Joseph Ratzinger: The Truth of the Resurrection

When Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was a young theologian, he wrote his book "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 from which the following is an excerpt:
 http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/ratzinger_resurrectionitc_mar07.asp

To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament, this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands of eros, its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction. Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is the greater strength of love in face of death.

At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to be understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.

Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living. Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction; final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if he lives on through all ages in the memory of others. But this second attempt of man to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades; a sheol: more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even the other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its pre-human stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where he grants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes. 

For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to be understood as the Lord’s approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.

Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despite their doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.

Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death. 

Why have You forsaken me?

Today is the day when the crucifixion of Christ is celebrated in the Western Christian world.  I have too much sadness because of what is happening among Christians who profess to be servants of the Lord.  Christianity is under attack because Christ is being questioned like Pilate did with him almost 2000 years ago. Today the questioning is by Christians. Some of us, not in my community, doubt the divinity of Christ. More of us believe it but act as if they are the Anti-Christ. Look only at the unending questioning of everyone discussing his own troubles or envying his neighbour because the neighbour happens to be richer.

Look only at the murdering of many innocents and real humans in the name of liberation and freedom in the Middle East. We do not know anymore who is right in Syria as the media continue to favour the armed resistance.

Look at the huge economic problems driving governments in Europe, Canada and the U.S. to bow to excessive speculation and Capitalism. Look at the incredible looting of money by some corporate elites. Who is being disadvantaged but the weary poor and disabled! The poor of Africa included! And the unborn Children too!

One word comes to my thought: “Why have You forsaken me?” uttered by Christ on that cross when he had already trusted his Father. He was probably repeating words from the Psalmist in agony but that was real suffering to the last breath.  

He had already sweat blood on the night when he was to be betrayed by one of his disciples and left alone by the rest to confront Satanic powers. Generations of artists attempted to replicate the picture of his suffering but none was able to gaze into his bleeding heart, except probably his immaculate mother.

And here how can I imagine a young mother who is watching her son being beaten and crucified with such barbaric methods? Where was the Father when His only Son had already surrendered himself to His protection? The Father, I think subject to ecclesial approval,  could not have watched His own Son suffering without the Father himself suffering too with His Son. He was not the cruel judge but the loving Father who shared with His Son the cross of self-giving from eternity. The Gospel tells us that there was darkness over the earth when Jesus died. Nature itself seems to have protested the death of Christ, but something else happened according to received Tradition.  

When the Romans invented the cross as a tool of hanging their enemies and troublemakers, they knew it was a terrorist machine intended for slow killing and torture so that the perceived criminal’s flesh will be eaten by eagles alive if not already dead. The surprise which we sing tonight in the Christian Byzantine Tradition is the descent of Christ that defeated Hades when he visited it in his divine power as Hades expected to swallow him. Hades full of herself was surprised by the visitor and the power of Satan was crushed. How deep is the wisdom of God who does not stop from loving us!

The Truth of Selfishness - My Real Story Today

A little event made me upset today. It should not have if I was dependent on God alone, but as a weak Christian when another Christian and preacher accused me of distorting the history of a certain event that I had published a few days ago, I immediately went on the defensive. I had always thought that he wanted to be at the centre in anything we do. However, he proved to me that he attributed to others the good things that he brought in. In both attitudes mine and his, I find egocentric tendencies which I attribute to Original Sin. First, he is guilty of reacting so aggressively and threatening me without thinking when I called him.  Under any circumstances, if he thought that I was guilty he should have given me the opportunity to explain my position. In Christian tradition, a Christian should first examine his conscience and his motivations and take time in silent prayer before accusing his brother.  Second, I am guilty of the act itself to which he was referring as a distortion of history. In all honesty, I wanted me to be in charge and, while focusing on what I do, I did not imagine that he, out of all men, would feel wounded.  I still have hidden feelings of revenge!

Egoism is at the heart of my thought here and I believe that all of us humans are still under the powerful temptation of sin except for the very few saints living and dead. I want me and my family and my church and my reputation and my country and my health and my wealth and my pleasure to be for me because they are my extension. I want my self-expansion and at least that history would recognize me and my contribution!  

Who does not want to be eternal? Is not this why the ancients wanted to have male offspring?  Is not this why barren women were considered a shame in ancient and, to-date, in most Eastern cultures? Is not this why Egyptian ancient kings built the Pyramids and why today we build skyscrapers? Is not that why most humans attempt to survive by adapting to the wishes of the powerful in this world including those who serve others?  

