Two paths leading astray
Recently I came across the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate by Pope Francis, published on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph in 2018, which, in its second Chapter, instructs us on “two subtle enemies of holiness“. The exhortation is concernced with the topic of the “call to holiness in today‘s world“.
Gaudete et Exsultate is not the only place and time the Holy Father has spoken about these two false ways influencing the Church today. In fact, he has regularly adressed them in his homilies throughout his pontificate.
I would like to share some excerpts from this second Chapter because I think that the things highlighted therein are indeed very influential in the Church, at least in the West, to the detriment of her sap and vigor, her saltiness, her lightfulness, and her members‘ joy.
“Here I would like to mention two false forms of holiness that can lead us astray: gnosticism and pelagianism. They are two heresies from early Christian times, yet they continue to plague us. In our times too, many Christians, perhaps without realizing it, can be seduced by these deceptive ideas, which reflect an anthropocentric immanentism disguised as Catholic truth. Let us take a look at these two forms of doctrinal or disciplinary security that give rise ‘to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyses and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others‘.“
Gaudete et Exsultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today‘s World by the Holy Father Francis, par. 35
After listening to the Holy Father, which undoubtedly will be of great profit for us, this article continues with a Post Scriptum on the Pelagian heresy in the ancient Church and on the dangers of Stoicism.
On “contemporary gnosticism“
“Gnosticism presumes ‘a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings‘.
Gaudete et Exsultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today‘s World by the Holy Father Francis, par. 36-45
Thanks be to God, throughout the history of the Church it has always been clear that a person’s perfection is measured not by the information or knowledge they possess, but by the depth of their charity. ‘Gnostics‘ do not understand this, because they judge others based on their ability to understand the complexity of certain doctrines. They think of the intellect as separate from the flesh, and thus become incapable of touching Christ’s suffering flesh in others, locked up as they are in an encyclopaedia of abstractions. In the end, by disembodying the mystery, they prefer ‘a God without Christ, a Christ without the Church, a Church without her people‘.
Certainly this is a superficial conceit: there is much movement on the surface, but the mind is neither deeply moved nor affected. Still, gnosticism exercises a deceptive attraction for some people, since the gnostic approach is strict and allegedly pure, and can appear to possess a certain harmony or order that encompasses everything.
(…) Gnostics think that their explanations can make the entirety of the faith and the Gospel perfectly comprehensible. They absolutize their own theories and force others to submit to their way of thinking. A healthy and humble use of reason in order to reflect on the theological and moral teaching of the Gospel is one thing. It is another to reduce Jesus’ teaching to a cold and harsh logic that seeks to dominate everything.
Gnosticism is one of the most sinister ideologies because, while unduly exalting knowledge or a specific experience, it considers its own vision of reality to be perfect. Thus, perhaps without even realizing it, this ideology feeds on itself and becomes even more myopic. It can become all the more illusory when it masks itself as a disembodied spirituality. For gnosticism ‘by its very nature seeks to domesticate the mystery‘, whether the mystery of God and his grace, or the mystery of others’ lives.
When somebody has an answer for every question, it is a sign that they are not on the right road. They may well be false prophets, who use religion for their own purposes, to promote their own psychological or intellectual theories. God infinitely transcends us; he is full of surprises. We are not the ones to determine when and how we will encounter him; the exact times and places of that encounter are not up to us. Someone who wants everything to be clear and sure presumes to control God’s transcendence.
(…) A dangerous confusion can arise. We can think that because we know something, or are able to explain it in certain terms, we are already saints, perfect and better than the ‘ignorant masses‘. Saint John Paul II warned of the temptation on the part of those in the Church who are more highly educated ‘to feel somehow superior to other members of the faithful‘. In point of fact, what we think we know should always motivate us to respond more fully to God’s love. Indeed, ‘you learn so as to live: theology and holiness are inseparable‘.“
On “contemporary pelagianism“
“Gnosticism gave way to another heresy, likewise present in our day. As time passed, many came to realize that it is not knowledge that betters us or makes us saints, but the kind of life we lead. But this subtly led back to the old error of the gnostics, which was simply transformed rather than eliminated.
Gaudete et Exsultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today‘s World by the Holy Father Francis, par. 47-62
The same power that the gnostics attributed to the intellect, others now began to attribute to the human will, to personal effort. This was the case with the pelagians and semi-pelagians. Now it was not intelligence that took the place of mystery and grace, but our human will. It was forgotten that everything ‘depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy‘ (Rom 9:16) and that ‘he first loved us‘ (cf. 1 Jn 4:19).
