The Condition of following Christ

 

As today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, I have been pondering over and praying about the condition of following Christ. As one who has also made his solemn profession of the four public vows in the Society, I think especially about the requirement to accept the request from the Roman Pontiff to serve the Church’s missions—wherever they may be, and they are everywhere these days. I also think about God and the question of the Second Council, quid est homo?

As an aid in all this, I have been reading Samuel Gregg’s recent book The Modern Papacy. He concludes this informative and wonderfully thought-provoking book with this:

The moment the papacy ceases to explore these matters [i.e., Does God exist? If so, what is his nature? Through what means, if any, can humans comprehend this higher reality? If God has revealed himself to humanity, how does this Revelation relate to the truths knowable through natural reason? Does this Revelation have any significance for the choices made by individuals and societies? If so, does this mean that man is essentially free or is humanity simply subject to the whims of an arbitrary Supreme Being? What does it mean to do good and avoid evil? Do categories such as good and evil possess their own concrete content? Or are they simply synonyms for useful and less useful, better and worse? Is death the end and oblivion, or the culmination of one beginning and the commencement of something new?] or begins, as Ratzinger writes, to present a vision of Jesus Christ as someone who “demands nothing, never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything, who no longer does anything but affirm us,” it will surely have nothing distinctive to say. The loss would be everyone’s.

A blessed feast to one and all. An now, back to pondering and praying—and a wee bit of celebration.

RJA sj