"The question about our world is not really why so much violence, but why so little? Why are we not always at each other’s throats?” In 1997, the philosopher René Girard asked provocative questions in his compelling D'Arcy Lecture. Delivered annually at Campion Hall, Oxford since 1976, the lectures are in honour of Martin D’Arcy, SJ, the British philosopher who is perhaps the only Jesuit to have been published by TS Eliot (The Mind and the Heart of Love, 1945). D’Arcy’s literary and artistic interests have been well-represented by his titular lecturers, among them Girard (one of the only non-Jesuits), Joseph Fitzmyer and Avery Dulles.
In recent years, the lectures have spanned months, allowing a scholar to build a broader argument than is possible in a single keynote. James F Keenan, SJ, the lecturer in 2022, posited vulnerability “as the foundation for contemporary [theological] ethics” via particular lectures on grief, vulnerability, recognition, conscience, discipleship, grace and sin, the virtues, and the communion of saints. He has collected those lectures in a single volume, The Moral Life, in which he interweaves Scripture, history and tradition. The book is especially appropriate to consider during the transition from Lent to Easter, as Keenan negotiates spiritual and religious considerations of the self with recognition of one's place in community and society.
A Jesuit priest since 1982, Keenan is the Canisius Professor, director of the Jesuit Institute and vice provost of global engagement at Boston College, and writes a regular column for Chicago Catholic, the newspaper from the Archdiocese of Chicago. His work focuses on Catholic theological ethics, and the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. Keenan has called for a return to Aquinas, because “he captures an understanding of the moral life that is enormously helpful in for ming a vision of the type of people we ought to become”. Keenan argues that in “an age that wants to respect the individual conscience while maintaining a sense of the objectively right and wrong, Thomas provides a framework in which we can achieve both”.
Although titled The Moral Life, Keenan’s collected lectures might be best understood as preparation for the moral life. His book offers some considerations for the latter, but it is most useful when viewed in the spirit of preparation, a way to look at ourselves (and others) in a new light before the action of encounter.
In the preface, Keenan notes that lectures, as a genre, tend to be “more open-ended” as inquiries than book chapters, and there is “more of an openness between the speaker and the audience”. Keenan is strongest when he unpacks Scripture; where he demonstrates his formidable knowledge of Church tradition, and when he anchors his ethical sense in personal anecdotes.
His first two lectures, on grief and vulnerability, are masterful. “I hope you find that in preparing for the moral life, grief conveys how much we matter to one another such that the moral life should never forget this,” he says. Keenan speaks of how Pentecost is depicted in the Gospel of John, starting with Mary Magdalene's discovery of the empty tomb, her rush to report the missing body, and then her own return to the tomb to grieve. Four times she is described as weeping, so much that Jesus, when he appears to her, asks her why. Her grief is visceral; compelling.
For Keenan , the grief of Mary Magdalene and Doubting Thomas “was not an obstacle to their capacity to recognise Jesus but rather the passageway itself to the recognition. Through their grieving they became more vulnerable to their love for Jesus so that they could recognise his risen presence. These words – grief, vulnerability and recognition – are here inextricably linked to the Pentecost story and, in particular, to the role the Spirit plays in our lives and in the church.”
“Grieving for the other's loss,” he explains, “their alienation, suffering or death, is the beginning of the beatitudinal response of the call to genuine discipleship, that is, of responding to the poor in spirit.” When we encounter loss, when we suffer with each other, we “are led by the Spirit as the disciples were led to not only recognise the Risen Christ but to unabashedly preach him.”
For Keenan, “whether in grief, in suffering, or in the sick self, we experience the Spirit leading us, accompanying us, expressing for us and from us what we yearn and hope for.”
Keenan follows this with a consideration of vulnerability. “ the problem is that we think of the beginning of the moral life as the conscience, but I now believe that the beginning of the moral life is first being vulnerably disposed to the other, and then subsequently recognising the other, and then acting in conscience.” He points us toward Golgotha: “the vulnerability I see from Mary, John and the Magdalene is in their openness to bear with Jesus his pain, his sorrow, his death; their vulnerability is a capacious accompaniment, a faithful courageous presence, and an unquestionable witness to the ultimate rejection of the Saviour.”
Envisioning an ethics that moves outward, Keenan revisits Augustine’s Letter 118, where Augustine writes that “Christ Humbled is the Way ; Christ the Truth and the Life, Christ Highly Exalted and God. If thou walk in the Humbled, thou shalt attain to the Exalted. If infirm as thou art, thou despise not the Humbled, thou shalt abide exceeding strong in the Exalted. For what cause was there of Christ's Humiliation, save thine infirmity?” Keenan concludes: “Humility is rightly the virtue of vulnerability as the virtue prior to all; it reminds us of God's world and our place in it.”
Late in The Moral Life, Keenan reminds us that we “cannot pursue one’s own redemption; one needs instead to pursue Jesus who redeems us.” Keenan’s ethical vision is anchored in the risen Christ, and is a notable call to act toward others with humility and love.
<em>The Moral Life: Eight Lectures by James F Keenan, SJ, is published by Georgetown University Press, priced £20</em>