Those who yield to this pelagian or semi-pelagian mindset, even though they speak warmly of God’s grace, ‘ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style‘. When some of them tell the weak that all things can be accomplished with God’s grace, deep down they tend to give the idea that all things are possible by the human will, as if it were something pure, perfect, all-powerful, to which grace is then added. They fail to realize that “not everyone can do everything”, and that in this life human weaknesses are not healed completely and once for all by grace. In every case, as Saint Augustine taught, God commands you to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot,and indeed to pray to him humbly: ‘Grant what you command, and command what you will‘.
Ultimately, the lack of a heartfelt and prayerful acknowledgment of our limitations prevents grace from working more effectively within us, for no room is left for bringing about the potential good that is part of a sincere and genuine journey of growth. Grace, precisely because it builds on nature, does not make us superhuman all at once. That kind of thinking would show too much confidence in our own abilities. Underneath our orthodoxy, our attitudes might not correspond to our talk about the need for grace, and in specific situations we can end up putting little trust in it. Unless we can acknowledge our concrete and limited situation, we will not be able to see the real and possible steps that the Lord demands of us at every moment, once we are attracted and empowered by his gift. Grace acts in history; ordinarily it takes hold of us and transforms us progressively. If we reject this historical and progressive reality, we can actually refuse and block grace, even as we extol it by our words.
When God speaks to Abraham, he tells him: ‘I am God Almighty, walk before me, and be blameless‘ (Gen 17:1). In order to be blameless, as he would have us, we need to live humbly in his presence, cloaked in his glory; we need to walk in union with him, recognizing his constant love in our lives. We need to lose our fear before that presence which can only be for our good. God is the Father who gave us life and loves us greatly. Once we accept him, and stop trying to live our lives without him, the anguish of loneliness will disappear (cf. Ps 139:23-24). In this way we will know the pleasing and perfect will of the Lord (cf. Rom 12:1-2) and allow him to mould us like a potter (cf. Is 29:16). So often we say that God dwells in us, but it is better to say that we dwell in him, that he enables us to dwell in his light and love. He is our temple; we ask to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our life (cf. Ps 27:4). ‘For one day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere‘ (Ps 84:10). In him is our holiness.
(…) The Catechism of the Catholic Church also reminds us that the gift of grace ‘surpasses the power of human intellect and will’ and that ‘with regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality‘.His friendship infinitely transcends us; we cannot buy it with our works, it can only be a gift born of his loving initiative. This invites us to live in joyful gratitude for this completely unmerited gift, since ‘after one has grace, the grace already possessed cannot come under merit‘. The saints avoided putting trust in their own works: ‘In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you empty-handed, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justices have stains in your sight‘.
(…) Only on the basis of God’s gift, freely accepted and humbly received, can we cooperate by our own efforts in our progressive transformation. We must first belong to God, offering ourselves to him who was there first, and entrusting to him our abilities, our efforts, our struggle against evil and our creativity, so that his free gift may grow and develop within us: ‘I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God‘ (Rom 12:1). For that matter, the Church has always taught that charity alone makes growth in the life of grace possible, for ‘if I do not have love, I am nothing‘ (1 Cor 13:2).
Still, some Christians insist on taking another path, that of justification by their own efforts, the worship of the human will and their own abilities. The result is a self-centred and elitist complacency, bereft of true love. This finds expression in a variety of apparently unconnected ways of thinking and acting: an obsession with the law, an absorption with social and political advantages, a punctilious concern for the Church’s liturgy, doctrine and prestige, a vanity about the ability to manage practical matters, and an excessive concern with programmes of self-help and personal fulfilment. Some Christians spend their time and energy on these things, rather than letting themselves be led by the Spirit in the way of love, rather than being passionate about communicating the beauty and the joy of the Gospel and seeking out the lost among the immense crowds that thirst for Christ.
Not infrequently, contrary to the promptings of the Spirit, the life of the Church can become a museum piece or the possession of a select few. This can occur when some groups of Christians give excessive importance to certain rules, customs or ways of acting. The Gospel then tends to be reduced and constricted, deprived of its simplicity, allure and savour. This may well be a subtle form of pelagianism, for it appears to subject the life of grace to certain human structures. It can affect groups, movements and communities, and it explains why so often they begin with an intense life in the Spirit, only to end up fossilized… or corrupt.
