Catholic Migrant Id After Augustine, Bonaventure, and Ratzinger | Church Life Journal

A decade in the past, I made a transfer from Australia to the US and served for a yr as a visiting analysis Professor at DePaul College. This temporary interval of migration—one overlaid on my expertise of already being a migrant to Australia—supplied an experiential backdrop to what would later turn out to be my main analysis mission that yr, specializing in a theological account of migrant id.

On this context I discovered that the fifth-century North African bishop Augustine of Hippo—arguably the Church’s foremost migrant thinker—supplied the important thing theological backdrop to the analysis that may unfold. That hyperlink between Augustinian theology and migrant id would proceed to occupy me lengthy after I completed up in the US and took on new twists and turns, after I had event to delve extra deeply into the works of a second Augustinian theologian, the late Joseph Ratzinger, whose hyperlinks to Augustine are obvious in his works on love and in his curiosity in a 3rd Augustinian theologian, the Franciscan Physician of the Church St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

In what follows, I’ll lay out some broad brushstrokes of the analysis on a theological engagement with Catholic migrant id, and prepare this presentation across the three thinkers talked about above: Augustine, Bonaventure, and Ratzinger. In elaborating the considered every I additionally hope to weave three factors via the argumentation. First, I spotlight how an Augustinian theology of affection varieties one essential golden thread connecting all three thinkers, a golden thread that helps us make sense of migrant id, particularly Catholic migrant id. Second, I determine the seek for a house outdoors one’s native land because the connecting Augustinian theme that additionally helps us perceive Catholic migrant id. Lastly, I argue that the experiences of the Catholic migrant varieties a mirror that displays again upon the experiences of each Catholic.

Augustine

When speaking about migrant id and Augustine, what is commonly introduced up is the thought in his Metropolis of God, by which the Metropolis of God sojourns as a pilgrim via the Metropolis of Man. What typically follows is the shorthand of “pilgrim equals migrant” which, as a result of it’s shorthand, overlooks one thing extra theologically foundational.

To this, we have to think about Augustine’s Confessions. Specifically, we must always think about his most oft-quoted line discovered within the opening chapter of the Confessions, “You may have made us for your self, O Lord, and our hearts are stressed till they relaxation in thee” (I.1.1). This one line encapsulates probably the most foundational declare of Christian anthropology, and frames the puzzle of the Catholic migrant: earlier than we’re thinkers, we’re stressed lovers. For Augustine, in addition to Bonaventure and Ratzinger, all theological pondering begins with the center that loves, for love underwrites our conception of self and offers path to our ideas, phrases, and deeds.

A really deliberate tie could be made between this directive energy of affection and migrant id. This tie is obvious to migrants who made their transitus to their nation of domicile after their youth of their nation of origin. Extra to the purpose, it’s most viscerally felt when migrants settle into the journey of their new dwelling nation, while concurrently craving for the familiarity and safety of the outdated dwelling nation, giving rise to an odd sense of homesickness while at dwelling.

How one can make sense of this homesickness? I recommend that it boils right down to sin, which has an influence on our love, the fallout of which the migrant experiences in a selected method. The related query right here considerations what sin does to our love, and the way that is inflected within the expertise of the migrant.

For Augustine, our love for God as the very best love spills over to a correct ordering and cohesion to our secondary loves and due to this fact cohesion to our sense of id. In explaining what sin does to our love, Augustine follows Origen of Alexandria’s maxim: the place there’s sin, there’s multiplicity. Put one other method, sin diverts our love away from God as the very best love, resulting in a disordering of our loves. Sin splinters love and in the end, self. Briefly, sinners develop the theological equal of cut up personalities, and our divided loves result in an entire host of typically conflicting variations of ourselves. That is why Augustine, when talking of his lifetime of sin in E-book II of the Confessions, says, “I’ve been fruitlessly divided. I turned from unity in You, to be misplaced in multiplicity” (II.2.1).

