Christoph Schönborn - Loving the Church: Spiritual Exercises Preached in the Presence of Pope John Paul II

LOVING THE CHURCH

CHRISTOPH SCHNBORN

Spiritual Exercises
Preached in the Presence
of Pope John Paul II

Translated by John Saward

SAN FRANCISCO IGNATIUS PRESS

Spiritual Exercises preached from
February 25, 1996, to February 30, 1996

Original Italian edition: Amare la Chiesa. Esercizi Spiritual
predicati al Papa Giovanni Paolo II
1997 Edizioni San Paolo, s.r.l, Cimisello Balsamo, Milan

Cover art: Sermon on the Mount (detail)
Fra Angelico
From the Museo San Marco, Florence, Italy
Scala / Art Resource, N.Y.

Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum

1998 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-676-5
Library of Congress catalogue number 97-76859
Printed in the United States of America

To the Priests of the Archdiocese of Vienna
as a sign of gratitude and encouragement

Meditations :

Meditations :

Meditations :

Meditations :

Meditations :

Scriptural quotations have in most cases been taken from the Revised Standard Version. The translations of the documents of the Second Vatican Council are either the version given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or my own translations from the Latin text. Translations of prayers from the Missale romanum (1970) are my own work and not the ICEL version currently in use.

AG Vatican Council II, Decree on the Churchs Missionary Activity Ad gentes divinitus (December 7, 1965)

CCC Catechism of the Catholic Church

CT John Paul II, apostolic exhortation Catechesi tradendae (October 16, 1979)

DEV John Paul II, encyclical Dominum et vivificantem (May 18, 1986)

FD John Paul II, apostolic constitution Fidei depositum (October 11, 1992)

GS Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes (December 7, 1965)

LG Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964)

MD John Paul II, apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem (August 1, 1988)

PDV John Paul II, apostolic exhortation Pastores dabo vobis (March 25, 1992)

SC Vatican Council II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium (December 4, 1963)

STh Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae

TMA John Paul II, apostolic letter Tertio millennio adveniente (November 10, 1994)

Emphasis has been added to many of the quotations from Scripture, Church documents, and other sources in accordance with the original German text.

PRAISED BE JESUS CHRIST!

Holy Father, my dear brothers in the episcopate and priesthood,

With these words begins the Catechism of the Catholic Church , and with these same words we begin these days of spiritual exercises. They are meant to show the place to which our Lord is inviting us during these days, the place where we find his rest (cf. Heb 4:11). Rabbi, where are you staying? That was the question of the first disciples on that unforgettable day when they met him for the first time, when he turned and saw them and said: What do you seek? (Jn 1:38). Rabbi, where are you staying? He said to them, Come and see. They came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour (Jn 1:38-39). That first meeting lives on in the mind of the disciple whom Jesus loved. Even in old age, he remembers, It was about the tenth hour, about four in the afternoon. From this first hour, a community began, a communion of life with him began, the Church began. For what is the Church if not living communion with Jesus Christ (as Catechesi tradendae says)? The Church began when John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to two of his disciples, who were standing with him: And he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, Behold, the Lamb of God! (Jn 1:35-36). This meeting with him, and thus the beginning of that living communion with him that we call the Church, had a long preparation . It required many centuries of God and man becoming accustomed to one another, as Saint Irenaeus puts it (CCC 53), before the hour was ripe. Only then could men be taken to the place where the Lord dwells, the place to which, from the beginning, he has invited mankind.

As always in the Gospel of John, visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly, are intertwined: Where are you staying? That is the simple question of two rather gauche fellows who do not know how to start a conversation. And yet the whole quest of mankind resounds through their question, the question about the One with whom men once enjoyed an intimacy that now they have lost: Rabbi, where are you staying? And the longing behind this question is already a call to him who, from the first hour, has been calling men: Adam, where are you? (Gen 3:9).

And so, as the Apostle looks back in his old age, that first hour seems heavy with mystery, the Mystery of the Beginning not just of the beginning in the chronological sense, the moment in time of that first meeting, but also the source of the meeting in the beginning in which God created heaven and earth (Gen 1:1), and even more deeply in that beginning in which the Word was, in which the Word was with God and was God and is God and remains God forever (cf. Jn 1:1).

For the aged Apostle, the moment of the first meeting is bathed in the light of that beginning , that source, which is Gods most proper mystery. Here began the path to intimate friendship with Jesus, a path on which John and the others who soon came after were led by Jesus himself into the innermost place where he dwells. In the bright light of Easter faith, John says of this place: No one has ever seen God. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known (Jn 1:18). It is into this place of his rest, the bosom of the Father, that Jesus will usher John and the others. It is from this place that Jesus comes, and of this place he alone brings knowledge (Jn 1:18). And the knowledge that the Only-begotten, the Son, brings from the heart of the Father is this: Father,... this is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent (Jn 17:3). There, in the heart of the Father, rests the Son, and from there comes the decision to create the world, the plan of the community that is called and is the Church.

All this is still hidden at that first moment of meeting. What did Jesus say to them at that time, when they stayed with him that day (Jn 1:39)? Strangely, John is silent about it, even though he, like no other evangelist, reports the most intimate words of Jesus to his disciples (Jn 13-17). The first meeting remains as a mystery in his heart. And yet it is as if all that follows is already hidden within the mystery of this hour. We learn how decisive these hours with Jesus were from what happens the next day. Andrew brings Simon to Jesus: We have found the Messiah (Jn 1:41). And the day after that, Nathanael says to Jesus, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! (Jn 1:49).

At the beginning of this retreat, we are being invited, with John and like John, to look back at the first moment when we met our Lord, when he addressed the question to us , What is it you seek? For every person, the call of Christ has a unique, unmistakable charactertoday just as at the beginning of the Church. And just as John kept the memory of the first meeting as his own secret, so we, too, cannot express in words what happened so deep within ourselves when we were called, even when we can speak about its outward circumstances. Still, in a retreat, we can and should go back, in a personal way, to that beginning, whatever it was like, so that we can find him anew and see and contemplate where he lives (Jn 1:39) and stay there with him. Then we can once more do what Andrew did for his brother Simon: He brought him to Jesus (Jn 1:42). What more beautiful gift can spiritual exercises give us than the ability to say: We have found Christ (Jn 1:41) and to confess with Nathanael: Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel (Jn 1:49)? May the personal grace of these spiritual exercises be this: the joy, ever ancient and ever new, the never-aging joy, of being able to say, We have found Christ!