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St. Robert Bellarmine's Spirituality

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St. Robert Bellarmine's Spirituality Brother Brian Dybowski. FSC, PhD St Robert Bellarmine Page 1 Santa Fe Institute for Spirituality, Summer 2017 St. Robert Bellarmine’s Spirituality Introduction St. Robert’s sermons were so powerful that people thought he was a huge man. The spiritual force of his personality seemed very muscular, because his sanctity engulfed everyone. He was morally large, even vast. His intellectual ability stretched way beyond his slight height. His holy life radiated profound spiritual knowing and loving. He inspired people because his vibrant soul overcame both his short stature, and his crippling illness. He thrived, not in spite of hardship, but because of it. He grew through disasters that destroyed taller men. He ex- celled against challenges that crushed stronger men. How did he flourish through exceptionally hard times? Fr. James Broderick’s biography: Robert Bellarmine, Saint and Scholar, reveals his inner strength growing through trials. St. Robert’s book: The Mind’s Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things summarizes his superlative spirituality. We learn his keen spirituality by liberally quoting this book. Highlights of His Life: 1542-1621 St. Robert was born October 4, 1542 in the small hill town of Montepulciano in Tuscany, thirty miles south of Siena. His family was noble, but poor, because wars with Florence and Siena bled them dry. They strove for independence from several city-states whose armies stormed through Montepulciano, impoverishing everyone. In spite of material poverty, Robert’s parents were pious, and generous to people less fortunate. Vin- cenzo and Cynthia raised five boys and seven girls. Robert was the third son. Life was hard, food was scarce, but God supported the struggling Bellarmine family. Robert loved Latin, which was still a living language, the key to all knowledge. Cicero set the ultimate linguistic standard, but Virgil captivated Robert. His academic success inspired his uncle to offer a free ticket to medical school at the University of Padua. But when the Jesuits opened a school in Montepulciano, his parents enrolled him there. Robert so admired his teachers that he yearned to join them. They liked this high-spirited and profoundly pious young man, and foresaw that he would help many people as a Jesuit. His father resisted Robert’s vocational choice, hoping instead that his brilliant son would make the family rich. After months of argument, Vincenzo finally agreed, for his wife’s sake. In 1560 Robert began his novitiate in Rome on the site of the present Gesu church. While other young Jesuits slept, Robert worked through the night, perfecting his knowledge, but wrecking his health. Exhaustion provoked intense headaches and lung congestion, which led doctors to diagnose tuberculosis. While studying at Louvain, in rainy Belgium, he also taught Greek, until his health failed in 1576. Then his superior assigned him to sunny Rome, expecting him to die in the near future. He lived another 45 years, most of them in Rome. His brilliance naturally fitted him to serve the Pope, especially to correct the various heresies raging at the time. His popular catechism attracted thousands of people to the truth. His book The Controversies was the most frequent- ly consulted work to defend the faith against rabid heresies. Because Robert saw Jesus even in his adversaries, he listened to them attentively, and lavished exquisite kindness upon them. Often, he supported their errors with better reasons than they could devise, so they read his reasoning avidly, and set up squads of university profes- sors to refute him. But they failed because errors contradict themselves. Another reason for their failure was that Robert understood what they were doing better than they did. Yet he respected them all, and charitably assisted them toward truth. His intense charity enabled him to preach effectively, and to convince many heretics to accept truth. Here is his insightful key to effective preaching: “Three things are necessary to preach well; three qualities of the soul without which the preacher will fail. They are: 1) great, vehement zeal for the honor of God, 2) wisdom, and 3) eloquence. The fiery tongues above the apostles, when God made them the first preachers of His Gospel, are the symbols of these things.The burning fire betokens zeal, the light symbolizes wisdom, and the shape of a tongue denotes eloquence. Eloquence with- out charity and wisdom is only empty chattering. Wisdom and eloquence without charity are dead. And charity without wisdom and eloquence is like a brave man unarmed.”1 Robert begged God for these three qualities, accepted them as precious gifts, and used them exclusively to serve