We now should ask how the splintering of affection applies to the theme of migrant id. To reply this, we’d like to pay attention to the twofold problem that migrants typically face of their nation of residence. The primary problem is that they don’t seem to be born within the nation of residence, and in various methods this can, in delicate and not-so-subtle methods, completely mark the migrant as an outsider. The second, extra pointed problem flows from the primary. As a result of they don’t seem to be born within the nation of residence, the migrant’s allegiances will in numerous methods stay a dwell query, particularly in instances of societal stress. The fixed query to the migrant is whether or not, as an outsider residing within the midst of the native-born, their loyalty rests on the nation of residence or elsewhere. What complicates issues is that many migrants typically make no try to show their patriotism in such binary phrases. Certainly, many migrants rejoice their earlier belonging while within the nation of residence. It may be at very quotidian ranges, resembling via meals or language, or by way of allegiances to the symbols or establishments of the nation of origin, be they flags, festivals, political and social organizations.

In response to migrants’ celebrations of a number of belonging, political commentators within the nation of residence typically assert {that a} migrant’s splintered love for each nation of origin and nation of residence foments disunity throughout the latter. Seen in an Augustinian gentle, we are able to see that the criticism by such political pundits of a migrant’s love for a number of polities is a type of civic try at critiquing the multiplicity of loves led to by sin. Moreover, the treatment to such divided love additionally appears to be a civic parallel to Origen’s level that the antidote to multiplicity is singularity via the assistance of advantage, for implicit within the criticism of the vice of migrant’s divided love is that the one treatment is the advantage of a singular and unique love of the nation of residence. Insofar as migrants are patriots of a number of international locations, they’re thought to be secular sinners.

Having problematized the deadlock with Augustine, the query now turns into one in every of whether or not he may help us resolve this deadlock. A facet be aware is required right here. If multiplicity is an inescapable human situation, then theologically talking, the type of multiplicity the Catholic migrant manifests is just not one thing confined to migrants. We are able to put this extra constructively and say that the type of multiplicity manifested within the migrant is just not problematic however is certainly iconic of each particular person. Certainly, of their embodied expertise of multiplicity, migrants could be thought to be a picture of the Church. Framing the migrant as a secular sinner due to their outward multiplicity, articulates an inner actuality that impacts each the migrant and the native-born. Set in opposition to the backdrop of Augustine, the multiplicity of the migrant is a symptom, one of many many outworkings of our division of loves, which is in flip led to because of sin. If everyone seems to be marked by multiplicity, as Augustine claims we’re, it implies that the migrant’s externalized multiplicity ought to convey to our consideration subtler multiplicities inside every one in every of us.

We are able to push the envelope additional. The temptation right here can be to use the rubric of “multiplicity unhealthy,” due to this fact “unity good,” and to attempt to expunge multiplicity as a prerequisite to unity. This could not be in step with a cautious studying of Augustine’s theological critique of our divided love. Keep in mind that Augustine didn’t say that he was merely divided, however that he was “fruitlessly divided.” I recommend that Augustinian theology engages the issue of multiplicity not by expunging multiplicity however by reworking it, from the fruitless multiplicity to a fruitful, redemptive multiplicity. To this, allow us to now go to St. Bonaventure.

Bonaventure

Although the extent of Bonaventure’s continuation of Augustine’s legacy can’t be exhaustively explored right here, the hyperlink between each medical doctors is most obvious within the centrality of affection each give of their respective accounts of the economic system of salvation. Extra particularly, the hyperlink between each medical doctors turns into evident in the way in which each paint an image by which love is important in both dispersing a union or drawing the various right into a unity.

The important thing Bonaventuran theme for our functions is his tackle the traditional theme of the coincidence of opposites, by which all the things has an reverse with which it’s united via a mediator. Bonaventure grounds his tackle the coincidence of opposites on the patristic positing of Christ because the Divine Logos, the Phrase of God and likewise the divine underwriting of all creation. For Bonaventure, the Logos was not one thing extrinsic to creaturely existence. Since it’s via the Logos that each one creatures had been made (because the Gospel of John’s prologue signifies), the Phrase is the truth is the very floor of each creature’s existence and an integral a part of every creature’s construction.