Once we believe that everything depends on human effort as channelled by ecclesial rules and structures, we unconsciously complicate the Gospel and become enslaved to a blueprint that leaves few openings for the working of grace. Saint Thomas Aquinas reminded us that the precepts added to the Gospel by the Church should be imposed with moderation ‘lest the conduct of the faithful become burdensome‘, for then our religion would become a form of servitude.
To avoid this, we do well to keep reminding ourselves that there is a hierarchy of virtues that bids us seek what is essential. The primacy belongs to the theological virtues, which have God as their object and motive. At the centre is charity. Saint Paul says that what truly counts is ‘faith working through love‘ (Gal 5:6). We are called to make every effort to preserve charity: ‘The one who loves another has fulfilled the law… for love is the fulfilment of the law‘ (Rom 13:8.10). ‘For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’‘ (Gal 5:14).
(…) May the Lord set the Church free from these new forms of gnosticism and pelagianism that weigh her down and block her progress along the path to holiness! These aberrations take various shapes, according to the temperament and character of each person. So I encourage everyone to reflect and discern before God whether they may be present in their lives.“
“Charity is the soul of faith; it gives it life; without love, faith dies.“
Saint Anthony of Padua
“We will never be truly Catholic unless we conform our entire lives to the two commandments that are the essence of the Catholic faith: to love the Lord, our God, with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.“
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
“Defacing the confession of faith in Christ, the one, universal Savior“
It seems to me that both tendencies – the neo-Gnostic path of a disembodied subjectivism and the neo-Pelagian path of a willful and almost superhuman perfectionism – receive their support at least partly from the vertigo of the radically individualistic cult of self-sufficiency prevalent in our modern “atomist“ society, seeping into the Church.
A document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), entitled Placuit Deo, published in 2018 as well, also addresses these erroneous conceptions of the faith. It tells us that these tendencies “deface the confession of faith in Christ, the one, universal Savior“ (par. 4), and that they are at odds with the understanding of the Church as the “universal sacrament of salvation“ (par. 12) and with her sacramental character:
“Pope Francis, in his ordinary magisterium, often has made reference to the two tendencies described above, that resemble certain aspects of two ancient heresies, Pelagianism and Gnosticism. A new form of Pelagianism is spreading in our days, one in which the individual, understood to be radically autonomous, presumes to save oneself, without recognizing that, at the deepest level of being, he or she derives from God and from others. According to this way of thinking, salvation depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures, which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God. On the other hand, a new form of Gnosticism puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. (…) It presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by the interests of man.“
Placuit Deo, par. 3; 12; 13
“The place where we receive the salvation brought by Jesus is the Church, the community of those who have been incorporated into this new kind of relationship begun by Christ (cf. Rom 8: 9). Understanding this salvific mediation of the Church is an essential help in overcoming all reductionist tendencies. The salvation that God offers us is not achieved with our own individual efforts alone, as neo-Pelagianism would contend. Rather, salvation is found in the relationships that are born from the incarnate Son of God and that form the communion of the Church. Because the grace that Christ gives us is not merely interior salvation, as the neo-Gnostic vision claims, and introduces us into concrete relationships that He himself has lived, the Church is a visible community. In her we touch the flesh of Jesus, especially in our poorest and most suffering brothers and sisters. Hence, the salvific mediation of the Church, ‘the universal sacrament of salvation‘, assures us that salvation does not consist in the self-realization of the isolated individual, nor in an interior fusion of the individual with the divine. Rather, salvation consists in being incorporated into a communion of persons that participates in the communion of the Trinity.“
“Both the individualistic and the merely interior visions of salvation contradict the sacramental economy through which God wants to save the human person.“
Post scriptum: The Pelagian heresy in the ancient Church, and the dangers of Stoicism
Saint Augustine of Hippo vs. Pelagius
One of my favorite saints, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), fought against “Pelagianism“ in the Church of the early 5th century – against teachings that were connected with a man by the name Pelagius. The “Pelagian heresy“ was condemned by the Church at the Council of Carthage in the year 418. Saint Augustine‘s writings are the most important source for studying what “Pelagianism“ was. Besides, Saint Jerome also publicly opposed Pelagius.
