Called to Communion is Ever So Linked with the Mystery of the Person

We are social creatures. Yet, we Judeo-Christians believe that we are called out of the culture, out of the crowd, out of the mob, called out of our complicity in sacred violence to become a new creation, a person... But what is a person? From the first book of the Bible we are told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. But what does that look like? In the New Testament the full implications of this is revealed in Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

So we are made in the image and likeness of that God - the God of Three Persons, The Trinity. (From Gil Bailie - THE SUBJECT OF GAUDIUM ET SPES RECLAIMING A CHRISTOCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HUMAN PERSON)

The mystery of the person as embedded in Trinitarian and Christological thought was regarded as revelatory only of the Persons of the Trinity and of the unique person of Christ.

And so each of the “Persons” of the Trinity plays a “role” in the gift of personhood to humanity.

And in the same way, we each play a role in the gift of personhood to our sisters and brothers.

From Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) - Called to Communion - Understanding the Church Today:

Forgiveness, together with its realization in me by way of penance and discipleship, is first of all the wholly personal center of all renewal. But because forgiveness touches the very core of the person, it gathers men together and is also the center of the renewal of the community (the Church). For when the dust and filth that disfigure God's image in me are removed (by the grace of forgiveness & reconciliation), I thereby become similar to the other who is likewise God's image; above all I become similar to Christ, who is the image of God without qualification, the model according to which we have all been created.

Gil Bailie asks the most pertinent question we can ask today:

Can the call to personhood be made today so as to be heard? The answer is yes, and in my view the way to make it and to make it intelligible is to show how anthropologically sound – and how spiritually and psychologically gratifying – is the uniquely Christian understanding of the person, the person as seen in the light of a Christocentric anthropology. In recovering the mystery of the person thus understood, the anthropological insights of René Girard are simply indispensable.

In the end, like it or not, this understanding of what it means to be a person will be upheld only within The Catholic Church of Rome.

I conclude with Pope Benedict XVI as he extols each and everyone of us to take up our role in the Church as we participate - not with lukewarmness, but in the Fullness of Truth, Goodness and Beauty of the Body of Christ.

The Church will be all the more the homeland for man's heart, the more we listen to God and the more what comes from Him is of central importance in her: his Word and the sacraments He has given us. The obedience of all toward Him is the guarantee of our freedom.

We are truly 'inter-dividual' rather than individual and so we are free in as much as we surrender our will and fully participate in the Church - the Body of Christ.

The Gift of the Self (tape 12 excerpt)

When we are at the foot of the cross, we are standing at the very place where the old anthropology came into being. All of our social and psychological reflexes are programmed to have us emote toward that event in such a way as to reconstitute the old anthropology. So if we simply show up at the scene and the (Holy) Spirit is not there (or we have our ears plugged so the Word cannot penetrate) to inform us on how to respond to it we will simply put our fists in the air and say, "right on" as we do away with one more heretic or one more blasphemer or one more insurrectionist. It (the cross) is so close to the scene at the source of the old anthropology that it is very easily turned into precisely that again. So the Spirit has to be there. Gil Bailie

Aramis here: The key to becoming fully human, and thus not falling into the soap opera of mimetic entanglements that lead inevitably to the sacrificial killing, is grounding ourselves in Christ. For those who choose to turn away or rebel against Christ - as they will find themselves in the midst of another killing event, they will have no model to follow to instruct how to finally turn this long page of history. This is all linked to what it means to be a person.

Personality is essential to man. This truth becomes clear, however, and can be affirmed only under the guidance of Revelation, which related man to a living, personal God, which makes him a son of God, which teaches the ordering of His Providence. When man fails to ground his personal perfection in Divine Revelation, he still retains an awareness of the individual as a rounded, dignified and creative human being. He can have no consciousness, however, of the real person who is the absolute ground of each man, an absolute ground superior to every psychological or cultural advantage or achievement. The knowledge of what it means to be a person is inextricably bound up with the Faith of Christianity. An affirmation and a cultivation of the personal can endure for a time perhaps after Faith has been extinguished, but gradually they too will be lost. Romano Guardini

Aramis here: Christians themselves, must come to understand that Christianity is not just another religion in the list of world religions. God has blessed each of us with His Son so that we may give our lives back to him in praise, worship, and obedience - not only choosing, but also being a witness to Life. (BTW: To me, in response to Athos' post on Shangri-la I have come to see it not as a place, but a state of being - being a person. In my bouts with stroke, divorce and cancer I have had the blessing to experience, if only in small glimpes - I have come to witness to Life and I think it beats out any Shangri-la imaginable.)

