The Saint

By Zoebelle Bean, Catholic Editor

Fr. Dávila speaking on St. Hilary de Poitier – Photo by J.T. Doudna

Father Vincent Dávila, an assistant professor of systematic theology at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, gave a talk about Jesus Christ’s last words as He died on the cross on Thursday April 25 in the Donnelly Center. These words are commonly referred to as the cry of dereliction or abandonment, but Fr. Dávila was focused on explaining how it is hopeful, not despairing, and a prayer to God in Christ’s final moments of His ministry on earth.

Fr. Dávila was a Dominican priest who entered the Order after graduating from Purdue University with his undergraduate degree, then continued on to earn a graduate degree at the University of Notre Dame and finally ended up teaching systematic theology at the Aquinas Institute of Theology. 

Fr. Dávila began his talk by relating his topic to the Jubilee Year of Hope. Pope Francis claimed that Jesus and the cross are humanity’s hope. It can be seen reflected in the logo, where the pilgrims are depicted to be hanging on to the cross. Yet, if Jesus is the hope, Fr. Dávila wondered why He seemed to despair on the cross, crying: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 

Before Fr. Dávila explained why he believed this to be a hopeful statement, he proposed two questions: “Why are you here?” and “What does it mean to be hopeful?” 

“Our answers reveal that our lives are static and aimed somewhere,” Fr. Dávila said. “You can feel your desires drawing you somewhere. Being hopeful means having some sense that the future will bring something good… the virtue of hope is the stretching of desires to move you toward Heaven, so hope is about journeying.” He mentioned that most recently, the world saw the culmination of this hopeful journey in the passing of Pope Francis, who was directing humanity as pilgrims of hope even in death. 

Pilgrimaging toward Heaven has three key attributes according to Fr. Dávila: Heaven is hard to obtain, it is possible with God’s help and hope is not naïve optimism but an awareness that life is not easy. There are two contrary vices to these attributes, which are hope gone wrong in the form of despair and presumption. Despair is the idea that Heaven is not just hard but impossible to obtain, with or without God’s help. “[The idea that] even if you are repentant, you’re cooked,” Fr. Dávila said. 

On the other hand, presumption is the idea that Heaven is easy to get to and you can get there on your own, without God, which is a form of pride and undercutting God’s love. Fr. Dávila proposed that St. Hilary de Poitiers defends Christ’s cry of abandonment as both hope against despair and hope against presumption. 

Fr. Dávila’s talk was grounded in his studies of Saint Hilary of Poitiers. St. Hilary was an early father and Doctor of the Church who had an extensive reflection on Christ’s cry of abandonment. He wrote to address two prevailing groups of his time: the Arians and his own congregation. “[The Arians] don’t believe Christ is God,” Fr. Dávila said. “They were adoptionists, who believed Christ was a guy adopted by God, a ‘super Saint’… to them, the cry is proof that Christ isn’t divine.” The other group, St. Hilary’s own congregation, whom he engaged with as their priest, were reluctant to ascribe agony to Christ and admit Him as a man. The Arian group thought Christ was only human, whereas the congregation thought Christ was only divine, according to Fr. Dávila.

St. Hilary proposed that the solution to this was to realize that Christ has two natures. “He is one person,” Fr. Dávila said, “but two kinds, divine and human. They are not at odds with each other.” He explained that most people like to pit the divine against the human, so the closer to God one gets, the less human one is. However, he explained that humanity has all been made to be united with God, and Christ is at this beautiful unity of both humanity’s nature and God’s nature. “In fact, humanity is most itself when united to God,” Fr. Dávila said.

According to St. Hilary, Christ’s two natures in one person allowed Him to have two very real experiences on the cross, both one of anguish and a need for salvation, but also one of unceasing confidence in God. Christ asks to be saved because all humans have a need for salvation, but His need is unique. “Salvation is a whole journey,” Fr. Dávila said. “We are not just drawn out of sin but also brought up and united to glory. And for Christ, salvation doesn’t mean a saving from sin, because He is sinless, but a culmination of glory.” When Christ asks the Father for his own resurrection, He’s asking Him to not leave Him alone but raise Him to life. St. Hilary says that Christ Himself has a pilgrimage of hope to remain unceasingly confident in the Father. “This is a lesson for us,” Fr. Dávila said. “We, in our real agony, need not sacrifice our real hope.”

