Text: Martin Coffey CP at Passionist Seminar - Responding with Love to Suffering in the World Today

Fr Martin Coffey CP gave this presentation last week at the Passionist seminar in Minsteracres, Durham.

1. Overall Aim of the Talk

The theme Love and Suffering makes us think immediately of the Passion where the terrible suffering of Jesus is the greatest expression of love. This is the rock solid foundation of our charism. Jesus loved much and suffered much. He suffered because he loved. We might sum up the whole Gospel by saying Jesus is God's response of love to a suffering world.

I begin with an image. I see the Church solemnly handing over to us the Crucifix and mandating us to "make the passion of Jesus known and loved throughout the Church." For three hundred years, Passionists have fulfilled this mandate in different ways. For many Passionists today, the most powerful way of experiencing the charism and the mission of the Congregation is to present the Passion of Jesus as God's response of Love to human suffering in all its forms.

In union with Jesus, Passionists are called to respond to human suffering with understanding and compassion. This is the vocation of all Christians. Today, however, there is a problem. Many Christians are showing great indifference and lack of care for the suffering of the poor and of immigrants fleeing situations of war and persecution. Why is this happening? What has gone wrong? Is there a solution? These are some of the questions I want to explore in this presentation.

2. The Incarnation

I will approach the relationship between Love and Suffering from the point of view of the mystery of the Incarnation and the union of the divine and the human in Jesus. In the light of the Incarnation, we see the infinite divine love embracing the depths of human suffering. Infinite love and human suffering are indissolubly linked in Jesus and in human history forever after.

The Incarnation shows us that the transcendent God comes to meet us in the messiness of our ordinary lives. The God of Christian faith is the God revealed in Jesus. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14). Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us in the human life of Jesus. Jesus is the true and full human being, unmixed with anything divine. He refused the original temptation of Adam to make himself "divine". He emptied himself fully into his human shape and condition and realised it to the full. The radical humiliation of Jesus in his humanity signals the divine repudiation of any human project of becoming "like God". From now on there is no radical contradiction between the divine and the human, between the sacred and the secular. The divine is to be found in the human, the secular is the medium of the sacred.

Jesus made God present in a fully human way. But he did it in in a particular human way. He was a prophet, a teacher and a healer. He sought out the poor, the sick, and the afflicted. He chose to be close to suffering people. With love and mercy, Jesus reached into the root of our suffering in the human heart corrupted by greed, envy and hate.

3. The Passionist Response to Human Suffering

Love is God's response to human suffering. In the bible, we see how God cares about the suffering of humans and responds to them again and again with love. It was this love that brought about the great liberation of the Exodus. God's love takes many forms. Sometimes it is a love that heals and restores, sometimes a love that raises the dead to life, or a love that comforts and consoles, other times it's a love that forgives. There is a love that leads the sufferer to mystical ecstasy (Julian of Norwich). In most cases, however, it is a love that is silent and unfelt but that awakens deep faith and trust. That was Jesus own experience on the cross.

Among Passionists today, there is a new sense of being sent on mission to suffering people with the healing and saving Word of the Cross. This is captured in the new awareness of "the crucified people" and expressed in the lovely phrase, "We Passionists see in the one glance Christ crucified and the crucified people of today." The charism of the Passion is our way of bringing together Christ crucified and the crucified people of today. It is a way of seeing God's love coming in touch with human suffering.

Passionists are men and women whose mission is to bring the love of God and the suffering of people together for healing and salvation. There are still some in the Congregation who have little or no feeling for this new way of understanding the charism. They express their doubts by saying that the focus on "the crucified" is merely social work, or too secular, or at least not as religious as explicit preaching and devotion. This is understandable in the light of our long tradition, but it may also indicate an insufficient awareness or openness to the reality of God's real presence in creation, in history and above all in the poor and suffering people around us. I think the Congregation and our mission have been greatly enriched by this new theological insight that helps us to encounter Jesus in the "tabernacles" of the poor and suffering people, as Pope Francis has said.

The late Mother Theresa was deeply in tune with this contemporary Christian sensibility when she said, "when faced with countless lepers and poor people dying by the dozen, with children to be helped and the sick to be cared for, there are no problems to discuss because there just isn't time." She called her sisters to love Jesus in the Tabernacle and in the poor.

Another great Catholic, Jean Vanier, said, "One of the problems facing the Church today is that most of us have separated ourselves from the poor and the wounded and the suffering. We have lost the yearning for God that comes when we are faced with his suffering people." According to Vanier and many others, closeness to suffering people awakens a yearning for God.

The question of St. John is still resounding through the Church, How can you claim to love the invisible God when you don't love the brother you see? How can you claim to love Christ crucified when you do not love him in his crucified body?

4. Responding with Love to the Suffering in Today's World

We are called to respond with love to the suffering of people today. There is no absolute consensus on the most pressing issues facing the world but a majority of people would include the following:

•Global warming and climate change, the steady destruction of the planet, vanishing rain forests, desertification, extinction of species, depletion of resources, all of life in peril . . . with the resultant migration of people for survival.

•Poverty of 3 billion people who have no job or land/property . . on the move . . migration of people seeking a better life for their children.

