St. Gregory Says We Should Stop Talking
The Epiphany of the Lord
Joseph Ratzinger, in 1958, decades before he became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote an essay entitled “The New Pagans and the Church.” And in the opening paragraph he gives us a dramatic indictment:
The outward shape of the modern Church is determined essentially by the fact that, in a totally new way, she has become the Church of pagans, and is constantly becoming even more so. She is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians, but a Church of pagans, who still call themselves Christians, but actually have become pagans. Paganism resides today in the Church herself, and precisely that is the characteristic of the Church of our day, and that of the new paganism, so that it is a matter of a paganism in the Church, and of a Church in whose heart paganism is living.1
He wrote those words in 1958. Is the Church any better now than she was 65 years ago? My sense is that the Church is still afflicted by an interior paganism. And why? The answer I want to give is that too many of the faithful do not want to live differently because of Christ. We miss the point of what we celebrate today: the Epiphany of the Lord. We reduce the faith to words on a page, teachings that we can fight about, and rest easy with the assurance that we think the right things. But are we living differently because of Christ?
Just a few days ago, our Church celebrated the memorial of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, along with that of his friend and fellow bishop and doctor of the Church, St. Basil the Great. Over the course of the 4th century, those two men fought valiantly to defend the faith, battling against enemies who were found mostly within the Church. And if you were to pick up any history book that described those decades in the life of the Church, you would see that those battles were constant, waged on many fronts, and often violent. The real enemy of the Church in the 4th century was heresy. Many priests and bishops, various emperors and rulers, and huge numbers of the faithful fell victim to heresy—false beliefs about Christ—and the consequence was division and violence in the Church. St. Gregory gave a series of orations against these heresies and in defense of the faith. You should read them.
What surprises me the most about Gregory’s orations is the fact that Gregory didn’t think that most people should be talking about theology. He didn’t think the Church was well served by the faithful fighting on her behalf. He was convinced that the more the faithful argued, the worse the controversy and division within the life of the Church would become. He writes that:
Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone — it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun’s brightness.2
St. Gregory believed that holiness of life, real personal sanctity, was necessary for any person who would argue about matters of faith. He also believed that to discuss matters of theology required a real commitment to the intellectual life. Theology and religious questions are not for those with a casual interest in matters of faith. But Gregory also expressed real concerns for the audience—for those people who would hear what the faithful of the Church have to say to them. He thought that most enemies of the faith, upon hearing the arguments and claims of the faithful, would twist and contort the teachings of the Church to serve their own purposes. In a brilliant piece of rhetoric, Gregory asks a series of questions to anyone who would defend the faith:
Why do we appoint our accusers as our judges? Why do we put swords into our enemies’ hands? How, I ask you, will such a discussion be interpreted by the man who subscribes to a creed of adulteries and infanticides, who worships the passions, who is incapable of conceiving of anything higher than the body, who fabricated his own gods only the other day, and gods at that distinguished by their utter vileness? What sort of construction will he put on it? Is he not certain to take it in a crude, obscene, material sense, as is his habit? Will he not appropriate your theology to defend his own gods and passions? This is what our civil war leads to. This is what we achieve by fighting for the Word of God with greater violence than is pleasing to the Word of God.3
What Gregory reveals to us is that defending the faith is a matter of living differently because of Christ. To reduce the faith to words on a page, teachings that we can fight about, and then to spend our lives having those fights, gets us nowhere as a Church. But the great temptation in our lives is to spend our time having those fights, and then calling it ‘evangelization’ or giving ‘a defense of the faith.’ And don’t get me wrong. There are times when we need to defend the faith. And we bear an obligation to evangelize. I just think that the best defense of the faith that we can give is living differently because of Christ. And what better form of evangelization is there than the witness of a saint?
I have no interest in arguing about the merits of the Second Vatican Council. But I think we can say that the hope of many was that the Council would respond to the kind of interior paganism in the Church that Joseph Ratzinger described in 1958. Well, did the Council do its job well? Have the new pagans been vanquished as thoroughly from the Church as were the enemies of St. Gregory by the end of the 5th century? I have my doubts. And what has gone wrong? I’m sure everyone has their own answer to the question. Let me give you mine: more people—vastly more people—talk to me about the impact of the Council on liturgy or vocations or the life of the family than ask me about how to pursue the universal call to holiness that the Council Fathers beautifully articulate in the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen gentium.
What am I trying to say? Only that there is a part of us that would much rather fight about words and teachings regarding Christ than live differently because of him. St. Gregory knew this. We need to know it as well.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord. An epiphany. The original Greek term—epipháneia—means “a manifestation” or “a striking appearance.” And on the Solemnity of the Epiphany that is precisely what we celebrate: the manifestation of God in our world; the striking appearance of the divine made visible. The magi travel to Bethlehem and behold a God who has entered into human history by assuming for himself a human life.
God lives a human life. He walks amongst us. And that life, the whole of that life, is the real epiphany. And a life consists of more than spoken words. A life consists of more than teachings. With each and every gesture and action, with every loving glance and work of mercy, with every act of prayer and worship, with every moment spent in the company of friends and loved ones, with every aspect of his life, Christ manifested the glory of God. Each and every moment of Christ’s life is the striking appearance of God in our world. Every action of the life of Christ, and yes, every spoken word, is an act of divine revelation.
The whole life of Christ is an epiphany, the striking appearance of God in our world. And so it should be with our lives. Words and teachings aren’t enough.
Homily preached January 7th/8th, 2023 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Joseph Ratzinger, “The New Pagans and the Church.”
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 27: An Introductory Sermon Against the Eunomians.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 27: An Introductory Sermon Against the Eunomians.