The Psalmist presents himself: “I am a pilgrim on the earth” (Ps 119:19). And St. Peter: “We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (1 Pet 2:11).

We are pilgrims, not vagabonds who have no concrete goal. As monk Cassian said it well: “There is no arrival unless there is a definite plan to go” (Conferences). A pilgrim is not a tourist, not just a traveler, but a traveler looking for happiness. Not a bystander, but a journeyman longing for his or her promised land, for Jerusalem or the new Jerusalem, searching - consciously or unconsciously - for a supreme being: the universal quest for happiness is a mysterious search for God. St. Francis of Sales goes further and tells us that all human beings have the inclination to love God, their creator.

From cradle to tomb, every human being is a pilgrim, going somewhere. An American tourist visited the famous Polish Rabbi, Hafetz Chaim. The tourist was amazed at the austerity of the room of the Rabbi, and asked him: “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” The Rabbi answered him with a question: “Where is yours?” The American responded: “Mine? But I am only a visitor here, I am passing through?” “So am I, so am I, passing through,” the Rabbi responded (from W. Barclay). We are all visitors on earth, wayfarers passing through.

The pilgrim has a goal to reach, a goal that will improve his or her life. This goal or end is the first in intention and the last in execution. Every human act, attitude, or profession has a goal to achieve. For believers, the goal is the afterlife or heaven, and the intermediate ends are the practice of what is good, of virtues, and of love. Hence, the pilgrim is a hopeful person.

Every pilgrim hopes for a better tomorrow by reaching many destinations – proximate or remote. A Christian, a member of the pilgrim Church (cf. GS 57), hopes to achieve many temporal destinations, plus one: “a new heaven and a new earth” (cf. Rev 21:1-4). For the believer, life is a journey of hope to God, who is “the ultimate goal of man” (GS 41).

On February 28, 2013, the last day of his pontificate, Benedict XVI gave a brief and emotional farewell in the evening. He said then: I will simply be "a pilgrim who is beginning the last part of his pilgrimage on earth." Pope Francis, like St. John Paul II before him, calls himself a pilgrim in the world, and his trip to Canada (July 2022), was “a penitential pilgrimage.” In reality, all true pilgrimages are pilgrimages of faith, penance, and conversion, of prayerful and joyful hope, through which pilgrims, consciously or unconsciously, long and look for God.

In this life, there are two roads to follow: the road of “the world” or the road of God, the road of evil, or the road of goodness and virtue. The path of selfishness, hatred, unforgiving spirit, and insensitivity to the poor and needy leads eventually to unhappiness: “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evildoers” (Prv 4:14).  On the other hand, the road of kindness, prayer, compassion, and service to others give and increase happiness.

The end of the good road looks very attractive because it is full of happiness, but it is not easy to reach it. The hopeful road to beatitude, to heaven, is not an easy road. It is often a bumpy and stony road, and at times the road’s visibility is almost zero, a truly dark night when grave sufferings, serious doubts, and loneliness depress the pilgrim. Still, the virtue of the pilgrim, hope rooted in faith and practiced in love, makes the seemingly impassable patches of the road more bearable, even joyful. One remembers often St. Paul: “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).

Jesus says: “Enter through the narrow gate” and walk by “the hard, road that leads to life,” for the gate is wide and the road easy that leads to destruction” (Mt 7:13-14). Therefore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom 13:12). In our journey of life, sins are works of darkness, while good deeds are the armor of light: “Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness” (1 Jn 2:10”:11). 

A good road is the road of virtues, which inclines us to do good actions. In particular, the virtue of hope is permeated by human love or by charity. Although for Christians the most fundamental virtue is faith and the most perfect and need is love, hope is the constitutive virtue of the pilgrim. Peguy called hope the little sister of faith and charity; but in a sense, he added, it is the most important for she carries the other two. Hence, the virtue of the pilgrim is hope, which by itself gives certain happiness: “Hope is itself a species of happiness and perhaps the chief expression of happiness which this world can afford” (Samuel Johnson). 

How to be really hopeful people? To be truly hopeful, we have to be faithful to the moment by doing what we ought to do with love: “God speaks only in the present” (Kierkegaard).  Like the other virtues, hope needs the life of love to journey forward: “Only with steps of love, we march forward” (St. Augustine). As pilgrims journeying towards full happiness, we practice the love of God, of all neighbors, of ourselves, and of creation. Only by loving others as brothers and sisters, we may sow love and thus be happier and make people happy: “Put love where there is none, and you will reap love” (St. John of the Cross). 

True relative and real happiness are possible “already” in this temporal life, but full happiness, “not yet,” for “our homeland is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). To be faithful to the goal of life, to walk by the good road, we need God’s help, we need to pray. Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls (Jer 6:16).

I love hope and therefore to be a pilgrim with a thousand human hopes plus One – divine, and theological.  Once - years ago -. I even dared to write a few cheap verses when an evening I was waiting in beautiful Vigan (Philippines) for the bus to take me to Manila. The little poem is entitled “PEREGRINO” – PILGRIM”:

You pilgrim that walks, / that walks with hope, / never lose sight / of the goal of your steps.