•War and conflict in Middle East, Africa, Arabia,

Afghanistan . . . . once again migration of people seeking security.

•The new biotechnology and the capacity to "engineer" new humans

What is the response of Love to these sufferings of humanity today? The fundamental challenge for all of us is to see and accept reality. Only then will we be able to respond in a creative and Gospel way to these other great challenges.

Let's take a closer look at the issue of Climate Change. The dangers facing the planet and humanity due to global warming and climate change have been documented and substantiated by the global scientific community. There are still those who refuse to accept the need for a change in thinking and lifestyle called for and so simply deny that climate change is due to human activity. Powerful economic interests are supported by other ideologues who resist any suggestion that the market economy fueled by consumerism needs to change. They convince themselves that the wealthy people of the West can continue to exploit the planet to achieve ever more material wealth and comfort. They are also consoled by the belief that they have the scientific and technological know-how to minimize any negative impact of climate change on their world. The implication is that poorer countries will inevitably bear the brunt and suffer the consequences of our decisions.

How are Christians responding to this and other issues? When people like Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis try to raise our consciousness they are ridiculed and dismissed by vested interests, and many Catholics are happy to go along with this. In the US where denial is greatest, 60% of white Catholics either deny climate change or consider it unimportant and only 17% of white Catholics consider it a very important issue (the smallest percentage of any group sampled). Their motive is economic and political. Many Evangelicals are also skeptical but mainly for religious reasons.

In Europe also, there is something happening that is preventing many Christians from seeing or caring about the terrible suffering of so many people. Instead of Christian compassion there is cold indifference and sometimes resentment and anger directed against vulnerable and suffering people. There is a toxic environment that is suffocating Christian charity and kindness. This is also a major challenge looking for a response. Why is this happening?

5. The Catholic Response to the Challenges of Today

Within the Catholic Church there is also great suffering and division. There are many reasons for this but one reason is that the Catholic Church is having great trouble finding its feet in the so-called secular age.

From a Catholic point of view, the long 19th century stretching really from the French Revolution to WW II was characterized by the ongoing tension/conflict between the Catholic Church and the modern world. In the late 20th century, the impact of two world wars forced Catholics to rethink their relationship to the modern world and to find new ways of engaging with the world for the betterment of all people.

In the early 1960s, Pope John XXIII in particular was keenly aware of the dangers of a new and even more devastating world conflict and determined that the Catholic Church would play a leading part in promoting peace and harmony among all people. The alternative was for the Church to remain aloof and by inaction contribute to the dangerous tensions in the world. Pope Paul VI developed this idea with his insistence on dialogue as opposed to opposition and conflict as the appropriate stance and way forward for the Catholic Church. The great achievement of Vatican II was to institutionalize this new stance of dialogue and collaboration which has affected every dimension of Church life since.

Vatican II happened as the secular climate was taking hold in western democracies. The great controversies at the council concerned a small number of topics. Two major flashpoints were the documents Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom and Nostra Aetate on interreligious dialogue. These topics were very much in tune with the mood of the time. The oppressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of colonialism heightened the sensitivity around the question of human freedom and the dignity and rights of previously oppressed peoples.

These two documents were controversial because they appeared to contradict long standing (19th century) positions of the Church on the truth of the Catholic faith and the unique authority and rights of the Catholic Church to defend, teach and impose the truth in the face of error and heresy. The Church rejected as irrational and immoral the idea that people have the freedom or right to deny the truth and embrace error.

6. A Current Version - Saving Western Civilization

The themes and tensions of Vatican II are still alive and working their way through the life of the Church. We find them today in the tensions around secularization and the attempts to find the appropriate response to an increasingly secularized and multicultural society in the West.

One reaction to secularization is religious revival in both the political and spiritual sphere. Some of the revitalized or more accurately politicized religions assume militant and fundamentalist forms. The rise of militant Islam is often explained as a reaction to western secularization. In the West, recent mass murderers have written manifestoes where they set out their thinking. They are reacting against the diversity, fluidity and interdependence of modern life. They are violently anti-pluralist. They yearn for a return to clear borders, settled truths, and stable identity. They kill for a romanticized world that shines in their imagination but that never really existed.

There are many versions of this broad reaction to recent developments in society. One version is focused on the "immanent dangers" facing Western/Christian civilization and the need to defend the Christian heritage of the West. The hostility towards immigrants and especially Muslims in often fueled by this kind of argument. Even very eminent intellectuals talk about the danger of the West committing "cultural suicide".

At a different level, there are white supremacists who argue for the superiority of white European culture, history, achievement etc. and put it down to racial superiority. The great cultural and scientific achievements of the white West are imperiled by the influx of inferior non-whites into Europe and the US. Thus the need to build walls and expel people of different race, color, and religion - "send them back! To support their case they use the internet to spread lies, half-truths, scare tactics generating misinformation and fear.