From the cosmos’ inception, the Logos stands as the purpose of unity for all creatures. Whether it is via the Phrase that each one issues had been made, then for Bonaventure, each creature that exists and each creature that ever will exist is, within the face of the array of variations between each, nonetheless an articulation of that very same Phrase. Much more related is Bonaventure’s apprehension of the Logos encompassing not simply all the things, however all the things and its reverse. It’s because the Phrase itself is all the things and its reverse, one thing Bonaventure expresses finest in his Itinerarium. In Christ, Bonaventure says, one sees without delay “the primary and final, the very best and the bottom, the circumference and the middle, the Alpha and the Omega, the induced and the trigger, the Creator and the creature, that’s the guide inside and with out.”[1]

For Bonaventure, Christ is the mediator for all issues and their opposites, as a result of Christ can be the essential mediator that holds the Trinity collectively. The Logos is just not one remoted monad throughout the Trinity, however an individual who, as a result of he’s an individual, intimately inheres to a different particular person.[2] Extra particularly, the Logos is an individual who brings into himself and shares the traits of two different obvious opposites, the Father, who’s all generator, and the Spirit, who’s all generated.[3] Just like the Spirit, the Logos is the era of the Father (“born of the Father earlier than all ages,” as we confess within the Creed), but just like the Father, the Son can be one from whom the Spirit proceeds (because the Spirit proceeds from each the Father and the Son, because the Creed additionally professes). The Logos mirroring each the Father and the Spirit is the explanation why the Son reveals the fullness of the Triune God to all who encounter him. Furthermore, the Logos doesn’t scale back or remove the particularities of both generator (Father) and generated (Spirit) to suit right into a homogenized unity. For Bonaventure, unity within the Logos presumes the integrity of each Father as Father and Spirit as Spirit, because the Logos is however the inhering of each Father and Spirit of their fullness.[4]

Allow us to circle again to our consideration of a Catholic migrant’s celebration of a number of belongings. If we comply with Bonaventure, and if Christ holds collectively what look like opposites by bearing the options of each, then our multiplicitous loves cohere with one another as long as they continue to be anchored within the unifying love of the Logos. Within the Logos, our manifold loves now not oppose one another, as a result of the Logos returns to unity what sin had cut up into the a number of. Every constituent id is now united with different constituent identities for, within the Logos, every constituent presumes the opposite quite than opposes the opposite. Moreover, every constituent id shall be remodeled within the Logos, although that transformation doesn’t require that constituent to give up its integrity to be harmonized within the Logos or to at least one one other. As an alternative, the transformation within the Phrase of God ends in every constituent arriving at a better integrity. In different phrases, the nearer one’s love is built-in into the Phrase of God, the extra the one which loves turns into itself. What’s extra, the extra all the things is ordered in the direction of the Logos and turn out to be actually themselves, the extra they cohere with all the things else, together with their opposites.

At first, the picture of the ultimate reconciliation of all loves within the Phrase may sound summary, even pollyannaish. Nevertheless, one other dimension that the coincidence of opposites can converse into is a reconciliation of reverse experiences by the identical particular person. The migrant would expertise the coincidence of opposites most viscerally within the expertise of losses from the nation of origin the extra one integrates into the nation of domicile (I’ve written extra about how Bonaventure may assist us face the expertise of loss extra typically elsewhere). This may be the lack of a cultural marker, historic dwelling, and even constituent id, factors of familiarity, safety, and even id that when grounded the migrant earlier than their transitus. These losses are sometimes met with a poignancy and even remorse, and such poignancy and remorse over these losses are highly effective tokens of a love of that which was misplaced. The love of what was misplaced is perhaps coupled with a want for its reverse, specifically the restoration of that which was misplaced. Because the coincidence of opposites, Christ may be the locus of bringing collectively the expertise of loss and its hoped-for restoration. This experiential query opens up a pastoral one, which is answered as regards to Ratzinger.

