From the Desk of Edward J. Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa

Opportunity for sufferers offered in 'Confraternity of Holy Cross'

"The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us" is the succinct way in which St. John the evangelist captures the heart of these feasts we have been celebrating, giving language to mystery and expression to the inexpressible such that the Church in her prayer and in her charity might always return to the contemplation of God's descent into human history, with all its twists and turns and refusals to love.

It is in this descent into the murkiness of our relations, into the very worldliness of our lives and cultures, that God reveals the depths of His love for us. For this is the extent to which He seeks out the lost sheep and restores to the heavenly Kingdom those who were captured by our enemy, that the Word Who is the living God's Eternal Son, the beginning with no beginning and the end that has no end, works His way down into the very heart of man, where little loves, incomplete and tiny, begin and end with astonishing rapidity, and real love is almost unknown.

The unfathomable humility of God

In the heart of man, God speaks His Word, but such is the unfathomable humility of God that He never speaks it "in the abstract." Rather, God condescends to speak to us as persons of inestimable worth (though He alone can see through the weariness of our constant failures to that bright-shining perfection of our re-created selves) and He binds us to Himself by the creation of a communion of love, of faith and of hope, which draws its very life from having received that Word from those who first heard it and then handed on to the next generation that Word and all His life-giving deeds.

Thus it seems inevitable that God's free decision to reveal Himself in human history (with all His love and in order to save us) should create the Church, for once that Word enters time and the Uncreated Son becomes created, then He is bound by the laws of time and place as we are. Once He speaks and His words are heard by the apostles, those words pass into history. Once He acts and His actions are known by the disciples, those deeds pass into memory.

Our Apostolic Faith

He must allow this, since all human consciousness is bound up in the record of things known and remembered. But the apostles and disciples, those first uniquely privileged witnesses, also gave witness and in their lived testimony of Who Jesus is, they passed on through Word and Sacrament, all that they saw and felt and knew, so that we ourselves are able to be caught up in their experience and in this way enter into their faith-life.

Thus we can affirm with the whole Church that we believe what the Apostles and disciples believed, but also that we believe because the apostles and disciples believed.

They have proclaimed to us the fullness of their faith in the "Word made flesh," and we experience that same Mystery of God's desire to save us because we have been caught up in their response of faith. It cannot be any other way. We read, for example, the story of the Birth of Jesus from the Gospel of St. Luke, and we receive the witness of St. Luke's faith in the power of God to save. We receive St. Luke's faith in God's revelation and thus God's love is revealed anew--through St. Luke to us in our lives today and in all the darkness of a world gone mad.

It is wholly inconceivable that one of the ways in which God maintains His revelation and continues to reveal Himself should be through man's response to Revelation with all the individuality and the particularity required of any such personal response. Yet this is required by the structure of the Incarnation, and we find it true as well in our own lives. God enters into human history and builds from the response of man a communion of love through which He reveals Himself to others that they in turn might reveal Him to us.

We enter into communion with them and discover from them the unimaginable richness of God's love. This discovery binds us as members of this community as well and allows us to love others with the love of God. And as we love others, we reveal the love of God as well to them.

To understand this principle is to understand how the Christ builds His Church as a community of love, how she derives her mission from His Incarnation, and why nothing human (no matter how broken or incomplete, how painful or bitter) is foreign to the Church or beyond the scope of her ministry.

How man saves man

In their sermons and writings, the Church Fathers often marveled at the arduous path by which the Word of God makes His descent into the heart of man irreversible and the humility required of God Who not only subjects Himself to the Incarnation but limits Himself by it so that He depends upon His creatures and requires of them their free cooperation if revelation is to continue and He is ever to accomplish His purpose.

Yet it is true, and so true that only the most profoundly humble can ever begin to grasp that the plan and the purpose of God was to use man to redeem man. As the Church sings with lyric joy these weeks, "the cause of our ruination has become now the hope of our salvation; by God has this been done and we find it marvelous to behold." Reflect, then, at the words we have heard in recent days and tell me if you do not see this mysterious plan of God at play in the life of the Virgin of Nazareth?

Was there not a moment, when the Angel Gabriel held his breath in expectation of her answer, when the whole world--its past and present and future--hung in the balance of her answer? If Mary doubted Gabriel's word, hesitated in selfish pride or even said, "no," then God's plan would have been frustrated and the darkness of the world would have continued without the hope of Christ's light. But Mary answered "yes!" surrendering herself to the will of God.