I will try to look at some important aspects of this ancient theological controversy. In the first few centuries the Church already lived through many attacks upon the orthodox faith, constantly battling to ward off yet another new heresy springing up here and there, causing schisms. The main errors in thought and practice have kind of all been here before.
Pelagius was from the Roman province of Britannia and lived in Rome for many years. He was a highly educated lay monk, fluent in Greek and Latin, and lived a very ascetic life. Many considered him a saintly man. And in his eyes, moral laxity in society had gotten out of control…
His teachings emphasized the free will of man, man‘s moral responsibility. Pelagius denied the concept of original sin. He taught that every human being can freely choose between good and evil, and that it could be possible for a man to live a sinless life. He felt that many were only “Christian by name“, but not by conduct.
In Rome, Pelagius became friends with Caelestius, an Italian lawyer who was drawn to asceticism and who came to hold the same beliefs as him. When Caelestius later tried to become a priest in Carthage, the deacon of Milan hindered his plan by sending a letter to Bishop Aurelius in which he listed the heresies that Caelestius was adhering to: among them, that Adam‘s sin harmed only himself and not the whole human race, and the notion that every human being is born in the very same state as before Adam‘s fall. We see that one aspect of Pelagianism was about human autonomy and individual free will.
One can best understand the Pelagian heresy in relation to the teachings of Saint Augustine. He and Pelagius were fighting this out with another – and the whole Church eventually took the side of Saint Augustine, recognizing in the propositions which he defended the orthodox doctrine and faith as handed down from the beginning, and in the year 431, Pelagius and Caelestius were declared heretics by the First Council of Ephesus.
Saint Augustine was teaching original sin, that it is impossible to live a sinless life without Christ and the grace of God active in man, that all good works we ever do are due to God’s grace, and that, because of original sin, infants should be baptized.
Pelagius understood grace differently than Saint Augustine: To him, the grace of God was mostly the gift of the moral compass we should follow, that mankind had received the Law of Moses and the teachings and the example of Jesus, and that baptism granted the remission of sins already committed. One could probably say, that he presented a kind of “Christian moralism“ as the pathway to holiness. He tried to motivate people to fulfill the high ethical standards of Christianity by warning them of hell, of eternal damnation, as the eventual outcome of their immoral behavior.
Saint Augustine was not a fan of this method. In his view, it was instilling a servile fear into people when rather the Holy Spirit should guide and motivate them delightfully. But the concepts of Pelagius spread quickly especially in Northern Africa where Saint Augustine was bishop, which is why he and his fellow bishops felt compelled to oppose these ideas with sermons and books.
Saint Augustine presented to the Council at Carthage meeting in 418 nine beliefs of the Church that the Pelagians were not sharing:
“Death came from sin, not man’s physical nature.
Infants must be baptized to be cleansed from original sin.
Justifying grace covers past sins and helps avoid future sins.
The grace of Christ imparts strength and will to act out God’s commandments.
No good works can come without God’s grace.
We confess we are sinners because it is true, not from humility.
The saints ask for forgiveness for their own sins.
The saints also confess to be sinners because they are.
Children dying without baptism are excluded from both the kingdom of heaven and eternal life.“
For Saint Augustine, “Pelagianism“ was some sort of “humanism“. In its consequence it meant excluding God from human salvation, men saving themselves by their own willful efforts. And in his eyes, the Pelagian way was inevitably leading to pride.
“‘I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; but apart from Me, you can do nothing.’“
John 15: 5
The downsides of Stoicism
It is often said that Pelagianism can also be understood as a form of “Catholic stoicism“, that Pelagius was influenced more by Stoic ideas than by the Gospel. Which immediately begs the question, what “Stoicism“ was and is? Ancient Greek philosophy 101, here we go…
The Stoic school of philosophy emphasized that happiness consists in a life of wisdom and virtue. The task was to overcome passions by reason, logic, self-control and asceticism. One of their mottos was “Follow where reason leads“, and because happiness is achieved by virtue, which in turn is a matter of self-control, they were convinced that it must be possible to be always happy – calm and content – despite the circumstances.
The Stoics taught that we should try to achieve the peace of mind that comes with apatheia, being free of pathos. The Greek word pathos means “suffering, experience, something that happens to one or that one undergoes“. In Latin, pathos is rendered as passio, the etymological root of the English passion.