You pilgrim and journeyman / that walks joyfully, / you will take a step forward / if you are faithful to the present.

Journeyman, yes there is a way / when you walk by loving, / when you walk, pilgrim, / with your sight on the Beloved.

(FGB)

St. Thomas Aquinas begins his moral theology or theological ethics with the question of the last end of human life, namely, perfect beatitude (cf. STh I-II, q. 1). 

        Following the Greek philosopher Aristotle, Aquinas tells us that “every agent acts for an end,” and therefore, the last end or goal is the first thing we need to know before we may journey with sense. The intermediate ends, if they are good, are directed to the last end, as temporal hopes are ordered to the hope of achieving eternal life, that is full beatitude.  We remember the saying of the Spanish philosopher Seneca: “There is no favorable wind for him who does not know where he is going.”

        After studying the basic question on Beatitude, the Angelic Doctor goes on studying the first part of his morals, and in general (I-II), the basic ethical categories: human acts, morality, freedom conscience, law, sin, and virtue. In the second part of his moral theology, special morals (II-II), St. Thomas develops principally the seven virtues of human and Christian life: the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity). The theological ethics of the Common Doctor of the Church is positive ethics, an ethics of virtues or good habits.

        Thomas’ morals begin then with the last end, which is full beatitude or perfect happiness, and ends with the beginning of a good Christian life, that is, with divine grace, which is the foundation of the spiritual/moral life.

        The end of our actions is happiness. We all want to be happy, but it seems that unfortunately many among us are unhappy.  As A. Camus said: “Men die and are not happy.” And we are not happy - at least relatively but really happy – because perhaps we place our happiness in places where happiness is not found, in utopian places, for instance in transhumanism, or because we place our happiness in the possession of false or insufficient objects, for instance in pride, in material possessions. Certainly, happiness on earth cannot be found in a place, an inheritance, a title, or a victory. 

        In his passionate search for full happiness, Aquinas approaches money, pleasure, power, science, and wisdom… to conclude that these objects can and must contribute to our happiness, but by themselves, they are insufficient and not the principal ones to give us some happiness here. The same measure we can apply to the currently dominating technology. Undoubtedly, technology is a great value, but carried out without a sound conscience, without respect for the basic human ethical principles and values cannot make us happy: it may even become our tyrant and manipulate us.

        Evil causes unhappiness. As a modern philosopher underlines: “Evil [ethical evil] is always a degradation, a sinking” (José Antonio Marina).  We can only be happy -Aristotle tells us – by doing good, that is, practicing virtues, which are the good habits that incline us strongly to do good in the different facets of life. Aquinas says that happiness “consists in the practice of virtue.” The practice of virtues (connected among themselves) is in itself the cause of happiness and, moreover, the road to greater happiness. Happiness is “the reward to virtue.”

A morally good life is a virtuous life. A good life is manifested in virtues, which are good operative habits that strongly incline to good actions (for instance, mercy inclines to merciful deeds), and good actions strengthen virtues. Virtue is a strong inclination to goodness, and the different virtues are firm dispositions to doing good deeds in the different spheres of life - personal, social, and spiritual.

A virtuous life is a loving life. A special virtue gives life to all other virtues: love or charity. From an ethical and spiritual perspective, without love, nothing has much value.  Love, however, needs the other virtues to be able to walk and provide a blessed and happy temporal life, although imperfect. For Aquinas, happiness is the presence of true love in our life. For Christians and other believers, charity or love of God is the most perfect virtue and moves all other virtues, while compassion or mercy – the fruit of charity, with peace and joy - is the most perfect virtue in relation to the neighbor. Wise and relevant words: “It is not science that redeems man, but love” (Benedict XVI).

In Christian tradition, the last end is complete beatitude, full happiness, or supreme love, that is, God. In truth, “only God satisfies” (St. Thomas Aquinas). Later on, St. Teresa of Avila will say: “Only God suffices.” Undoubtedly, happiness is holiness. If we read the lives of the saints of the different religions, we shall see that the saints, intimately united to God, are the happiest persons in the world. Gandhi said: “The world needs saints, not politicians.”

In this world, the Beatitudes of Jesus (cf. Mt 5:3-11) lead us to the perfect Beatitude or complete happiness. As a good theologian has elegantly said, the Beatitudes are eight forms of happiness (J. M. Cabodevilla), that is, eight forms of loving. Without a doubt, happiness in this life consists essentially in loving God and neighbor - all neighbors -. in getting out of oneself to encounter the good Lord in himself, in our sisters and brothers, and in his awesome creation. Practicing the beatitudes here, the virtues of the Beatitudes, lead to full Beatitude hereafter.

