Artist: Angel Valdez
Sometimes we ask ourselves how we can keep going in the midst of the storm around us, the people with all their needs, their anxieties, the traumas they carry with them, their health problem. We have to ask the Lord to be with us each day as he calmed the sea for the disciples during a great storm. We also pray for the ship of the Church in the midst of the tempests of our time.
Three of the Gospels recount the story of the time that Jesus was in a boat with the disciples when a great storm arose. The Lord was asleep. They woke him up and begged for help. Jesus calmed the sea and asked, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”
The possibilities of doing good are overwhelming when one begins to do the Works of Mercy. It almost seems like the crowds that followed Jesus come to those who try to follow as His disciples. Word spreads when you house people, when you give food to the hungry without too many restrictions, when you provide health care for the poorest, do what you can to assist the sick and injured, when you recognize the Lord’s presence in the poor. More and more people arrive at Casa Juan Diego seeking whatever help they can find. Agencies and referral services keep sending more people. Mark Zwick once said that people are paid $25,000 a year (adjust to inflation to $45,000 a year) to give out our phone number.
We are just a few full-time people, fewer than ever because this is the transition time when some young people have left to pursue their vocations and others have not yet arrived. Part-time volunteers help very much.
Individuals who come across a person in need do what they can, often by bringing them to Casa Juan Diego. In addition to the dedicated doctors who volunteer in our clinic, the assistance of the Harris Health System is invaluable for the sick who come to us. We know that those who help in the parishes are in the same boat as we are (no pun intended) with many coming for help. The Houston Food Bank provides much food.
We ask the Lord to be with us in performing the Works of Mercy, following Matthew 25. The Works of Mercy help to keep us from despair in the face of the realities of poverty, displacement, and violence in our world. The daily practice of the Works of Mercy reminds us to invite the Lord to be with us in our sometimes shaky, certainly vulnerable boat.
We were quite surprised recently to discover that some Protestant Christians believe that the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25:31ff. can only apply to those who have been “saved.” His words that whatever we do to the least of the brethren, the poor, the stranger in a strange land, the sick or in prison, we do to Him, are reinterpreted out of its clear meaning in the Scripture to include only an elite group. Quite different from Henri De Lubac’s and Dorothy Day’s Catholic vision. We wouldn’t have as much work at Casa Juan Diego if we tried to sort out the deserving poor from the rest. However, these misinterpretations also have influence in Catholic circles.
We find hope and encouragement in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Our Supernatural Destiny and the Mystery of God
Some might ask why we continue to do this work. We try to focus on what Henri de Lubac, SJ (as well as Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, SJ, and Fr. John Hugo of the Retreat given at the Catholic Worker) taught about our supernatural destiny. Their teachings encouraged living with a focus on our final end – following the Nazarene in our daily lives with a supernatural motive, faith lived according to the Gospel that will hopefully lead to the beatific vision with saints and the heavenly hosts. Living with an awareness of that destiny can change our lives completely, as can meditating on the mystery of the cross and the resurrection and how God’s grace can transform our human nature and all of humanity in Christ, in spite of disturbances and tragedies and the difficult challenges in daily life.
De Lubac and the Retreat given by Fathers Lacouture and Hugo taught that our “supernatural final end has implications for human life, perfecting it into a ‘new creature’- making it holy. “(Peters, p. 237). These priests clarified that a life of faith with a supernatural perspective in mind could not be confused with trying to identify the nation-state and its institutions as sacred, on a par with salvation history.
In the light of that supernatural destiny and the plan of God for the salvation of all people, it is hard to understand the turn today toward supernationalism, harsh authoritarianism, rejection of whole groups of people, and Machiavellian plots, far from the prayer of the Nazarene that we all may be one in His name.
What Does Theology Have to Do with Social and Political Realities?
The importance of the theology of Henri de Lubac cannot be underestimated in these times when there is a concern about dictatorships and conflating Christianity with extreme nationalism. The threats of authoritarianism and exclusion of people on the basis of ethnonationalism of today remind us of the crises of the twentieth century. De Lubac’s insights and his courage were remarkable in confronting those realities. It turns out that theology does make a difference in real life.
Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. The challenge, the question of the possibility of confusing the reign of God with a very imperfect nation is not new.
Henri De Lubac, one of the most important theologians in the twentieth century, brought the insights of the Fathers of the Church to not only theology, but to the problems of tyranny in his time. De Lubac was not always understood or appreciated. His theology was criticized by those who wanted to keep the neoscholastic status quo in theology, and for a significant time he was forbidden to teach.
We have been aware of how de Lubac was “alienated by the politics closely associated with the neoscholastic model in France among the clergy, where neoscholasticism sometimes went hand in hand with support for the far-right nationalist and royalist movement known as the Action française, condemned in 1926,” but De Lubac was also a part of the resistance under Hitler. Benjamin Peters pointed out how the opponents of De Lubac’s theology used neoscholasticism to attack his early work. His main critic, Fr. Garrigou-La Grange, O.P., later supported the Vichy government, the Nazi regime’s takeover of France, in contrast to de Lubac’s courageous writings and stand against Hitler’s regime. (See Benjamin Peters, Called to Be Saints: John Hugo, the Catholic Worker, and a Theology of Radical Christianity (157-158).