One famous Stoic was the Roman emperor Marc Aurelius, reigning from 161 to 180. The following quote gives us in just one sentence the Stoic mentality of achieving apatheia together with its downside – or rather: its logical conclusion – of securing one‘s moral and emotional autonomy, well-being and self-sufficiency at all costs:
“In general, evil does no harm to the world, and in the individual case, it only harms the one to whom it is not granted to liberate himself from it, as soon as only he wills it.“
Marc Aurelius, my own translation into English from the German version
I often think of Epicureanism, the hedonism of the ancient times, as trying to avoid and escape pain through seeking pleasure, and Stoicism as trying to avoid and escape pain and suffering (and conflict and confrontation) through self-control and an inwardness that puts a barrier between oneself and one‘s surroundings and leads to a certain aloofness and passivity. Pagan philosophies are never able to handle in any other way than that of escapism that which Jesus Christ underwent so that by His wounds we may be healed and may be liberated to follow Him: the Passion.
In the midst of great injustice, violence and despicable sins, or in the midst of the greatest tragedy and suffering, the Stoic would still try to “keep calm“ and to keep going with his course of things in a detached, unaffected and undisturbed manner – because he has once and for all determined by logic and reason that he himself at least is doing everything the right way, and that is all that counts in the midst of a crumbling civilization. All the Stoic truly wants is to be left alone so that he can quietly live his life of moral excellence. He has long given up on the mad people beyond his doorstep. There is an element of elitism, a feeling of intellectual and moral superiority, present in his display of strength.
The Stoic is not as far from the Epicurean who lies on his couch in his garden of sensual delights as he himself thinks he is. Both shut the door to the outside and enjoy themselves more than they care about the rest of the world. Both philosophies were reactions to the crisis of the polis, of the social community in ancient days. They were both “privatisms“, and variants of these temptations to withdraw into a private paradise of one’s own liking resurge with every major social crisis.
In my opinion, there is, then, no way in which Stoicism and true Christian charity can ever come together. If you inject the faith with Stoicism, love dies. A Stoic is not a lover; he is a respectable character who has got his stuff in order. He is the very opposite of the sinful woman at Jesus‘ feet, so to speak. And a Stoic is not a brother; he is a Master. Where brotherly love “covers a multitude of sins“ (1 Pt 4: 8), a Stoic’s moralist sophistry uncovers twice as much.
We should not misunderstand Saint Paul‘s words in his epistle to the Philippians as him endorsing Stoicism. The very last sentence of this passage will always remind us that Saint Paul‘s “secret of contentment“ was Jesus Christ, and nothing else. His joy never was to escape sufferings by some neat philosophical trick or some comfort-securing quietism or tribalism, but to take part in the sufferings of Christ.
“(…) for whatever circumstance I am in, I have learned to be content. I know what it is to live with humble means, and I know what it is to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of contentment – both to be filled and to go hungry, to have abundance and to suffer need. I can do all things through Messiah who strengthens me.“
Philippians 4: 11-13
And in the same letter, Saint Paul urges the Christians at Philippi to keep the bond of brotherly love and unity in humility – the very opposite of Stoic autonomy and self-sufficiency:
“Therefore if there is any encouragement in Messiah, if there is any comfort of love, if there is any fellowship of the Ruach, if there is any mercy and compassion, then make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, united in spirit, with one purpose. Do nothing out of selfishness or conceit, but with humility consider others as more important than yourselves, looking not only for your own interests but also for the interests of others.“
Philippians 2: 1-4
Ideas of Stoicism seem to have made a comeback in recent years. It can hardly be otherwise in a society like ours that is so obsessed with avoiding suffering and with securing one‘s own individual contentment and comfort. Nothing is wrong with the Stoic‘s focus on a life of virtue, but everything is wrong with the mainly individualistic and self-centered approach to achieving it and with the resulting spiritual pride and blindness – a blindness to one‘s own weakness and pitifulness.
Because in the end, it does not matter so much whether our selfishness is coarse or cultivated, and it does not matter so much whether we are allowing ourselves to grow blind to the good and high mountain we are called to climb, like the complacent Epicurean on his couch, or blind to the evil we ourselves do and bring into the world as well as to the sufferings and misery of others, like the self-assured Stoic in his lofty castle.