Ratzinger

Whereas Bonaventure lays out the metaphysical foundation for the cohering of loves which might be splintered, a pastoral query for the migrant stays: what does the cohering of opposites in Christ imply for Catholic migrant id, particularly with respect to the migrant’s want for a house when one’s authentic house is misplaced? We are able to body the puzzle one other method: how may this cohering of loves in Christ produce a locus of stability that underwrites the id of the Catholic migrant? It’s this query that Ratzinger helped me reply.

When reflecting alone migrant journey, I assumed at first that my locus of stability was geographically based mostly; by this I imply that my id was first grounded in a single territory, and now it’s grounded in one other territory. Thus, after I began the analysis on Augustine and migrant id, I centered on how migrants negotiate the multiplication of geographical affiliations when stricken from one’s authentic homeland.[5] Upon reflection, I now notice that the migrant faces a a lot subtler problem, for the migrant’s most quick level of interface within the nation of residence is just not geography, however the individuals residing inside that geography. It isn’t merely that the place I discover my stability has to shift. Moderately, the entire axis for that locus of stability should bear a shift. It’s proper at this level that Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity turns into significantly related, or extra particularly, a phase that explored the implications of the clause within the creed that claims “I consider in God.”

Ratzinger begins his exploration by specializing in Israel’s choice to seek advice from God with the Hebrew prefix “El” (e.g. Elohim, El-Shaddai, and many others). This looks as if a easy transfer at first look, however Ratzinger regards this as an essential spiritual turning level for Israel. It’s because the so-called El-religions, Ratzinger says, are “characterised mainly by the social and private character of the divinity.”[6] In referring to God with the prefix “El,” Israel’s God was now not a geographical god tied to a spot, now not a numen locale. As an alternative, Ratzinger says, Israel shifted the axis in its reference to God away from geography, making the God of Israel a private god or a numen personale. This shift from a geographical to a private god was extremely important, not solely as a result of it distinguished God from the geographically based mostly deities of the encompassing nations. For Ratzinger, a numen personale overcomes a definite geographical limitation throughout the numen locale. Ratzinger lays out the issue on this method:

We should always recall that the spiritual expertise of the human race has regularly been kindled at holy locations, the place for some cause or different the “fairly different,” the divine, turns into significantly palpable to man . . . however the hazard instantly arises that in man’s eyes the spot the place he skilled the divine and the divine itself merge into one another, in order that he believes in a particular presence of the divine at that specific spot and thinks he can not discover it in equal measure elsewhere.[7]

In different phrases, a geographical god is just potent particularly locations and never in others. Against this, if Israel’s God was a private god, the hyperlink to the divine is anchored on a private airplane versus a geographical one, what Ratzinger calls “the airplane of the I and also you, not on the airplane of the spatial.”[8] In different phrases, the biblical God is just not the God of the lands of Canaan, Egypt, or Babylon, however of the individuals of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

What are the implications of Israel’s change to a private God? First, Ratzinger says {that a} numen personale is a God whose presence is skilled as long as the private relationship between God and believer endures, no matter the place the believer is. In Ratzinger’s phrases, God “is now not certain to at least one spot, however current and highly effective wherever man is.”[9] Moreover, when divine presence and efficiency is decoupled from geography, a numen personale turns into a God who’s extra intimate with an individual, no matter the place that particular person is. This innovation in apprehending a private God survives the transition from the Outdated Testomony to the New. The numen personale, Ratzinger writes, turns into “the one sustaining component not solely of the faith of Israel, but in addition of the New Testomony religion: the emanation of God’s persona, the understanding of God on the airplane outlined by the I-and-You relationship.”[10]