Fr. Vincent Dávila presenting at a podium in Donnelly – Photo by Zoebelle Bean

The evidence of hope against despair lies in both Christ’s last words as well as His words to the thief being crucified with him. Christ tells the thief that He will see him in paradise on the same day that He dies. “He promises to someone Heaven,” Fr. Dávila said, “which no one else can do, only God.” This is evidence that Christ is not despairing against Heaven at all but remains vigilant in His hope of achieving salvation. St. Hilary also notes that the final cry is also a prayer. Christ is a model of prayer. He remains hopeful especially because He calls God “my God,” according to St. Hilary. “Whenever Christ calls God ‘my God,’ it’s a form of intimacy, a loving confidence in the Father,” Fr. Dávila said. Even in His agony, He never gave up on praying, which means He could not have despaired. Those who are despairing would not pray because they would not find hope in God.

St. Hilary’s evidence of hope against presumption is Christ’s crying out in the first place. He raises His own humanity. “Why cry out to God if He is God and can do it all Himself?” Fr. Dávila said. “It reveals that the Father is the source of glory and begat the son.” As Christ talks to God as another entity, He reveals the trinity at work, and by crying out, reveals the source of glory to be God.  Christ cannot save Himself alone. Fr. Dávila summed up this theory by saying that if presumption is saying that one does not need anyone’s help, and Christ is crying out to God to rely on the Father and His saving power, then this is the opposite of presumption. He says that if Christ cried to God when He was in trouble, then humanity should have no shame in telling God they need His help.

Some students received Fr. Dávila’s talk with enthusiasm. “[Fr. Dávila] made it very simple to understand,” junior Sarah Evon said. “I liked his answer to my question about whether Christ would have prayed the psalms of repentance. He said that He speaks for the entire body, all its members, as the head, so He’s speaking also for His members [all of us as well].”

Professors also attended the talk and engaged with what Fr. Dávila had to say. “I was intrigued by and interested in his approach to the virtue of hope, which he said was Thomistic,” Professor of Theology Stephan Davis said. “I was unfamiliar with the vice of presumption; the competing vices of despair and presumption is a valuable concept. I was surprised that Psalm 22 did not much factor into his analysis… I just assume that readers are supposed to understand the whole of the Psalm when making sense of Jesus’ Cry… All in all, an engaging, inspiring talk. I was part of the committee that put together these Jubilee talks [and] I did not know of Fr. Dávila before Fathers Jordan and Bob spoke so highly of him. Excellent choice.”

Fr. Dávila left the audience with an open-ended revelation about the cry of abandonment. He said it was not a shameful cry, but a glorious one. Glory, in and of itself, reveals something intrinsic about God. Here, it is His love. “Think about how much your life changes when you know someone loves you,” Fr. Dávila said. “Now, what if that person was the Person who created everything?” He claimed that the whole cosmos was a love story, featuring humanity. The cry is a revelation of Christ’s love. It is something that is meant to stop the audience in their tracks because it is meant to cut down their pride. “We think we get it despite how small we are,” Fr. Dávila said. “We keep cutting God down to the size of our brain, and God is saying ‘stop.’ To get us to listen to Him, He has to get us to stop thinking we get it and to leave us in awe with the cry of dereliction… it’s meant to unsettle us because we are too comfortable, and to get us to have some saving faith, He wants us to just accept the mystery.”

Fr. Dávila suggested that the audience should pray the psalms until they become theirs, so they can pray as Christ prayed when He was in anguish. Repetition of praying the psalms can increase one’s hope and meaning in it, so it can better reflect how one is feeling in their life. Christ is a model for the audience; He has taken humanity up with Him in his death and resurrection on the cross, now humanity has to unite themselves to Him.