As this little inquiry into the Pelagian heresy of antiquity might have shown, self-sufficient Stoicism and a sort of rigid moralism can go together quite well. And the general social and cultural crisis along with all the outer and inner trials of the Church are probably the perfect breeding ground for such attitudes and “spirits“. They always offer some comfort and security, which is their allurement, but ultimately they always lead astray and obscure the truth.
For we have a need for gazing on God’s grace as embodied in Jesus Christ – “grace and truth came through Yeshua the Messiah“ (John 1: 18). In fleshless, placeless, “private“, and perfectionist times like these, I guess we could – against neo-Gnosticism and neo-Pelagianism and every other form of radical hyper-spiritualistic individualism – need a revival of the charism of Saint Dominic de Guzmán yet again, who is invoked in the classical hymn of the Dominican order as “praedicator gratiae“, as the “preacher of grace“, and who stressed the importance of living as brothers in community. And the answer to human sinfulness was and always remains God‘s marvelous and overflowing grace.
“Together with Saint Francis of Assisi, Dominic understood that the proclamation of the Gospel, verbis et exemplo, entailed the building up of the entire ecclesial community in fraternal unity and missionary discipleship.“
Praedicator Gratiae: Letter of the Holy Father to the Master of the Order of Preachers for the 8th Centenary of the Death of St. Dominic of Caleruega, 24th May 2021
“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in a manner similar to the violation of Adam, who is a pattern of the One to come. But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if many died because of the transgression of one man, how much more did the grace of God overflow to many through the gift of one Man – Yeshua the Messiah. Moreover, the gift is not like what happened through the one who sinned. For on the one hand, the judgment from one violation resulted in condemnation; but on the other hand, the gracious gift following many transgressions resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s transgression, death reigned through the one, how much more shall those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, Messiah Yeshua. So then, through the transgression of one, condemnation came to all men; likewise, through the righteousness of one came righteousness of life to all men. For just as through the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, many will be set right forever. Now the Torah came in so that transgression might increase. But where sin increased, grace overflowed even more – so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness, to eternal life through Messiah Yeshua our Lord.“
Romans 5: 14-21
On Pentecost Sunday 2020, Pope Francis warned us, not to fall into the temptation to seek a “nest“ for ourselves in the midst of our troubled and evil world – and not to try to turn the Church into one of those “nests“.
“The Spirit does not want the memory of the Master to be cultivated in small groups locked up in upper rooms where it is easy to nest. And this is a bad disease that can come to the Church; the Church not as a community, not as a family, not as a mother, but as a nest.“
Pope Francis in his homily on Pentecost Sunday 2020
Discernment of spirits
In the final chapter of Gaudete et Exsultate, the Holy Father is addressing the issue of “discernment of spirits“, a discernment which we all need in order to tell false ways of holiness from authentic ways of holiness.
“(…) Only if we are prepared to listen, do we have the freedom to set aside our own partial or insufficient ideas, our usual habits and ways of seeing things. In this way, we become truly open to accepting a call that can shatter our security, but lead us to a better life. It is not enough that everything be calm and peaceful. God may be offering us something more, but in our comfortable inadvertence, we do not recognize it.
Gaudete et Exsultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today‘s World by the Holy Father Francis, par. 172-174
Naturally, this attitude of listening entails obedience to the Gospel as the ultimate standard, but also to the Magisterium that guards it, as we seek to find in the treasury of the Church whatever is most fruitful for the ‘today‘ of salvation. It is not a matter of applying rules or repeating what was done in the past, since the same solutions are not valid in all circumstances and what was useful in one context may not prove so in another. The discernment of spirits liberates us from rigidity, which has no place before the perennial ‘today‘ of the risen Lord. The Spirit alone can penetrate what is obscure and hidden in every situation, and grasp its every nuance, so that the newness of the Gospel can emerge in another light.
An essential condition for progress in discernment is a growing understanding of God’s patience and his timetable, which are never our own. God does not pour down fire upon those who are unfaithful (cf. Lk 9:54), or allow the zealous to uproot the tares growing among the wheat (cf. Mt 13:29). Generosity too is demanded, for ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive‘ (Acts 20:35). Discernment is not about discovering what more we can get out of this life, but about recognizing how we can better accomplish the mission entrusted to us at our baptism. This entails a readiness to make sacrifices, even to sacrificing everything. For happiness is a paradox. We experience it most when we accept the mysterious logic that is not of this world: ‘This is our logic‘, says Saint Bonaventure, pointing to the cross.“