Who does not want to be loved? Who does not want to be appreciated regardless of his own malicious words and acts? And when he is loved, does not he want to still be loved by everyone and admired by everyone? It is in the heart of every heart that still lives with some wishful thinking that the earthly things can satisfy him.  This is why to answer the first question “Who does not want to be eternal?” we need to answer the second question “Who does not want to be loved?” To live eternally in happiness I must love but to love I must be loved by the One who can powerfully hold me eternally in himself.  This is the truth from the Resurrection of Christ which Ratzinger ably explained in his book “Introduction to Christianity.”  See  it here at:http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/ratzinger_resurrectionitc_mar07.asp

From a logical perspective it makes sense that the vast majority of those who die in the grace of God will have to be purified before they can experience God’s glorious love in heaven. In Eastern Christian tradition, God is present everywhere, including heaven and hell. The Devil who hates God experiences his huge loss in hell and this is why he suffers most. The angels who love God experience their utter joy in heaven and this is why they enjoy love.  But I have another explanation of heaven and hell and purgatory which is subject to approval by ecclesial authorities. Hell is a state of total self-closed beings – Each of them hates everyone else and hates God who still loves everyone including the lost. Heaven is a state of utter openness to love and communion. The joy of being in heaven is that of self-giving which starts here on earth because God himself is self-giving of love or self-giving of Father to Son and Son to Father eternally by the power of the Holy Spirit who unites them. Purgatory is a state of temporary suffering for anyone who is longing and willing to give himself in love, and yet has not reached his potential of perfect love for the sake of love i.e. for the sake of God in whom Man can be eternally saved and find his resurrection.

I wish I can express my feeling of utter helplessness alone but at the same time I hope that God and people I know will forgive me and forgive my fellow Christian preacher and that each of us will forgive each other; for I think God uses our finite weakness to still get us closer to him and to each other which is the communion of the Church.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock

As we enter into the Holy Week of the Passion of Christ, I must recognize that we spend too much time on connecting with the world around each one of us than on contemplating God in his love to you and to me individually. Not only in entertainment or work, but also in service of the church and good causes we are drifting away from thinking of our Savior and God Jesus Christ.  The Internet is a good thing but how we use it makes a difference. 

Even in the Mass I attended on Sunday, I felt I was talking with others but not with God. The Mass is necessary for the community. The more we are in the habit of memorizing what we do, the more we do it without thinking or reflection. However, I am invited to focus on Christ more than merely a theatrical play. The Eucharist is the epitome of God's grace. How badly did  I misuse it! Christ himself becomes our food as the bread and wine are transformed to his real body and blood. He unites us all in this communion. In Catholic theology this is called the Real Presence.

Many years ago, before email and the Internet became possible, I read this magnificent word in a Christian publication. The priest was telling himself "How many years have I served the altar of the Lord rather than serving the Lord of the altar??" 

My life and yours will not be eternal here on earth.  "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. " says the Lord. 

Let us think again!

A Man of Faith and Unity

When we celebrate Easter, we recall to memory Pope Shenouda III, the outstanding late Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church - a man who departed to God on March 17 and who greatly influenced by his presence the pastoral work of many Christians in Egypt and the Churches of the Middle East. His heroic contribution is far more than mere pastoral care of the Coptic Orthodox Church or theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Non-Chalcedonian (called also Old Oriental) Orthodox Churches in which he significantly contributed.  He was an energetic person who went everywhere he could go to preach and teach the Christian faith according to the early Church of Alexandria.  His contribution to the welfare of his faithful included direct contact with those in authority and those who listened to him among his faithful in his weekly answers to their questions in personal, social, and theological matters. So much can be said about his commitment to the monastic life in Egypt which flourished during his pontificate, or to his enormous writings accessible by the ordinary and simple folks as also about his relationship with other Christian Churches and communions as well as the President of Egypt and other political leaders, Muslim leaders and organizations. But let me only present his contribution to the dialogue for Christian unity.