"Let it be done to me," she said, "even as you have said." And at this central moment in history, the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

The transformation of suffering

What God did in history through the Virgin, He continues to do through us when we participate in the Eucharist. Mary was the first to accept fully this divine advance of love, and now, because of her response in faith, God's love advances upon us. When we cooperate in God's plan for the redemption of the world, every facet of our lives begins to reveal the mercy of the Father.

Even sickness, suffering and death, because they have been redeemed through Christ's Incarnation, must serve God now.

In and through Christ, all those who suffer have acquired the sacred privilege of redeeming the world through their personal hurt, their individual brokenness, and even their gradual dying. What had been a curse, a punishment for our sinful disobedience, has become now--if accepted in union with the suffering of Christ on the cross--a blessing and a joy. As St. Paul reminds us: I find my joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh, I fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church. (Colossians 1:24)

From a simply human point of view, suffering is nothing more than an evil to be avoided at all costs, or--if unavoidable--endured with as much good grace as one can muster. But from the point of view generated by our faith in Christ crucified and risen, suffering can be redemptive. It saves the world, brings joy to the saints, and reveals that our final destiny is complete union with the Father.

I suppose that the question must arise: "Why do we go to such great lengths to avoid suffering, if suffering is what saves the world and brings joy?" I would propose that the reason is the imperfect love which characterizes our lives and becomes the pattern of our relationships. If we loved well--as the saints love or as Christ loves--then we would accept suffering as a gift from God, a unique opportunity to surrender ourselves to the love of the Father specifically at a time when the Father might seem distant and even cruel. This is how Christ accepted His Passion. He endured the ignominity of the cross, surrendering Himself to His Father ("Father, into Thy hands, I commend My Spirit." Luke 24:46) even thought the Father seemed to have forgotten His Son ("My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?" Mark 15:34).

Suffering united in Christ

Suffering--especially when it is unexpected or beyond our control--can perfect love by purifying our intention and intensifying the essential element of self-surrender. But what is required is that we suffer with Christ. We must see our suffering as a sharing in what He endured, and we have to find in our suffering a way of more deeply uniting ourselves to Him as He surrendered Himself to the Father.

This year just past has been a time of enormous suffering for the Church, for all the members of Christ's body who love her as a mother. Not only were we confronted with the moral failure of some priest-shepherds, but we suffered the horrendous disappointment that even some of our principal shepherds, my brother bishops, failed to protect the weakest members of Christ's body. We suffered with the victims and felt ourselves outraged and violated by this betrayal of a sacred trust.

However, I am also hopeful that the year past will also be remembered as a year of grace and favor from the Lord, a year when we as a diocese responded to this crisis with deeper prayer, the humble conversion of our hearts, and an all-parish call for purification and reparation. This is why just before Holy Week last year I asked that every parish begin a Holy Hour on Friday evenings from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. I asked (and fully expect their positive compliance) the priests, deacons, religious, and lay faithful of the Diocese to make reparation for our own sins and those of our priests and bishops.

Beginning a Confraternity

Now I wish to carry through with my stated intention by inviting all those in our communities who suffer from chronic, serious, permanent or life-threatening diseases to bring together all that they suffer, and unite it in faith and love to that which Christ suffered and then in union with the whole Church offer their pain and disabilities as a gift to the Father for the general intention of the sanctification of the Church and the particular intention of healing those members of the Church who have suffered abuse from our ordained shepherds and whose suffering may have been worsened by the lack of vigilance exhibited by the hierarchy.

I wish to bring together into a single spiritual body--called a confraternity--all those who are in the unique position of being able to make a gift to God the Father of their chronic (like arthritis or bipolar disorder), debilitating (like MS or fibromyalgia), or life-threatening diseases (like leukemia, polio, HIV, or Gulf War Syndrome) and I would like to consecrate this confraternity to Christ Crucified by calling it the Confraternity of the Holy Cross.

I have asked all the pastors in the Diocese to forward to me the names of those parishoners whom they think would be interested in learning more about this Confraternity, but perhaps you would like yourself to write me for more information on how the Confraternity of the Holy Cross will function. If you would like me to write to you and answer your questions regarding the Confraternity, my address is: Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa, P O Box 690240, Tulsa OK 74169-0240.