Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 4

It is taking longer to move through this than I thought. I do thank you for your patience and I hope this exercise is beneficial. I know it has been for me because it has helped me to really understand what Pope Benedict is stating about the Church and the world. I remember often as I read this document what Bishop Campbell said to a Mass full of college students, he told them to remember that they were pursuing truth and for us truth is a Person.

When we begin to talk about heaven, the information that we have is known from the negative means of arguing, that is what we know about heaven is from what we know it will not be. This has historically led to a perception of an idealized life in this world. In order to attain heaven we must abandon everything of this world and live life alone. In order to be saved one has to abandon life and cut one self off. This is the perception, and yet is the perception correct?

Pope Benedict uses to people of authority to demonstrate the error in this perception. Henri de Lubac, a Jesuit priest of the last century, cites several references in the Letter to the Hebrews that show salvation is a communional action. He even showed that sin was understood by the early “Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race” and that salvation “appears as the reestablishment of unity.”(#14) Today we often see sin as a very private matter that should have no reflection upon the community, so we can see how this perceived reality does actually exist. The other person that the Pope uses is Bernard of Clairaux, a French Abbot and reformer of Cistercian monasteries. Many men were have perceived to flock to the monastery to escape life; but Bernard believed that the monastery “perform[ed] a task for the whole Church and hence also for the world.”(#15) Bernard considered manual labor an effective means of cultivating the soul. Manual labor allowed for the soul, so that the substance of faith that God gives us can flourish. That “no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown.”(#15)

Pope Benedict outlines two reasons for a man who is considering the priesthood to be in the seminary. The Church is a community and so we must realize that to hear God’s call, then we need to be a community. The seminary is not a place to escape and become a priest, but it is to be a place where a man who is called to the priesthood is to have soul properly prepared for service in God’s Church. We can probably state a number of reasons for why we should do what we want, but we should see this as disunity and potentially sinful. We should realize that listening to God unifies us with others and allows God’s grace to maximize unity.