The Gift of Self - Freedom & Love

Gil Bailie, starts off in tape 6 of his series The Gift of Self with the following remark pertaining to his book, Violence Unveiled;

In the book that is being made ready for publication, I argued that we live in a world where we are less and less able to resolve social crisis violently because the Gospel revelation has shorn our violence of its sacred pretension and without an aura of sacred surrounding it, violence can never be a source of durable cultural stability.

It all has to do with one of the two revelations that is overtaking us in our world: one is that conventional religion and culture is intertwined with violence and the second is that the self is constituted by its relation to the other or to others or to The Other.

The first 5 tapes of the series Gil takes up the first revelation and now he begins to map out how the second revelation is working out in history. I will post on this later, however I felt the calling to do a little weaving of thoughts by 3 great minds here and I hope I can make clear this tapestry. I have already referred to Gil as one source - the others are Raymund Schwager, who just prior to his sudden and unexpected passing on February 27, 2004 had agreed to serve on Cornerstone Forum board; and Romano Guardini, renowned Catholic theologian and writer.

Bailie's very short summary (above) on his book is a great meditation: "the self is constituted by its relation to the other or to others or to The Other." I was drawn to see how freedom and love are linked to this meditation on the self.


In his book, Banished from Eden, Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation, Schwager elaborates on freedom and I have pulled a few quotes from (link here) Chapter 4 Human Self-Reflection and Universal Responsibility:

At the same time this insight makes it evident that freedom cannot be completely understood either from the standpoint of the isolated subject nor from that of the I-Thou relation, but must be seen in the context of human society and history in their entirety. ... Individual self-reflection, accessible to earlier human individuals within certain limits, has developed into a comprehensive process of self-reflection, which can only be fulfilled by humanity as a whole and in view of its final destination.

... it makes sense that freedom in its radical form as total self-determination cannot be a matter pertaining just to the individual or any group, but is a task of all mankind. All individual attempts toward self-reflection and freedom must complement one another toward an all-embracing self-reflection in which humanity intervenes in its own nature and determines itself with regard to its future and final destination. ... But if freedom is a universal process, it also becomes clear that each individual subject is more determined by the free acts of others than by his or her own self-determination. Freedom turns out also to be an affliction, something that the traditional doctrine of original sin has always known.

Aramis here: The modern individualistic view will never be able to see how we are interconnected. Prayer is key here. We are inter-dividual as members of God's creature and that freedom is bound up with one another. And freedom can only be brought forth in relationships as one surrenders his or her will to the Will which stands outside the mimetic whirlwind, but yet is so very near as Christ's life showed us.


Monsignor Romano Guardini writes from Living the Drama of Faith:

To love, from the human point of view, is first of all to admit the existence of a being greater than myself who demands a sacrifice on my part. To love means to be prepared to meet the Most High, not to shun this encounter, but to seek it in order to realize that it is only in the gift this encounter will involve that I can truly find myself. This attitude awakens in me all that speaks of God, and enables me to see him.

Guardini writes that being in this image of God - being in love with God is "infinitely more vital then whether this or that man exists..."

Aramis here: After going through a rocky time of my life I was invited to go to church (being a non-church-goer for most all of my life, but go figure that I could learn something from church) and what followed, looking back today, is nothing short of amazing; I came to experience love through a poverty of self. This love reached out from me and touched everyone and everything that I too touched. I came to understand that for me to continue to experience this love I had to empty all my closests out to God, and by His Gifts to me I could come to an acceptance of my fallenness, repentance and a metanoia that was embracing and at a deeper level allowing me to reach out and embrace everyone around me. I was able to share this with my wife and we have built our marriage around this love of God, that encapsulates the two of us as one. We came to understand that my love for her (and vise versa) comes from God alone and only by my being humble and open to receive this love can I pass it on to her (and vise versa).

In the end, as Howard Thurman told Bailie, "what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Are we being Christ, coming alive in freedom and love as the new creation, spreading His Love in the world?

The gift of self - freedom and love of the new creation 2 Corinthians Chapter 5: 14-21

For the love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died. He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer. So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.

And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Ontological Density cont.