This faithful servant of God, as Pope Benedict XVI called him in his letter of condolences to the Coptic Orthodox Church, initiated a new idea and presented it to other theologians from Chalcedonian/Greek and Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches as well as theologians from the Catholic Church. The theologians meeting in Vienna in 1971 agreed to use a new language and new terms in coherently expressing the disputed doctrine of the divinity and humanity of Christ at the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon where the schism between some of the above Churches took place in 451 AD partly due to using old philosophical terms that were probably misunderstood. In 1951, on the occasion of the 15th centuries anniversary of the Council, Pope Pius XII had expressed his conviction that there is little, if any, disagreement between the Catholic Church and the Non-Chalcedonian Churches on the doctrine of the two natures in Christ promulgated by the Council. With the theological agreement in 1971, the proposed solution now had to be ratified by ecclesial authorities in Rome and the Patriarchates of Orthodox Churches both Chalcedonians who agree on the decisions of Chalcedon and Non-Chalcedonians who did not accept the decisions of Chalcedon. 


In 1972 Shenouda, newly elected Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, visited the major Chalcedonian/Greek Orthodox Churches to soothe the relations with them. While in Lebanon before the end of his ecumenical tour, he received an invitation from Pope Paul VI for a visit to the Vatican. It was in his Easter message in 1973 that Pope Shenouda III announced to his Coptic people that he accepted the invitation and gestured that Pope Paul VI would send with him a relic of St. Athanasius the Great, one of Shenouda’s great predecessors who defended the faith in the divinity of Christ in the 4^th century, to its original place in Egypt. In May 1973, Pope Paul VI received Pope Shenouda III in the Vatican and together they signed a common declaration on the Incarnation of the Son of God. See the Declaration here:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/speeches/1973/may/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19730510_dichiarazione-comune_en.html

Even when our Orthodox brothers may question the "Development of Doctrine" you can see here how one of their profound theologians, Shenouda, used new expressions of the doctrine to re-present it anew according to the current thought yet he did not rescind what the Coptic Orthodox tradition believed with regard to the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ; for he willed unity as much as he could push it and in the way he understood in his conscience. May be for him, he was restoring the recognition of the Holy See of Rome of the Coptic theological understanding. In fact the Council of Chalcedon did not condemn Dioscorus, then Patriarch of Alexandria, for any theological error but because Dioscorus dared to excommunicate the Pope of Rome before the Council! This is, in my opinion, a case of  the Development of Doctrine since new expressions are used to illuminate an old doctrine. The Ecumenical Second Vatican Council had said it in 1965.  It does not mean that the doctrine changes in itself but that the the Church perceives it more fully as she grows in her experience or uses new expressions that fit the culture/language she lives in. 

This was a moment of celebration in which the two sister Churches of Rome and Alexandria embraced each other again after 15 centuries of enmity and moved wisely to re-establish full visible unity.  The great Catholic ecclesiologist and Cardinal, Yves Congar, commented about this declaration that it included the only concrete Christological dogmatic agreement between two heads of Churches. Shenouda III had the dogmatic agreement ratified by the Coptic Orthodox Synod in 1986. Shenouda remained committed to the reunion of the Churches. This was a wise move too by Pope Shenouda;  for by accepting the invitation of Paul VI, he opened the way for more mutual understanding of theologies and, more importantly, the world heard of this Coptic Orthodox tiny Church  for the first time in centuries.  To his credit, he was a magnificent contributor to the doctrinal agreements reached between the Chalcedonian and Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches in 1989. Both families of Churches found nothing that would stand in their full reunion in terms of tradition or doctrine. In 2000, Pope Shenouda III received Blessed Pope John Paul II in Cairo and in the Mass celebrated by the Roman Pontiff, Pope Shenouda addressed him with warm words about the ecumenical results achieved so far by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. In the same meeting Pope Shenouda referred to his warm relations with Sheikh Dr. Tantawi, the late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar which meant that the patriarch was a moderate man with a large heart for Non-Christians. Even when in Pope Shenouda's mind, Christian unity may have meant first restoring unity among Christians of Egypt to come back to the "mother Church" i.e. the Coptic Orthodox Church, it still was encouraging to see the patriarch use his energy to open theological dialogues with the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Churches without compromising his own traditional doctrines of faith. He did not accept the Catholic dogmas of Purgatory and Filioque although these same dogmas were accepted by the Jacobites (including Coptic representatives) and Greek Orthodox bishops in the Council of Florence (1439 AD). He maintained a distance against the Assyrian Orthodox Church accusing them of keeping the Nestorian heresy even when Pope John Paul II had received Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV of the Assyrian Orthodox Church and the two issued a Christological declaration in 1994 that in substance was not different from that issued by Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III in 1973. In many ways the energetic Pope Shenouda III resembled Blessed John Paul the Great not the least in his outspoken courage to deal with heresy such as Jehovah's Witnesses, his pastoral concerns for the youth, and his patriotic stance for which he is remembered as saying "Not that we live in Egypt, but that Egypt lives in us."