De Lubac was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The French bishops have begun his cause for beatification. With the announcement of the opening of his cause, the Jesuits put out a statement about his life of faith and his work, including the following: “Through his work, a believer’s itinerary emerges: a faith which is attentive to the problems of the times, rooted in the experience of God, nourished by Scripture, and attached to the life of the Church. “
Recent books and articles about Henri de Lubac’s work are bringing to us a deeper understanding of his faith, even mysticism, and the relevance of his insights in theology and Church history for the crises in today’s world. His immersion in the Mystery of Christ and his study of the Fathers of the Church permeated de Lubac’s work, and his understanding of the social nature of the Eucharist and the Body of Christ brought to the world a new awareness of the meaning of history and the common destiny of humankind.
Susan Wood, SCL, described his mysticism as one with a perspective somewhat unusual in the way mysticism is often understood: “De Lubac’s mysticism is a discovery of spiritual meaning in historical realities. It is thus a mysticism of the incarnate rather than an escape to something otherworldly or disembodied.” (Susan Wood, quoted by Andrew Prevot, “Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Contemporary Mystical Theology” in A Companion to Jesuit Mysticism, edited by Robert A. Markys. Brill, 2017 (280). Benjamin Peters called De Lubac’s mysticism “practical mysticism” (155).
The Theological Origins of Secularization Theory
Not only is De Lubac considered by many to be one the most important theologians, if not the most important theologian of the twentieth century, he also continues to influence studies of secular history. In researching how secularization and the secular nation-state developed, historians have since 1957 been citing de Lubac’s theological work. These studies are quite relevant to the problems of extreme nationalism (to be distinguished from patriotism) to today’s political realities.
Several recent studies of de Lubac’s work including those of Sarah Shortall, Andrew Prevot, and Eugene Schlesinger, emphasize de Lubac’s study of the shift in language in medieval theology from the use of the terminology of the early Church about the Eucharist as the Mystical Body, to applying that term rather to the Church. Rather than speaking of the three bodies of Christ, medieval theology with its scholastic distinctions, wrote of only two. In his book Corpus Mysticum, De Lubac argued that this shift happened at least partly because of the hope of one medieval Pope of a renewed theocracy based on this concept. De Lubac contended that the medieval shift in theology to describe the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ , a theology that was not closely associated with the Eucharist, was open to misinterpretation and even the political use of ecclesiastical words and symbols.
Shortall defines the terms: While Jesus is one person, the three bodies of Christ presented by the Church Fathers are 1) the physical body of the Christ of the Incarnation who died on the cross, was resurrected and ascended into heaven, 2) the Eucharist, and 3) the Church. The early Church used the term Mystical Body to refer to the Eucharist.
It is fascinating to read with Sarah Shortall, a professor at Notre Dame, how Catholic theology influenced the development of the secular state. She shows how historians fairly recently discovered through de Lubac’s writings that the shift in medieval theology affected the idea of the divine right of kings and facilitated the transition to an almost divine view of the newly emerging secular state. The historians quoted by Sarah Shortall, Ernest Kantorowicz and Marcel Gauchet, studied de Lubac’s book Corpus Mysticum, and cited it extensively in their interpretation of the rationale used to make the new secular nation-state seem sacred.
Shortall describes the way in which nations mimicked and took advantage of the language that medieval theologians and some Popes had used to describe the Church. She brings the idea of Kantorowics that somehow with the development of secular states, this morphed into the king being one “sacred” body and the nation-state being another – two bodies instead of the three bodies of Christ in earlier theology. The concept of the King’s two bodies was, according to Kantorowicz, a “legal fiction”: an individual, mortal body and an immortal body politic. Shortall points out that some nations, with these concepts equating the Church as a juridical body like any other, even called their countries a “mystical body” appropriating the term to hallow their own institutions.
The appeal to theocracy continues to be a concern as not only Christian(?) nationalists but some sincere young Catholics become enamored of this idea.
De Lubac Against Authoritarianism and Ethnonationalism
De Lubac was very aware that the political dangers of misunderstandings of the mystical-body theology were not limited to the medieval past. He was concerned that calling the Church the Mystical Body might be playing into the hands of those who would use it to support an extreme nationalism which would harm many people. He observed that the terminology was being used by Catholics in the liturgical movement, especially the German liturgical movement in the nineteen thirties, appealing to the desire for community and bringing people together. He was concerned that this could be confused with the “goals of earthly communities like the nation, race, or class” and could be used to support authoritarian and fascist regimes.
These dire predictions turned out to be true. Karl Adam, a theologian widely read at the time, who wrote the book The Spirit of Catholicism, actually put together the concept of the Mystical Body with the ideology of the Third Reich in an article in 1933, “to argue that ethnonational identity (something he defined in terms of ‘blood purity’) was in no way incompatible with the universality of the Church.”
