Seeking the Face of Christ: Part III—A Spirit of Eucharistic Hope by Ged Ayotte

This is the third of a three-part reflection. Part I, “The Plea of Bartimaeus,” is available here; Part II, “The Leap of Joy,” is available here.

Hope is inevitable when our focus is on God’s loving faithfulness. “For mortals, it is impossible. But for God, all things are possible” (Matt 19:26). Hope is to be found in recalling constantly that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

If God so desires it, so to speak, I will in fact welcome the death of many systems and structures within the institutional church which we have mistakenly come to believe are essential and foundational. I don’t fear their dying, but rather welcome it, because together we believe that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work and that “the gates of hell will not prevail” (Matt 16:18); that Jesus was right in reminding us that “apart from him we can do nothing” (John 15:5); and that his Spirit is as active in the life of a loving Muslim or Jew as it is in the life of any Christian. “I place before you life and death,” says our God as recorded in the book of Deuteronomy; “choose life.” I think that by now the sincere, devout discernment of countless Catholics—especially those who are least invested in the hierarchical and clerical power structures (and the best of our clergy are not thus invested)—has brought a liberating clarity regarding those canonical and dogmatic systems of the church which lead to life in God, as opposed to those that draw us into the clutches of “the enemy” of God’s project of universal, unconditional love.

But at the heart of all of my musings over the light and shadow of this church of ours is the fact that I love her deeply, and have loved her throughout my 76 years. She is my Mother in all of her reflections of an infinitely loving Divinity, as well as in the myriad imperfections of her incarnate humanity. She has revealed to me the face of Christ through a 2,000-year queue of saints and sinners alike. Christ, a God fully human and fully divine who embraces all of humanity, all of creation, with loving inclusivity, and who only asks that I try, with all of my warts and scars, to do the same. “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).

She is a pilgrim church, a church on the way, as Fr. Peter Nguyen has reminded me: a mystical communion, a servant church, a church heralding the Good News, a sacrament (cf. Avery Dulles, SJ). But she is also organized as a human institution, and in this must be addressed her many weaknesses and sins. We as her members have not so much a right to address these weaknesses; it is rather our individual and collective duty. And how can we not be hopeful in the final analysis? The cast of characters who have held papal authority over the centuries has included the likes of the utterly depraved Alexander VI, and on the other end of that pontifical spectrum, the pastoral tenderness and prophetic wisdom of Saint John XXIII. And now dear Francis who, despite his inevitable imperfections, also reveals holiness in his willingness to persevere in the struggle, and to include and encourage us all within that covenant of perseverance.

And I do cherish the traditions of our church . . . so many of them, at least. I reject outright most dualistic categories, including the ubiquitous liberal/conservative divide. I identify as a progressive Catholic, but I also choose to embrace much orthodoxy which is in decline among many contemporary theologians: belief in the virgin birth (though I love to think that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus’s birth, in the way in which many couples do); belief in the mystery of the Trinity; belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; belief in the Real Presence of Christ, body-blood-soul and divinity in the Eucharist when those who long to follow gather “in memory of him.” I also choose to believe in the miracles of Jesus as described in the gospels as historical events, and have absolutely no need to interpret them metaphorically. All of this because I believe that the transcendent “pierces” into the imminent with far more regularity than we could possibly know. But all of this constitutes belief, and not certitude, and I happily dwell in all of this as “mystery” and entrust the rest to God.

I cherish and am inspired by our church’s tradition of respect for the significance of “informed conscience” (and what Aquinas taught regarding its binding character) in the development of our personal and corporate spirituality and theology. This surely seems to be a crucial aspect of the threefold elements which constitute a mature, psycho-spiritual way of being: openness to the transcendent (grace); prayerful reflection on one’s interior affective experience; and, finally, the intellectual. We do well to remember, of course, that in Christ this way of being must always be paradoxically grounded in “Ignatian detachment” expressed in Ignatius’s Suscipe: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect, and my entire will.” All must be rooted in Christ. There is tension in this paradox, to be sure, but mature faith requires that we hold this tension rather than deny it.