Excuse this over-simplification...the difference between existence and being

Descarte - I think, therefore I am

verses

Buber's I-Thou Relationship

The following excerpt is from tape 6 The Gift of Self by Gil Bailie:

"We all exist, we wake up one fine day and we look down, there we are, we look around and there is the world, we are aware that we exist, we have reflective self consciousness. That is existence. But there is something else and that is being... The biblical tradition – 3000 plus years of tradition – speaks almost unanimously on this matter and it says that we are called into being. We may exist waking up, blink our eyes and there we are, that is existence. But we are called into being, and it is only in response to that call that we really experience being. Martin Buber says, “Real existence or being is comprehensible only in connection with the nature of the being with whom one stands in relation.” Buber writes later on, “He who ceases to make a response (to this call) ceases to hear the Word.”

(Gil) So when we cease to make a response and we cease to hear the Word then what gradually begins to happen is the loss of ontological density.

(Aramis here) Grasping the significance of our waning of ontological density - the separation from the call and therefore response to the call - helps one realize the importance to abide in the only True Source of Transcendence.

Couple Quotes Regarding Ontological Density

There may be no more important a task today then the study of our ontological density. (This post links to a previous one 6 Degrees to the Waning of Ontological Density.)

“Every being is more than itself. All things are related to a reality above and beyond themselves. From this reference alone can they be perfected and carried to fulfillment. Failing their reference to the Other all things, all orders of reality, become empty shells.”

Romano Guardini

(Aramis here) (I grant the exceptions, however) There has hardly been a person raised in our modern societies that has this reference of the Other - of The Real Transcendence as in Jeremiah, Jesus or Paul. The modern question of whether one believes in God or not, points to this lack of urgency or reality of God in our world (demonstrating the waning of ontological density) and therefore we are not much more than walking shells today. Jung says “once man is cut off from the nourishing roots of instinct, he becomes the shuttle cock of every wind that blows….and nothing short of a catastrophe can bring him back to health.” (1945,201). Well Girard and Oughourlian tell us of the only 2 ways of restoring stability (health) and that is either: 1) through the false transcendence of the sacrificial and scapegoating mechanism which no longer works due to the biblical revelation; or 2) the Real Transcendence of the God who Christ revealed on the cross. I maintain that I must surrender my desire (compulsive, preoccupation with the other) so that I more readily re-present Christ in all my relations.

“I knew a man, a priest, who spoke in almost the same tone in his room, in a church, in a lector hall. Who expressed himself in almost the same terms whether before little children or among philosophers. Who said the same things to the infidels or our modern society, to pagans from the far-east and to the faithful. In his discourse, which never attained eloquence, the machinery of proof was always reduced to a minimum. There was no debate. It was as free before strangers as in a group of intimate friends. His politeness, exquisite by the way, ignored the conventional pleasantries. Never a man, in a sense, who was less adapted, but this man was all things to all men and of his plentitude everybody partook.”

Henri de Lubac

(Aramis here) Now this man has ontological density! I don't think we comprehend the magnitude of scandal in this world with so many of us operating with paper thin ontological density - representing little or no attention spans, ultra short fuses, and knee-jerk reactionary responses to any suggested alternative to a primative sacred. The friend who de Lubac paints us a portrait of in the above quote should be a role model for us to imitate.

tip of the hat to Gil Bailie and his tape series The Gift of Self - tape 5.

6 Degrees to the waning of Ontological Density

Artist visualization of the 6 degrees of separation link

Excerpt from tape 3 The Gift of Self by Gil Bailie:

Lack of ontological density means a self that is insubstantial and it is seeking in self-defeating ways some way of substantiating itself. There are 2 ways of substantiating the self: 1) that way that perfectly parallels the cultural system that generates false transcendence; and 2) the experience of true transcendence. The false transcendence is generated out of the sacrificial scenario and true transcendence corresponds with prayer and the God revealed by Christ on the Cross – which can never be the false transcendence because it is the God of the victim and not the victimizers. The god of the victimizer is the false transcendence.

There is a psychological parallel to this: real ontological density is what the prophets experienced; it is what Jesus extremely experiences when he said, I do nothing but what the Father bids me to do and the Father and I are One. This is supreme ontological density. Prophets, mystics, saints, the humble faithful, etc, etc have partaken of that ontological density, to one degree or another, at the heart of it is real transcendence. The simulated form of ontological density is the desire of others – if I can get enough others to desire me or to admire me – even to hate me – I can feel that I exist. A simulation of ontological density is generated socially by somebody putting herself or himself in the eyes of others.

For tape 3 excerpts click here.

Tape 4 excerpts click here.

