Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
In the Greek tongue, the word for decision or opportunity is krine from which our English word crisis is derived. As it is so often, the ancient Greek masters of this supple language possessed a natural wisdom which enjoyed an unusual concurrence with the reveled truths of the Catholic Faith. Such consonance caused amazement amongst the ancient Church Fathers, prompting them to anoint many Greek thinkers, viz., Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as proto-Christians. So it is that Dante takes Virgil as his navigator in the exploration of both the Inferno and Purgatorio. The Italian poet names Virgil a “virtuous pagan”, and along with many other “virtuous pagans”, dwell in the regions of Limbo, spared the punishments of Hell. It might also be remarked, that the founding editor of this prestigious journal, Ralph McInerney, took its title from this ancient Greek usage.
Similarly, the corona virus crisis brings into relief several teachings of the Church, fulfilling its classical Greek meaning of seizing an opportunity. The obvious one is the doctrine of Divine Providence. Nothing that happens to us in this life is without God’s concurrence, and ultimately permitted for our ultimate good. Even evil, physical and moral. God, of course, does not will evil, which is opposed to His perfect nature, but in His Wisdom He permits it, so that greater goods may occur. Sometimes these greater goods are hidden are from eyes, but not from the eyes of supernatural Faith. God knows His wayward fallen children of Adam and Eve, and appreciates that the hardened carapace of sin often dims their understanding, if not blinding them entirely.
Being a Provident Father, He applies a remedy that seems prima face painful, but necessary for our happiness. Oftentimes suffering is obligatory to shatter the walls of own making. Too much ease, convenience and pleasure settles onto the soul like a narcotic, numbing the soul to the exertions of spiritual warfare. Cardinal Newman thus warns: “Health of mind and body is a good thing, if you can endure it.” From our most bitter afflictions God’s power triumphs. So Aquinas: “The greatest manifestation of God’s power is to bring goodness out of evil.” In a few weeks we shall be praising this power of God as the Exultet rings out in the darkness of Easter Vigil, “O felix culpa!” Imagine, Holy Church praises a sin! “O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam!” For from it the Savior was moved from His place at the right hand of His Father, to stand by the side of the likes of you and me. This same beneficent Divine Providence stands as a conundrum to those without supernatural Faith. Remember Mephistopheles’s despairing howl in Goethe’s Dr. Faustus, “I desire only evil, and produce only good!”
A second doctrine comes to mind. Pause and consider the Church’s teaching that all men are made in the “imago et similtudo Dei.” (“ image and likeness of God.”). This “image” encompasses two critical powers that comprise the nature of man: his intellect and will. God does not grant powers in vain. They are meant to be used, used well, and used unto our perfection. If not, we come under the dire obloquies of the Savior. Reread the parable of the talents in Mt 25 16. God will not do for us, what we can do for ourselves. Such a slothful attitude tips over onto the heresy of presumption: assuming that God will always compensate for what I refuse to do myself. The Church has also identified this sin with the rather spine tingling name of ‘tempting the Holy Spirit.” Frightening indeed, for it’s an affront against the Third Person whose identity is the Truth. Playing games with the gifts God has given us is a prospect that should make our skins crawl. No voice has been more insistent in using the intellect ad maiorem Dei gloriam than the Church. To face this crisis, we rely upon the finest minds at our disposal, carefully implement their cautions and always take due consideration of the common good. It is the modus Catholicus, par excellence. For good reason, Etienne Gilson named the final chapter of his 1939 classic Christianity and Philosophy, The Intellect in the Service of Christ the King. But this lofty teaching was expressed to us as we sat on our mother’s knee, “God helps those who help themselves.”
The next teaching is summarized in the pithy phrase of St. Ignatius Loyola: “work as if everything depended upon you; and pray as if everything depended upon God.” In the final analysis everything depends upon God’s grace, and pleading for it – like beggars. Before, during and after our work we are on our knees, paupers at the throne of God. Yes, we enjoy all the powers that God has given us, but they remain stillborn or misdirected without God’s grace. After we have exhausted all that we can do, we leave the rest in the hands of God. As the ancient Allocutio before Marriage so elegantly put it: “Nor will God be wanting to our needs.” The lurking heresy here is Quietism, the seventeenth century error that riddled the Church. It possessed a siren appeal because it took a little bit of the Truth and exaggerated it, which is the trademark of all heresies. In the case of Quietism, it acknowledged the necessity of prayer and grace, then stopped there. No human action was necesssary. God will take care of everything as long as we pray. Notice the snare. God can do all things, true enough. Man need do nothing except pray, there the heresy.
Its contagion is so subtle that its lie captures the best of Catholics even today. When you hear prominent Catholic voices in the face of the gaping crisis facing he Church simply prescribe, “Stay positive and pray”, know you staring into the maw of Quietism. These voices are the Shirley Temples of Catholicism today, when what we need are St. Athanasius’s. Adopt the classical prayer that avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of both Quietism and Activism: “Direct, O Lord, we ask Thee, all our actions by Thy holy inspiration and carry them on by Thy assistance, that every prayer and work of ours may begin from Thee, and through Thee be brought to completion.” A perfect plea before God: a perfect expression of Catholic doctrine.
After all this we are obliged by the command of God to be of good cheer, and have supernatural hope in God’s care. This past Sunday was called Laetare and we began Holy Mass with the exclamation from Isaiah 66: “Laetare Jerusalem” (Rejoice Jerusalem!). Since we are in the hands of a Provident God who loves and cares for us without measure, gloom and worry has no part. Lest God think we do not trust Him.
In the administration of the last president, his chief of staff once cynically remarked, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” That epitomizes modernity’s shrill, cold and scheming designs. True crises belong to Catholics, and to saints. For through them we can see God’s wondrous designs.
March 2020
