More Hope: Clouds and Clarity

Fr. George Rutler is quite emphatic about it: We are not basking in the afterglow of the papal visit, we are basking in the pre -glow of it’s far-reaching impact. Benedict’s central message, that Christ is indeed our Hope, is just beginning to kindle in our Church and society. The flood of interest in the priesthood is just one example of that preglow. Here’s another glance:

In a survey conducted last week by the Knights of Columbus and Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, nearly half of the respondents say they better understand and appreciate Catholic teaching as a result of the papal visit, and 65 percent of American adults have a more favorable view of Pope Benedict. About 30 percent say they are more likely to participate in their churches and communities, and 40 percent are inspired by the pope to renew their focus on family and morality. In short, Pope Benedict has reminded us that we encounter Christ “through the joys and the trials of ordinary, everyday life”; we encounter him in “letting go of self and . . . [being] drawn into Christ’s very being for others.”

Mystical levitation is bestowed on a few, but most of us are called to gaze at Christ’s face with our feet firmly on the ground. It is the challenge of balancing contemplation and action—looking up and looking out—which the disciples faced after Christ’s Ascension: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? As usual, Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict has walked this path before:

You are surely familiar with all those precious, naive images in which only the feet of Jesus are visible, sticking out of the cloud, at the heads of the apostles. The cloud, for its part, is a dark circle on the perimeter; on the inside, however, blazing light. It occurs to me that precisely in the apparent naivete of this representation something very deep comes into view. All we see of Christ in the time of history are his feet and the cloud. His feet—what are they? We are reminded, first of all, of a peculiar sentence from the Resurrection account in Matthew’s Gospel, where it is said that the women held onto the feet of the Risen Lord and worshipped him. As the Risen One, he towers over earthly proportions. We can still only touch his feet; and we touch them in adoration. Here we could reflect that we come as worshippers, following his trail, close to his footsteps. Praying, we go to him; praying, we touch him, even if in this world, so to speak, always only from below, only from afar, always only on the trail of his earthly steps. At the same time it becomes clear that we do not find the footprints of Christ when we look only below, when we measure only footprints and want to subsume faith in the obvious. The Lord is movement toward above, and only in moving ourselves, in looking up and ascending, do we recognize him. When we read the Church Fathers something important is added. The correct ascent of man occurs precisely where he learns, in humbly turning toward his neighbor, to bow very deeply, down to his feet, down to the gesture of the washing of feet. It is precisely humility, which can bow low, that carries man upward. This is the dynamic of ascent that the feast of the Ascension wants to teach us.

Images of Hope