For me, Aramis, I have to admit, this point has become more and more obvious. I have become more aware of some people who are close to me who have little ontological density - basically they rely on being a 'character' seeking approval anywhere they can find it. Some have been diagnosed and take medications and some live on the edge - only a short fuse from blowing up. Logic and reason do not strengthen dialogue nor relationships with them and so I end most days down on my knees in prayer for them.

The Gift of Self - Gil Bailie - tape 3 excerpt

Quote from Rene Girard:

“Desire (compulsive, preoccupation of the other) leads to madness and death if there is no victimage mechanism to guide it back to 'reason' and to engender this 'reason'. The mysterious link between madness and reason takes on a concrete form.”

Gil comments: The mysterious link between madness and reason is that “reason” is gemmed up out of the sacrificial (scapegoat) scenario. Reason always needs differences and the sacrificial crisis or the crisis of the contagion of desire destroys all differences and therefore makes reason impossible. There can be no reasoning going on in a world where there are no differences. Reason always needs distinction and the dissolution of all those distinctions is what occurs in crisis of undifferentiation – the crisis of desire – or what is brought about by an avalanche of mimetic desire.

...

Gil continues

...desire (compulsive, preoccupation of the other) leads to madness and death if there is no victimage mechanism to restore reason; and now there is no victimage mechanism to restore reason; so the old logos – the old forms of knowledge (epistemology) is dying – it cannot function because the apparatus for generating its necessary distinctions out of the undifferentiated chaos of an avalanche of desire – it doesn’t work anymore. So less and less are we able to put-to-work the old epistemological strategies.

Read more excerpts from tape 3 here.

The following is a thought of Aramis: With the dying of the old logos - the waning of the old epistemological strategies, if you will, means that as we continue to argue and debate within this knowledge base the more and more we will be falling into mimetic doubles and scandal. There is only one way out and that is by abiding in prayer, being a reflection of Christ to and for the other - for without transcendence, knowledge, even knowledge that reveals the problems of desire is useless and it can only lead to rivalry and violence in an attempt to re-kindle the victimage mechanism.

Can This Be True? Catholics Have Become Mainstream America

Ath, do you think this flow-chart below represents fairly a model of "dumbing down" as you posted in, Complicated Key vs Dumbed-Down Faith? Or, with tongue-in-cheek, could this really be the model for raising up our faith?

The next question is, are we dumbing down our faith or is our religion raising up our culture?

The following is from The Barna Research Group:

Catholics Have Become Mainstream America

Do you remember when Catholics were a distinct segment of America, and many people wondered what to make of them? Those days are long gone, according to the latest Barna survey. Catholics are not only the largest denominational group in the U.S., but are now part of the social mainstream. The survey explored 97 facets of the lives of Catholics and compared them to national norms. The outcome is striking - and, in some cases, disturbing.

Click here to read more

I have to agree with our friend Genevieve at Real Clear Religion, CATHOLICS MUST RECLAIM THEIR SPIRITUAL AND CULTURAL DISTINCTIVENESS - see her comments on this by clicking here.

(The following are thoughts from Aramis.)

The flow-chart above represents the current educational model for science as critiqued by British science teacher Mike Horne F.G.S. (I substituted the word 'religion' for 'science' for use in this post.) He wrote how his profession has fallen-in-line with the dumbing down educational process (which I will not go into any further here).

I find it interesting that from educators as well as from catechists there is growing concerns about the dumbing down process and how it has us spiraling into what seems like a black hole of empty and barren information. From math and science to history and anthropology to religious studies ... all of these have undergone a serious thinning of their roots by such contributing factors as teaching/learning through 'sound-bytes', attention deficit, hyper-distraction, on and on. This spiraling is and has the effect of what Girard calls a crisis of desire (compulsive, preoccupation of the other).

So trying to peek my head out from within this spiraling vortex, I can barely make out a problem; how to get my arms around such a profound concept when I want only the simplified version of our Christian faith because I am caught up inside the spiraling vortex of keeping up with everyone else. (Is this what they call a crisis of priorities?) Am I the only one in this vortex?

So I ask, are we 'doing' ourselves any favors by dumbing ourselves down by stretching ourselves so thin on a steady diet of constantly 'doing'? And what is this 'doing' for us? Or better yet, does not this 'doing' originate from our desire, that is our compulsive, preoccupation of the other? Wouldn't we be wise to re-orient our desire - in other words, wouldn't we be better off abiding in the One True Source instead of being tossed to and fro for all our 'doing'?

