Words on the Word
Bellarmine
Homily given during a meeting of the clergy of the Prelature of Tromsø
Robert Bellarmine, who died in 1621, was known as a learned cardinal and a holy man in his lifetime; but was canonised only in 1930. That is striking. The Church rediscovered his example, so to speak, in the painful years after the First World War, which we now regard as a prelude to the Second, even more terrible.
The thirties were a time of revival for the Church. Much that was wise was written and said during that decade. Europe, deeply wounded, was in need of repair. People sought, in the past as well as in the present, authorities that could be trusted.
What was it about Bellarmine that made him relevant just then? What can we learn from him now? We could say much in response. I shall limit myself to two brief points.
First of all, Bellarmine was a man who believed utterly in God’s gift to mankind through the Catholic Church. In the trauma caused by the Reformation, he saw how vital it was to communicate the Catholic faith in fullness, without compromise. He was a great controversialist and apologist; but above all he was a wise priest who knew how to expound the faith reasonably, understandably, and integrally. It was Bellarmine who, with Peter Canisius, prepared the Catechism of the Council of Trent, convinced that Catholics must understand their faith in order to ‘render an account of the hope’ that inhabits them (1 Peter 3.15). The catechism of Trent enabled a great flourishing of Catholic life within the movement we think of as the Counter-Reformation. We live now in the wake of another great council. One of the Second Vatican Council’s choicest fruits is the catechism published in 1992. It received much attention when it came out, but do we read it now? Do we use, and communicate, the fantastic resource the catechism constitutes? If not, let’s get on with it!
Another aspect of Bellarmine that makes him a guiding star for the Church is his resolute theocentrism. God is his constant focus. He does not reduce the Church’s essence and message to human measures. In his treatise on the Ascent of the Soul to God he exhorts his readers with words that have kept their relevance: 
Realise that you have been created for the glory of God and for your own eternal salvation; this is your end, this is the object of your soul and the treasure of your heart.
Everything that brings us near this goal, he says, is a blessing; whatever removes us from it is a distraction at best, at worst a real evil. Here we find criteria by which to construct our own Christian existence day by day. Amen.