McGrath Institute Blog

Editorial Note: This post was originally delivered as a reflection for Palm Sunday on Sunday, April 5, 2020.

“He emptied Himself,” Paul tells us in the second reading from Philippians (2:7). Who “emptied Himself?” “Christ Jesus,” Paul says, “though he was in the form of God.” The Creed explains what this means: in other words, “though He was in the form of God” because he was the “Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,”—“Christ Jesus” in the “form of God” is that one the Creed speaks of, truly God from all eternity in the permanent bliss and blessedness that belongs to God the Trinity as an eternal exchange of the most intimate love. 

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. 

St. Joseph is my favorite saint. He is my “best friend” among the saints, if the saints are our “friends.” I love him better than all the rest, and it’s OK, because, as St. Bernadette used to say, “there is no jealousy in Heaven.” But I cringe when someone asks me to write about him. I love St. Joseph so very much because his life is thoroughly “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He hides himself. We know him as someone who does not speak, who does not represent himself, who does not tell his own story, who gives up giving an account of himself. In this way, his life is a whole burnt offering, speaking to us only by not speaking.

If you are like me, the news of Jean Vanier’s abuse and manipulation of six women receiving spiritual direction was a gut-wrenching combination of disappointment, disillusionment, and disgust.

In the face of seemingly endless iterations of scandal in the Church, there was at least Jean Vanier. He was one of the beacons of hope and renewal and reform, a layman who had succeeded in creating, in L’Arche, a new form of communion and evangelization. A real lay leader in the Church. Someone whom we thought of as a harbinger of the ideals of “co-responsibility for the being and acting of the Church,” to use Pope Benedict’s words.

Here was hope for a new vision of leadership in the Church. But even this hope was dashed. Back to the drawing board. Find another beacon of hope and harbinger of renewal. But we’re running out! I thought. Where do we go from here?

Editorial Note: This post is an excerpt from a longer article, published on Church Life Journal on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. Read the full version here.

What is leadership in the Church?

Looking at the pictures of the Cross of Christ, shining with the light of the morning sun, intact amidst the ashes and debris from the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, I found them very moving. Is it a miracle that the cross and altar and candles survived? It depends on what you are willing to call a miracle.