De Lubac sought, as Shortall describes it, “to carve out a way for the Church to be in but not of the secular public sphere, and to articulate a Catholic alternative to both liberalism [classical liberalism, not to be easily equated with political liberalism today] and the growing threat of ‘totalitarian’ ideologies. He found the resources for this model by turning back to the work of the Church Fathers, who had been overshadowed by the dominance of neoscholasticism. He was also drawn to the ecclesiology of the Church Fathers, which allowed him to frame the Church as the only human institution capable of transcending the excesses of both liberal individualism and totalitarian collectivism.”
The Eucharist Makes the Church – One Bread, One Body
by Angel Valdez
Shortall suggests that de Lubac’s idea of conceiving of the Church as a ‘mystical body’ not closely linked to the Eucharist risked not only its being misused politically, but also led to the weakening of the idea of solidarity among members of the Church. For de Lubac, “Its effect was to individualize Eucharistic piety and dilute ecclesial solidarity by disarticulating the celebration of the Eucharist from the edification of the ecclesial community.”
In Corpus Mysticum, de Lubac famously declared, “Quite literally, the Eucharist makes the Church … Through its hidden power, the members of the body achieve unity among themselves by becoming more fully members of Christ.” The Church Fathers had understood that the mystery and significance of the Eucharist lay not just in an individual communion with the divine, but the Eucharist was thus an indispensably social affair.
As Prevot writes, “One of de Lubac’s central concerns here is to resituate Catholic Eucharistic devotion in the full Christian reality of ecclesial existence and thereby to combat the dangers of an overly individualistic or abstract Eucharistic piety. Nevertheless, in the end, de Lubac does not call for a reversion to the previous terminological practices but rather a more adequate awareness…of the entire interconnected threefold body of Christ.” Prevot (292)
Pope Francis on the Eucharist as Broken Bread and the Chalice Given for All Humanity
De Lubac’s “The Eucharist makes the Church’ can help us to understand that Communion is not meant to be individualistic. In the Angelus this year on the Feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Francis reflected on the meaning of the Eucharist for our lives and the lives of others, beyond personal consolation. Excerpts follow:
“The Gospel of the liturgy today tells us about the Last Supper (Mk 14:12-26), during which the Lord performs a gesture of handing over: in fact, in the broken bread and in the chalice offered to the disciples, it is He who gives Himself for all humanity, and offers Himself for the life of the world.
“In that gesture of Jesus who breaks the bread, there is an important aspect that the Gospel emphasizes with the words “he gave it to them” (v. 22). Let us fix these words in our heart: he gave it to them. Indeed, the Eucharist recalls first and foremost the dimension of the gift. Jesus takes the bread not to consume it by Himself, but to break it and give it to the disciples, thus revealing His identity and His mission. He did not keep life for Himself, but gave it to us; He did not consider His being as God a jealously-held treasure, but stripped Himself of His glory to share our humanity and let us enter eternal life (cf. Phil 2:1-11). Jesus made a gift of His entire life. Let us remember this: Jesus made a gift of His entire life.
“Let us understand, then, that celebrating the Eucharist and eating this Bread is not an act of worship detached from life or a mere moment of personal consolation; we must always remember that Jesus took the bread, broke it and gave it to them and, therefore, communion with Him makes us capable of also becoming bread broken for others, capable of sharing what we are and what we have.
“We are called to become people who no longer live for themselves (cf. Rm 14:7), no, in the logic of possession, of consumption, no, people who know how to make their own life a gift for others, yes. Thanks to the Eucharist, we become prophets and builders of a new world: when we overcome selfishness and open ourselves up to love, when we cultivate bonds of fraternity, when we participate in the sufferings of our brothers and sisters and share bread and resources with those in need, when we make all our talents available, then we are breaking the bread of our life like Jesus.”
References
Henri de Lubac, SJ, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man. Ignatius Press, 1988.
Henri de Lubac,SJ, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages. Paris,
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University of Notre Dame Press in English, 2006.
Benjamin T. Peters, Called to Be Saints: John Hugo, the Catholic Worker, and a Theology of Radical
Christianity. Marquette University Press, 2016.
Andrew Prevot, “Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Contemporary Mystical Theology” in A Companion
to Jesuit Mysticism, edited by Robert A. Markys. Brill, 2017.
Eugene R. Schlesinger, Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery
of the Cross. University of Notre Dame, 2023.
Sarah Shortall, “From the Three Bodies of Christ to the King’s Two Bodies: The Theological Origins of
Secularization Theory” Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 20, Issue 3, September 2022. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/from-the-three-bodies-of-christ-to-the-kings-two-bodies-the-theological-origins-of-secularization-theory/B656DD46715495626101EF2200F1047D
Thanks to Noemí Flores with help in editing this article.
Houston Catholic Worker, July-September 2024, Vol. XLIV, No. 3.