Here is the lesson we learn from such a Christian giant. He laboured with full courage to advance the cause of his Church and by doing that he advanced the cause of Christian unity.  Pope Shenouda's concern was primarily about a local Church - the Church of Egyptians including those in the diaspora.  And it seems, at least to me, that his concern for Christian unity was a defense of the Coptic Orthodox faith as truly orthodox (i.e. living in the right faith) before Catholic and Greek Orthodox authorities. In Benedict XVI, the same can be said: In theological dialogue, theologians representing the Catholic Church express (probably in new terms) the doctrines of faith of the Catholic Church in order to clear misunderstandings of the past, but there is no compromise about Catholic faith in theological dialogue with other Christian communions or Churches. This was the basis of the common declaration on the doctrine of Justification by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation  in 1999 in which both sides recognized that, although there remain some differences on justification by grace, mutual condemnations with regard to this doctrine in the 16th century no longer apply today.


Now we ask ourselves, what do ordinary Christians do to help advance Christian unity? We do not have to be theologians.  We do not have to build shrines and churches but at least open up to the great Eastern Tradition which very few know about; learn and dialogue with Orthodox neighbours; live a life of charity towards Christians in pain in the Middle East whether Catholic or Orthodox; help them to survive as Christians; give financially to the cause of many Christians in need there; and appreciate dialogue with moderate Muslims in the Middle East. After all, the Catholic Church gives priority to unity. Unity in Truth starts with the dialogue of love. Today, rich Catholics in the Western hemisphere have an opportunity to help their fellow Christians in the Middle East and alleviate their feelings of helplessness.  In a larger context, people of good will need to help a process of permanent and just peace among all citizens of the Middle East. This is certainly not happening today as we see powers of every political and ideological stripe fighting for a larger piece of the land or at least supporting a destabilization of existing peace through armed rebellion in the name of bringing a concept of freedom and risking, in the mean time, many lives. No one can ignore the vicious attacks on Libya by American, French and British bombers to free it from one dictator in the name of supporting freedom while they were creating more tribal divisions in that country as one example. Christian unity will, on the contrary, start the process of peace in the Middle East.


Nice words from our pastors are not enough. Exhortations without real action are empty! If Orthodox Christians are still scared of the Catholic Church fearing she is there to absorb them, Catholics must reassure them that they are valued with their tradition and in the event of full unity their tradition will be fully respected. This is the role that Eastern Catholics are here to play. The Orthodox Churches are part of us since Apostolic times and an opportunity or rather a call for restoring their unity with the Catholic Church is urgent and timely. Orthodox must recognize the only international voice of Christians which is performed by the Pope, Bishop of Rome.  Rome still wields the most formidable power in defense of Christians and Non-Christians with her diplomatic relations among nations and is the only sovereign country represented in Arab nations.  On the other hand, bishops of the Catholic Church headed by the Bishop of Rome may well pray and work together with those of the local Orthodox Churches to ignite again the fervor for Christian unity in the faithful. As I indicated in my letter to Pope Benedict XVI last October, this year is the 50th anniversary of the start of Vatican II, and would be a great initiative for His Holiness to convoke an Ecumenical Council to which bishops of the Orthodox Churches are invited to participate together with bishops of the Catholic Church to resolve what remains of doctrinal issues and the primacy issue.  This same proposal was uttered by Pope Shenouda III in 1974. He thought that differences between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches would be solved within a few weeks of such an Ecumenical Council. Again we must remember history. As Blessed Pope John XXIII was the first Catholic leader to recognize the need of the Catholic Church to enter into ecumenical dialogue with the rest of Christians, so was Shenouda III the first Coptic Orthodox Patriarch to realize and actively enter from his perspective into the same dialogue.  


It is in unity that we find strength as Christians. It is in unity that our Christian brothers in the Arab world can survive. The Lord has risen. Let’s imitate Him and strive to follow him as Patriarch Shenouda III did in his energetic work; for the Lord is generous in His love and He has conquered death for us!