In some places there is a new alliance between traditional Christians and white supremacists is based on the belief that Western Christian culture is superior to anything we find in other cultures. This, they argue, is proved by the economic, military, scientific and technological superiority of the West. To secure the continued strength and prosperity of the West, the influx of all other races, cultures and religions must be resisted. Many Catholics are influenced by this current of thought. They are upholders of Tradition and this includes opposing the banality of modern culture (vernacular liturgy) and the idiocy of inculturation that values the multiplicity of local cultures however primitive and unsophisticated. Most of all, they resist secularization and pluralism that deny the uniqueness and superiority of white Christian civilization and so put it in danger.

Secularization and religious pluralism are seen as endangering national, religious and cultural identity. Sovereignty is another dimension of the problem. By belonging to multi-national bodies like the EU people fear a loss of national self-determination. This is another threat to identity and sense of pride. Multiculturalism and religious and cultural pluralism dilute the religious ethos and deny the historical identity of the majority. The promotion of minority rights seems to imply the loss of the rights of the majority.

7. The Church and Secular Society: A different approach

Is there a different and less aggressive way of responding to the challenges of secularization and pluralism? There is a "school" of Christian theology that attempts to mediate between the polarised positions in the Church. These thinkers accept that the modern state is secular but that it does not have to be "anti-religion". It is best understood as favouring individual freedom in its richest sense. Individual freedom does not necessarily lead to individualism but rather to the affirmation of the dignity of the human person. Pluralism is not the same as relativism but another expression of the recognition of the rights of the person and of conscience.

Thinkers like the Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan and the philosopher Charles Taylor acknowledge the advent of a secular age and see it generally as something positive. For them, it is a human achievement especially when we consider the improvements in the conditions of life and work for so many people, the modern appreciation of human dignity and human rights, the affirmation of the equality of all people, the rejection of discrimination on the basis of race, colour or gender etc. The many achievements of the modern idea of democracy and the emancipation of formerly colonized and often brutalized peoples are also appreciated. However, unlike many others, these catholic thinkers argue that the seeds of the emancipatory movements and achievements are found in the Gospel and in the better moments of Church history and church teaching. They also argue that the golden age of Christendom and the following era of the confessional state were radically incapable of allowing these deeply Christian values to emerge.

They are arguing for a version of Christian secularism that affirms the intrinsic value and dignity of the created order and of human nature. The Christian life and the worship of God do not require that we devalue the human and the natural or that we need to add a supernatural layer to the natural in order to secure its value or dignity. The danger of attacking the secular order is that we fail to accept the truth of the Incarnation and instead dream of erecting or restoring a super-natural order (a new Christendom) that is neither human nor divine but a religious Frankenstein that risks being sectarian and intolerant.

The fact that Jesus assumed our human nature and lived with us in the world as a real man and did not need to inject some divine or superhuman elements into his humanity shows that the path Christians must tread is one that accepts our humanity and the natural world as the place of encounter with God. The holy is now firmly at home in the creaturely.

Christians can affirm the positive gains for society and the human person deriving from the modern age. We can also show that these do no imply a militant anti-religious reductionism and naturalism. Religion can play a positive and meaningful role in a secularized world to enhance human dignity and promote an integral development that respects the diversity of peoples and the natural world. It can also point to other values that are absent or neglected in today's society above all the transcendent dignity of each person and the universal right to worship and serve God.

The Church which supported the struggle of smaller countries against the dominating empires is today trying to help struggling migrants fleeing wars, poverty and persecution. This can put the Church in tension with those who are fighting to assert national, religious and ethnic purity. But the Church also wants to respond with understanding and compassion to the suffering of those who are frightened by the changes in society and react with anger. Nobody is excluded from the loving kindness of God. The Church is espousing a more Catholic and universalist view that seeks to affirm and support the identity and dignity of all persons but especially of those who are afflicted by poverty, persecution and suffering.

Pope Francis is clear that the proclamation of the Gospel must not be determined by political and ideological assumptions that do not express the heart and mind of Jesus. Francis insists that every political and religious ideology is subject to the judgement of the Gospel. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is transnational, multicultural, with a huge variety of historical incarnations.

CONCLUSION

Today the charism of the Passion is experienced as our immersion in the unfathomable mystery of God whose infinite and merciful love flows into a suffering world for healing and salvation. In union with Jesus crucified, Passionists experience the call to respond with love to the suffering people of the world.

I have explored some of the reasons why Catholics in some countries today seem to be indifferent and uncaring to suffering people fleeing poverty, persecution and war. They are unable to see and respond to the terrible reality of suffering people and because they are suffering due to their fear and anger at a changing world. God does not want any of his people to be crushed by suffering of any kind but acts with understanding and compassion to heal and to set people free.

What can we do to address this situation? We can help to change this situation by first recognizing the different forms of suffering that are present. We can refuse to contribute to the anxieties of people by spreading fear and negative attitudes towards the poor, immigrants, and people of other religions. We can facilitate great mutual understanding between people who are separated by fear. We can spread understanding and compassion that will help to heal the festering wounds and the toxic atmosphere that is choking Christian charity and human kindness in so many people.

We take seriously the words of Jesus, "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate." This is the only way to heal a broken and suffering world. We can help to reawaken within the hearts of the faithful the tender love of God. We can help them to open their eyes to see that it is Christ who continues to suffer in his suffering people.