The institutional church sometimes forgets, at its peril, that synodal conversation in the Spirit must allow for the prayerful critical thinking of the people of God, not as their baptismal right but as their very responsibility in Christ. And to allow for critical thinking one must leave space for respectful dissent. A monarchical church does not allow for this, but the synodal church which we believe was established by Jesus surely does. In laying the template for this synodal church, Jesus said, “You know that among the pagans their so-called rulers lord it over them, and their great men made their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; everyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matt 20:25). Failure to embrace critical thought as an essential part of any healthy organic community creates a situation rife with potential for the rise of abuse of power and the manipulation of the “interiority” of others. Developments in the United States in recent years seem a glaring example, as is the case in many other parts of the world. We in the church are forewarned.

Surely the traditional teachings and practice of our church are meant to serve as a rudder and sail in this vessel in which humanity moves through the waters of salvation history, this “barque of Peter” as we call it. Rudder and sail, not an anchor! I think it was St. John of the Cross who best described that vessel for me:

And I saw the river over which every soul must pass
to reach the kingdom of heaven
and the name of that river was suffering:
and I saw the boat which carries souls across the river
and the name of that boat was love.

In the decades following that quantum-leap movement of the Holy Spirit, discerned by the church during the Second Vatican Council, the progressive reform which its documents so beautifully encouraged were treated as optional, if not to some degree ignored and even actively resisted in some quarters. Many, both hierarchy and laity alike, seemed fearful of receiving the new wine of the council and clung instead to old, preconciliar wine and wineskins, blindly ignoring the eras that had passed since previous councils and the vastly changed world into which we are now called to live a faith always in need of renewal. The crisis of credibility and the distrust towards hierarchical and clerical authority which has evolved in the intervening decades is, to a high degree, a result of the sexual abuse committed by thousands of priests against vulnerable people as well as the systematic efforts of church officials to deflect and avoid responsibility, thereby imposing additional suffering on countless victims and their families.

This reality demands that we now pick up where the Second Vatican Council left off. It is no longer optional. The institutional church must change or it will die, and we seem to witness this concern reflected in such inspirational ways in the papacy of Francis. And if this death comes to pass, God’s plan of salvation for this created universe and all of humanity to enter more and more into the fullness of life revealed in the story of Love embodied in Jesus Christ will go on in a church renewed. Truly, as Gerard Hughes, SJ, has said, God “is a beckoning word. He calls us out of ourselves and beyond ourselves . . . [he is] the God of surprises, always creating anew. That is why a church which is static and immutable in its ways cannot be a sign, an effective sign, of [God’s] presence in the world.”

Ignatius has counsel that I pray, by God’s grace, will guide my own actions as we move forward:

[I]t should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbour’s statement than to condemn it. Further, if one cannot interpret it favourably, one should ask how the other means it. If the meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love; if this is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.

I need sufficient humility and release from my own fears to resist demonizing “the other”: those who I am convinced are misguided, and whose distorted thinking I believe is causing such harm to humanity and to our created world. I must commit to respectful and civil interpersonal discourse wherever possible, and where impossible to kick the dust off my sandals and discern where the Spirit might be moving next, following not with resentment and bitter anger, but with love and hope. I believe this is the synodal church to which Francis is inviting us, and I am eager to say “yes” in response to his invitation.

So how do we unite in a spirit of enthusiastic hope, the kind of hope that resists despair and instead inspires active service in a world so desperately in need of it? Surely it is in the promise given when “two or more of us gather” that the one who is the Center of our gathering will show us how to make camels pass through eyes of needles. He is the one who has the power to heal all of the Bartimaeuses among us, and even the Bartimaeus within me; the one who, in his post-resurrection appearances, showed us that we will most recognize him when we lovingly, vulnerably, and with hope touch one another’s wounds. The unfolding of his life among us surely indicates that we must be guided by his lack of regard for creed, race, gender, orientation, or material and political status. He is the one who in the final hours before his crucifixion instructed us to “love one another as I have loved you.” If we trust and ask Jesus to remove our many blindnesses, with our cooperation—as individuals, but also as small groups that come together in faith and prayer, and then worship together as part of the universal church—this love be accomplished day by day.

All of this as we continue to wash feet wherever we’re able. With God’s grace, only with God’s grace. ♦

Ged Ayotte is grateful for almost 80 years formed by the sacramental life of the church. He has served as a prison chaplain and a therapist (private practice), and continues to offer Ignatian spiritual direction. Decades of service in an archdiocesan advisory role has him continuing to accompany victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse in their search for healing and wholeness.

Image: Christus Pantokrator in the apse of Cefalù Cathedral, 1148.