In our world - materialistic, secular, and proud -, the moral values, the virtues, in particular, seem to count less and less. Generally, what appears to count today are not the basic human values, but what social majorities dictate, majorities at times manipulated by the invisible threads of the powerful and politicians without scruples, by the reigning ideologies. It continues to be true that the ethical fundamental values (freedom, truth, justice, solidarity) do not depend on majorities, but on the truth of human nature and its universal natural longing for happiness. In this context, it is good and refreshing to recall that true happiness comes from a good life, a virtuous life, which is hopeful, loving, and joyful. (FGB)

 

 

A group of tourists visited a small town in Old Castile some time ago. The town was almost abandoned with just a few people living there. The tourists met a farmer and asked him: “Probably few children are born here every year.” The farmer answered: “Only one child every year: the one we place in the Manger of Christmas or Belén.” 

The family is in crisis today. Often, very few children, especially in the West, growing divorces, abortions, assisted (euthanasia), and non-assisted suicides. In this post-modern era, the traditional concepts of marriage and family have become ambiguous - being so diversified and different:  from same-sex unions to gender ideology.  In Spain, there is a project of a bill for Congress that suggests that we should not talk of the family anymore, but of families, and it distinguishes 16 kinds of families.

The family is the basic cell of society and, for most people, the most important value in their lives, for instance, for the Chinese and oriental cultures. For Christians, the family is a sacred reality, a domestic Church, the main fountain of our faith and of essential values, and “the place where life is conceived and cared for” (Pope Francis, AL 83). For us, the Holy Family of Nazareth continues to be the icon, inspiration, and help of our families.

 By the end of December, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family and are asked to adore the Child Jesus, the Son of God, venerate Mary, his Mother, and wife of Joseph), and venerate, too, Joseph, Jesus’ custodian, Mary’s husband and head of the Holy Family.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOLY FAMILY

From my childhood in my lovely town El Oso (Ávila), I still bring in my heart many memories. Among them, and from high school, a painting of the Flight to Egypt of the Holy Family: Mary with the Child Jesus in her arms mounted on a donkey, and Joseph walking and leading the obedient animal forward to Egypt. I remember our dear teacher Don Jacinto telling us the story of the Holy Family. I felt then deeply sad for the Holy Family: the three had to leave Bethlehem in a hurry. Much later, I realized that the flight to Egypt is a symbol of our life on earth. How often, we are leaving something or someone, going somewhere else, saying “goodbye.” Indeed, we are all the time on the way to another destination, which leads - like all others - to the final destination, which is, hopefully, and joyfully heaven.

From Egypt, the Holy Family went to their town, Nazareth. As a young priest, I remember the wonderful meditation of St. Paul VI on his visit to Nazareth on January 5, 1964. Deeply moved, the Holy Father would have liked to go back to his childhood to begin anew, near Mary, and learn the science of life, of divine wisdom. This could not be, Pope Paul VI said, because “I am a simple pilgrim.” So are we all: pilgrims going from Egypt to the Promised Land, or to Nazareth, or to Manila, or to Madrid, or to Macau! Walking patiently and hopefully with other pilgrims – like the Israelites, like the Holy Family – to a better place, to a deeper liberation from selfishness to love – to the love of charity that helps, forgives, and shares.

Today, and by the hand of St. Paul VI, we continue learning lessons from Nazareth. Nazareth teaches us first about family life: its meaning, its beauty, its communion of love, and its teachings on the basics of life at the personal and social levels. Nazareth teaches us, second on silence: on the love of silence, an admirable and needed habit, particularly today when we are disturbed by so much noise, by so many voices of the agitated modern life. The silence of Nazareth teaches us of the need for recollection, interior and prayerful life; of the need to be always ready to listen to the inspirations and the teachings of true masters. Paul VI tells us that, we learn a third lesson: on work and its importance in our life (as it was in the life of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus), its creative and redemptive dimension; the great dignity of workers. We remember today the tragedy of unemployment and the growing number of poor people, caused by “the tempest of the pandemic” (Pope Francis) and the wars: not only of Ukraine but also of many regional wars that increase hatred and divisions among nations and citizens.

OUR RESPONSE

Unfortunately, the traditional family is in crisis today: wounded families, broken families, and no family…! Still the family, our family - represented by the Holy Family of Nazareth - is the best thing in the world.

A painter wanted to paint the most beautiful object in the world! He went to a big park to ask people: “What is the most beautiful thing in the world for you?” First, he asked a soldier. His answer: “Nothing is more beautiful than peace: living together in peace!” Then he asked a young couple that answered: “Love is the most beautiful thing: it makes the world go ‘round.” Finally, he asked a priest who answered: “Faith is the most beautiful thing; it moves mountains.”  The painter asked himself: “How do I paint peace, love, and faith?” He answered his own question, “Now I know what is the most beautiful thing in the world: my family, my home. It is here where I experience faith, peace, and love.”

Within the lovely Season of Christmas and around the Crib, we venerate the Holy Family: we adore Jesus, and we manifest our devotion to Mary and Joseph. We remember the families that are suffering. We pray in particular for our families. Bowing or kneeling before the Crib, we learn the lessons of genuine family life, the need for silence, and of dignified work. Above all, we learn the perennial lesson of love: we are loved and we love.”