Possibly this dumbing down is part and parcel to the dying of the old foundation of knowledge that is being destroyed by the revelation of the Gospel. But as this occurs, and all foundations crumble, including our psychological grounding, the problem is that we need to be about the business of the Gospel, as told by the Sermon on the Mount.

The following is but a very short excerpt from The Gift of Self by Gil Bailie as he reflects on a quote by de Lubac.

"There is no unique subject: no personality without otherness; no consciousness turned in upon itself; no real being without intersubjectivity; no real knowledge nor ontological density without mystery. And no man without God." - Henri de Lubac

For us studying these thoughts as we are: No real knowledge without mystery or better yet: no real knowledge without genuine transcendence. The old logos, the old religions which gemmed up their gods out of the sacrificial scenario and created a false transcendence (like I said before suddenly instead of being preoccupied with each other and then there is this crisis and then ... they are preoccupied with the gods). This is not what de Lubac is talking about. When he talks about mystery, he is talking about Real Transcendence. Just because the world is filled with false ones does not mean there isn’t a Real One. It just means we are hungry for it and we will fall for anything that simulates it. ...

Real knowledge requires transcendence now, because the other kind of knowledge was based on a false transcendence or else it has no transcendence at all and then it becomes mechanical. Enlightenment knowledge is basically mechanical knowledge, it appeals to no transcendence and therefore can work in a mundane order of things, but it cannot deal with the fundamental problem, which is our fallenness. We can take Enlightenment knowledge and crank it up as much as we can and it will create all kinds of breakthroughs, many advances in medicine and technologies, etc., etc., but it won’t do a thing about the fall because it has renounced any aspiration in that regard. But the knowledge that has something to do with the fall is going to be transcendence and it is going to require that we abide.

We fast-forward to the modern world where we increasingly say, ‘I cannot abide’ him or her, leaving more and more of us scandalized by the compulsive preoccupation with the other...

This has been a long way around to say that I invite everyone to the Emmaus Road Initiative (E.R.I.) of Gil Bailie and the Cornerstone Forum. I have found it to be a rock solid tool for reflection mixed with the Gospel and prayer - a tool right for Catholics to reclaim their spirituality and cultural distinction as well as this helps to build up the Church (you know that we Franciscans are into that). Check the times and places for the next E.R.I. near you and go to the website for E.R.I. sessions via CDs and audio files to discuss the material with others, enriching the experience and helping to pass on the faith.

Remember, "the unity for which Christ lived and died is not an abstract ideal. It is the result of hard work: suspending judgment, choosing others before self, forgiving, seeking reconciliation rather than nursing hurt pride. In other words, it requires that we die to self in Christ. The fruit? The blessing of God's peace!" -- Magnificat July 17, 2007

The Gift of Self - Tape 3

Desire - Compulsive Preoccupation With the Other

Girard says,

“Desire is what happens to human relationships when there is no longer any resolution through the victim.”

"There can be no ritualistic or victimary resolution to the modern crisis. The crisis can be stabilized at different levels according to the individual’s concern, but it always lacks the resources of catharsis and expulsion.”

Click here to read my transcript of the beginning of tape 3 (a review of tape 1 & 2) in Gil Bailie's series, The Gift of Self.

The Gift of Self -- Excerpt from tape series by Gil Bailie

As I revisit the tape series, The Gift of Self: Reflections on the Meaning of Christian Discipleship by Gil Bailie I will try to leave fresh notes here on our blog.

Conclusion to tape 1

"There is no unique subject: no personality without otherness; no consciousness turned in upon itself; no real being without intersubjectivity; no real knowledge nor ontological density without mystery. And no man without God."

- Henri de Lubac

Gil concludes the first session with the following:
"Either he is right or we moderns are right. The money is on the board and the dice are rolling… We moderns, by and large, have put all our faith in something other than what he (de Lubac) says. The gamble is whether or not some kind of selfhood that knows nothing of what de Lubac is talking about can retain its independence and its sanity and its civility as it moves further and further away from the biblical tradition that de Lubac is articulating."

"...note with interest: '…no real knowledge ... without mystery.' This takes us back to the Enlightenment project which was to achieve real knowledge by mere acts of rational or empirical analysis. We must take our hats off (to the Enlightenment) for it has produced a mountain of insights and information – but as Eliot says, 'Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' "

"Again, de Lubac says that it (information) looses its status as knowledge if it does not defer religiously to something greater than itself."