God’s people. His intense exercise of these abilities enabled him to encourage and inspire thousands of Brother Brian Dybowski. FSC, PhD St Robert Bellarmine Page 2 Santa Fe Institute for Spirituality, Summer 2017 people by his remarkable preaching. He saw many people fall into suffering so intense and pervasive that they lost hope of ever emerging. So he encouraged them to use the supernatural gift of Hope that God provided in Baptism. One of his favorite phrases was: “Lady Tribulation is love knocking at the door, trying to get in, an inexorable, patient, love, that sees our eternal destiny, and aims to purify, enlighten, and perfect us.”2 But we distracted ourselves from Love’s knock, even though all that nagging sorrow counseled us, and taught us that our sins were vain, that is, utterly useless. Though sorrow devastated us, Robert thanked God for dividing sorrow into separate instants: “The just man’s present sufferings cannot pass with him to the life beyond the grave. In this life they are permitted to come to him only one at a time, and for the briefest space. ... We never endure at once the pains of a year, or a month, or a day, or an hour. As in time, nothing is present but a brief indivisible now, so the burden we bear can never in a true sense be more than momentary. We sip our chalice slowly and gradually, God putting the tiny drops of its sufferings to our lips one by one. But in the life to come, how different will the process be! There we shall drink the torrent of bliss at one great drought, and hold all the riches of eternity in a present without future or past.”3 From his loving care, eloquently expressed here, we learned that Robert lived in God’s gift of Himself, which is Love everlasting. From that perspective, Robert loved his enemies, no matter how unjust their attacks. He recognized their torment, and strove to assist them through their horrifying moments, into the “torrent of eternal bliss”. God’s gift also accounted for this physically small and weak man’s moral strength. Tormented by illness, he lived through intense sufferings for half a century, so that he could serve God’s people. No doubt, his continuous pain inspired him to deal with it as it came to him: one instant at a time. As rector in charge of the Roman College from 1592 to 1594, Robert strengthened the curriculum, and led his fellow Jesuit teachers to excel. His leaders promoted him to supervise all the Jesuits in Naples. Then the Pope created Robert a cardinal in 1599, to elevate him to exalted leadership in the Church. He accepted this dignity as he received the others, in profound poverty. He lived in utter simplicity, giving his revenue away to the poor who are “always with us”, Mk 14:7. His excessive daily activities astound us, especially in spite of his several life-threatening ailments. When the Pope appointed him archbishop of Capua, in Sicily, Robert renewed his diocese, and wrote a book about guiding his flock in the way Jesus did. When the new Pope, Paul V, assigned him more Cardinal du- ties, Robert resigned his Capua office, and immersed himself in helping the Pope govern the Church. He quelled rebellious clergy like Fra Paolo Sarpi, Prior of the Servites in Venice. All of his efforts encouraged everyone to advance toward God. In the book Apologia, Robert argued with King James I of England, correcting many of his errors by his characteristic kindly dialog. Robert edited the Latin version of the Bible so well that his transla- tion remained popular for three hundred years. His final book, on Papal Power, roused the Gallican Church in France to publicly burn a copy in Paris. When Robert’s health failed, he asked to retire, so that he could prepare for death, to practice what he preached in his Art of Dying Well. Perhaps he is best known to us as the Church official who condemned Galileo.As we shall see, this never happened. Instead, Robert advised Galileo to moderate his anger before he aroused serious opposition. Most significantly, Galileo should claim proof only when he could demonstrate that the earth moved around the sun. That proof was two centuries away when Galileo claimed that the ocean tides proved the earth’s mo- tion. Though Galileo appreciated Robert’s wise and gentle council, he ignored it. That led to two appearances before the Holy Office in Rome. The first case came ultimately to Robert, who dismissed the wild accusations. Galileo’s second case, heard after Robert died, resulted in condemnation because Galileo claimed proof that the earth moved, but had none. He also broke his word to teach the Copernican theory as mere theory. Robert was not alive to help Galileo to retract his lie that he had proved the earth’s motion. The authorities at the time humiliated Galileo, but did him no bodily harm, as our last investigation will specify.
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