On the similar time {that a} numen personale makes God extra intimate, Ratzinger additionally observes that it makes God transcendent. In Ratzinger’s phrases, the numen personale “strikes [God] away into the transcendence of the illimitable.”[11] A private God is a transcendent God each not anyplace particularly and likewise all the time to be discovered. It’s God’s transcendence, Ratzinger says, that makes it extra credible to consider in a God who’s all the time close to his individuals. Moreover, Ratzinger observes that if God is transcendent, he’s additionally all-powerful. Whereas a geographical god is just potent in sure locations, a private god’s efficiency stays operative due to God’s faithfulness to a relationship with an individual. It’s faithfulness to a particular person, not geography, that charts both the train or withholding of God’s energy.

It’s this shift from a geographical to a private God that underwrites the shift within the locus of stability the Catholic migrant should bear. It isn’t solely sociologically acceptable to need group as a locus of stability; it might even be theologically crucial for the Catholic migrant to shift that locus of stability, not by way of shifting from one territory to a different, however by way of shifting from a geographical airplane to Ratzinger’s “airplane of I and also you.” Certainly, Ratzinger notes the need of exactly this shift in axis for the Christian life when, as Pope Benedict, he wrote his encyclical Spe Salvi. Benedict highlights a vital hyperlink between God’s kingdom, God’s private love and our locus of stability. In Benedict’s personal phrases:

His Kingdom is just not an imaginary hereafter, located in a future that may by no means arrive; his Kingdom is current wherever he’s beloved and wherever his love reaches us. . . . His love is on the similar time our assure of the existence of what we solely vaguely sense and which nonetheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that’s “actually” life (§31).

Right here, Benedict crystallizes what the Catholic migrant aspires to, a shift within the locus of stability grounded within the reward and reception of affection between individuals. This shift in axis takes place on three ranges. On a theological degree, this implies a shift from an affiliation to a land in the direction of an affiliation to the particular person of Jesus Christ. On a pastoral degree, it might imply a fine-tuning of the migrant’s locus of stability to the individuals in the neighborhood of believers within the nation of domicile. At a non secular degree, if the God of Israel retains a boundless efficiency, as Ratzinger places it, it additionally has implications for the non secular lifetime of the migrant who can, in instances of vulnerability, be tempted to nostalgically lengthy for lands previous, presuming that God was solely trustworthy in that previous geographical context. If God is private quite than geographical, the non secular problem for the migrant can be to carry quick to their relationship with the particular person of God and, wherever the migrant is planted, belief in God’s private and loving windfall, particularly as it’s mediated via the Church, which is mediated in flip by the love of individuals throughout the Church.

The reader will get a way of this Ratzingerian completion of this Augustinian motion even within the lifetime of Augustine himself, particularly when he recounts the function of St. Ambrose of Milan in his biography. Most of us is perhaps conversant in the function St. Ambrose performs in Augustine’s conversion, and attribute it to Ambrose’s mixture of mental prowess and private religion. The Confessions, nevertheless, highlights a delicate however extremely related element. In E-book V, Augustine mentions the paternal relationship with Ambrose. Its influence is nothing in need of placing. Ambrose, Augustine says, “took me up as a father takes a new child child in his arms, and in one of the best custom of bishops, he prized me as a overseas sojourner” (V.13.23).

Mediated by Ambrose, the Church welcomed Augustine not solely as a result of he’s an mental, however exactly as a result of he was a foreigner, removed from his North African dwelling. In his commentary on this passage of the Confessions, James Ok. A. Smith says that this relationship was an essential antecedent to the proofs of the Christian religion, exactly as a result of, Smith says:

Greater than arguments or proofs, Ambrose provided the seeker Augustine one thing he’d been hungering for: a house, sanctuary, relaxation. For this refugee in a brand new metropolis, arriving with questions and a lot unsettled in his life, the cathedral in Milan grew to become an outpost of the house this non secular emigre had been in search of.[12]