From New Avent.org: [Update: New Advent, not New Avent. HT to TB.]
Dr. Imbert counts 321 stigmatics in whom there is every reason to believe in a Divine action. He believes that others would be found by consulting the libraries of Germany, Spain, and Italy. In this list there are 41 men.Somehow I'm not surprised that there are more women than men stigmatics. Men make up less than thirteen percent of that list. It's always seemed to me that women have a greater natural capacity for holiness given that they understand receptivity to a greater extent and tend to be more sympathetic. Stereotypes, yes, but at the foot of the Cross men were strangely absent, with the exception of John. No wonder he was the disciple Jesus loved. New Advent continues:
The sufferings may be considered the essential part of visible stigmata; the substance of this grace consists of pity for Christ, participation in His sufferings, sorrows, and for the same end--the expiation of the sins unceasingly committed in the world. If the sufferings were absent, the wounds would be but an empty symbol, theatrical representation, conducing to pride.Some background from Louis Bouyer's Introduction to Spirituality:
Another step was taken with St. Peter Damien and his whole era (11th century). The religious soul then came to concentrate on the cross, no longer as the instrument of our liberation or as a testimony of love, but as a particularly impressive example of suffering deliberately accepted, even sought out. New mortifications of a directly punitive character, such as scourgings, came to be practiced in this spirit.Bouyer goes on to describe the greater excellence of an asceticism of compassion to that of reparation.
Thus the way opened out by the Irish monks led, toward the end of the Middle Ages, to an asceticism of compassion. Certain forms of Franciscanism, centered more on the stigmata of St. Francis than on his own spirituality, led in this direction. The theory was formulated clearly for the first time by the Dominican mystic of the fourteenth century, Henry Suso. The objective the ascetic had in view was no longer so much to fight and overcome the power of sin through Christ and by His power; it was rather to suffer with Him, as if to bring some alleviation to His suffering by taking a part of it on oneself.
The beauty and especially the generosity of this ideal are beyond dispute. But it is also beyond dispute that this ideal tended to be formulated in a sentimental context far removed from the sobriety of primitive Christianity or of monasticism, and not in accordance with the lines of a sane theology.
What we have just said is still more true when we go from the asceticism of compassion to that of reparation. This made its appearance in the modern forms of devotion to the Sacred Heart more or less directly inspired by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
No comments:
Post a Comment