The Church calls public revelation the coming of Christ, the Son of God who came into the world and was incarnated in the womb of Virgin Mary. It is his Life, Word and Work amongst us, his death, resurrection and ascension to Heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In contrast to this are the private revelations, the apparitions of Our Lady in Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima as well as the mystical visions of the saints in the 2000 years of Christianity.
If we stop and think, we will realize that public revelation is not really public nor is private revelation truly private; rather, both are at the same time public and private. Every revelation is public because the recipient of that revelation is never alone, and exclusively the person or persons to whom the revelation is given. On the other hand, all revelations are private because they are never made “urbi et orbe” to the general public, but rather in private to a person or group of people. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. (Matthew 10:27)
Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them…” (John 14:22-23)
God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. (Acts 10:40-41)
The public revelation of Jesus of Nazareth was given in private to the intimate inner circle of those who lived and came with him from Galilee and those who saw him in his glory after the Resurrection. Like Judas Thaddeus, when I was young I thought that the risen Jesus should have shown himself to all the people, especially to Annas, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate, and to all those who had shouted “crucify him”! It was only later that I understood the response that Jesus gave to Judas. Only love and faith can lead to knowledge, to the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus only reveals himself to those who love him and believe in him.
Therefore the aforementioned public revelation was, in fact, private as Jesus revealed his identity only to his disciples. The recipient of this revelation, however, is all of the humanity, men and women of all races, tongues, nations and places of all times.
The private revelation of Fatima, in the same way as that of Christ, despite it having public aspects from the beginning since the children after the first apparition were never there alone, was a private revelation because only the three little shepherds were visited by Our Lady. Yet, the recipient of the revelation was the whole world of the twentieth century and if we think of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that Lucia had been charged to propagate, then it is for all peoples of all times and places.
Private revelations as echoes of the Gospel
If it was not for prophecy, people would degenerate. For this reason, in all ages, men have been divinely instructed in matters expedient for the salvation of the Elect. – St. Thomas Aquinas
“Since the beginning of the world, Our Lady has appeared many times, in different ways… And that is what counts… the world is bad, but if there were not many cases like this, the worse it would have been… The power of God is mighty! We do not know what it is, but it is something… It is whatever God wants it to be.” Mr. Marto (Father of Francisco and Jacinta, and the first to believe in the apparitions)
From his academic ignorance, Mr. Marto has practically said the same thing as the greatest theologians of all times, Saint Thomas Aquinas. People have forgotten that even during biblical times God had raised prophets to correct and redirect the people back to Him from concrete historical situations.
During my days as a theology student, we used to say that Heaven has already spoken once for all times through Jesus Christ the eternal Word made flesh, so it will not speak again. In those days, we understood that Heaven has closed not for three and a half years like in the days of Prophet Elijah (Luke 4:25) but for all eternity.
The Marian apparitions as well as all sorts of private revelations have never been the object of theological reflection, not even in the subject called Mariology. Main stream theology looks at these revelations with disdain and relegates them to popular piety. I'm glad that the Holy Spirit does not always blow through the hierarchy, but rather He blows wherever He chooses (John 3:8) and in the case of Fatima, the voice of the people was the voice of God that stood up to the doctors of the Church.
It is true that after Christ nothing new will be revealed to replace what has been revealed in Christ, but something needs to be done to make sure that this revelation of Christ is not lost in time. This is, moreover, the role of the Holy Spirit, to repeat, to inculturate, and to apply the Gospel amid the idiosyncrasies of each place and time.
In this sense, the apparitions and the visions are like an echo of the Gospel; they remind or pinpoint to us any aspects that we may have forgotten or have not yet put into practice. Like cell phone antennas that carry our messages and voices from one to the next, private revelations, apparitions or visions, provide a service to the Gospel so that its transmission is not lost in time or space; and so that, one day in the future, we may be able to respond positively to that puzzling question the Lord has left us in the Gospel of Saint Luke: But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8)
The apparitions in the context of a more comprehensive Revelation
While many theologians discredit the visions and apparitions, calling them “private” and giving them a secondary and optional stand in the sense that we do not need them for our salvation, Karl Rahner who is without a doubt the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, considers them an amplification of the Revelation in the manner of an accurate and/or a clarification of the divine will, related to a specific action of the Church or to a particular historical situation.
In this way, Rahner overcomes the diatribe on public/private revelation and their mutual exclusion by merging the two into one single Revelation that occurs by and large throughout the history of mankind. After all, the Church is herself the Revelation or the subject of the revelation insofar as she is the realization of the Gospel of Christ here and now.
“The divine Words grow together with the one who reads them,” said Saint Gregory the Great. God’s revelation is not something immutable that was frozen in the past; it is a continuous process and is in some way interactive. This interaction is not only between the Scriptures and whoever reads them but also between Scriptures, the process and the historical context in which they are read and incarnated.
The function of the Church at the core of the history of mankind is to make this history a story of salvation. In this sense, the Church is the leaven of the Kingdom of God, a yeast intended to raise the entire mass – a world that is to be gradually transformed into the Kingdom of God on earth.
Just as there are evolution and revolution in the world so there are evolution and revolution in the interior of the Church; evolution is the ordinary activity while revolution is the extraordinary one. The ordinary has to do with the gradual evolution of the world with the view of becoming the kingdom of God. The extraordinary or revolutionary has to do with the prophecy through the action of the Holy Spirit who blows wherever and whenever he desires.
Prophets are not only characters of the Old Testament. We are all baptized into a common priestly, prophetic and kingly vocation and in real life, each Christian develops within one or the other of this common vocation. In the Old Testament, the prophets were the catalysts for the will of God in times of needs. Both in that time as in the present time, a prophet is always the bearer of a concrete message of God. The prophet does not only proclaims this message but also embodies it, making it his life. It is in this sense that we must regard the seers of Fatima, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco; the three, depending on their personalities, embody different aspects of the message of Fatima.
General revelation and particular revelation
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1-2)
Public revelation is, therefore, the Word of God stated by and incarnated in the person of Jesus the Nazarene. This Word beckons to our unchanging human nature. What was love two thousand years ago will still be love ten thousand years from now and beyond. The values like love, truth, and justice upon which human life is anchored, are timeless and so they do not change with the passage of time.
If human nature was susceptible to change over time then Christ would have to be incarnated many times throughout human history in order to be the way, the truth, and the life for human beings at each generation. But since human nature does not change, then at the right moment according to His divine providence, God incarnated into the History of mankind once and for all. In this sense, Heaven has spoken and will not speak again.
Whether you are an agnostic, an atheist, or a member of another religion, all those who want happiness and self-fulfillment here and now, and thereafter, must measure themselves to Jesus of Nazareth as he is the sole role model, the only human paradigm for all who strive to be fully human.
Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe and many other private revelations are not strictly necessary for the salvation of the human race, but they may be complementary. For this to be the case, the elements that they contain cannot be contrary to the Gospels. This is, in fact, the main criterion used to discern the veracity and validity of these revelations.
Perhaps there is not a single word or concept outside of public/private that does justice and defines exactly the two types of revelation:
Public, general or essential - because it is for the peoples of all times and places, and the one we cannot do without if we are to attain salvation.
Private, particular or non-essential - because it is, to a certain extent, restricted to a particular place and time and to a particular group of people, so is not indispensable for the salvation of the human race.
Pe. Jorge Amaro, IMC
No comments:
Post a Comment