Bread Grows in Winter offers bracing vision of faith, Christ-centered triumph

I was heartened to read in Pope Leo XIV’s General Audience of January 7th that he will begin a cycle of catechesis on the documents of the Second Vatican Council. And how providential it is that a book was published recently by Ignatius Press that addresses the challenges of that era. The book Bread Grows in Winter, by the German writer Ida Friederike Görres, was first published in German in 1970, a year before her death, and it includes the eulogy given at her funeral by Joseph Ratzinger.

I read Bread Grows in Winter with simultaneous feelings of joy and frustration: joy at the human, spiritual, and theological insights, and frustration that the crises faced after Vatican II, both inside and outside the Church, continue to plague us. I am a convert to the Catholic Church, and in those years of journeying to the Faith, I read the conciliar documents, along with the encyclicals of the popes that followed. It seemed to me that in the confusion after the Council, many in the Church—in their quest to be “open” to the world and with a desire for “relevance”—lost sight of an essential aspect of her reality: that she is triumphant. I picked up on this underlying issue while reading Görres’s book.

There are just two references to triumphalism in Bread Grows in Winter, translated from German to English by my Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) colleague Jennifer Bryson. Although the word appears only twice in this collection of essays and talks, I see it undergirding her entire view of the Church and the world.

The first comes at the beginning of the book in the chapter titled “Our Image of Christ: A Letter”:

The martyrs—from Stephen onward!—“see” the Exalted Lord, as icons still prefer to do. From the Victor of Easter, He “unfolds” into the Universal Ruler, to the Heavenly Emperor, to the Crown Bearer—all variations of the aspect of Him being the “one seated on the throne.”From this perspective, I must say that the virtuous indignation at “triumphalism”, an indignation that is now in fashion among Catholics, often strikes me as rather absurd. For me, this aspect, now thoroughly condemned, has its main root in the intensive experience of precisely this genuine and legitimate declaration: Divine Majesty, “the ruler of kings on earth”—and this is despite all the historical degradations of this … And before envy became the all-pervasive sociological world power it is today, believers, without envy and resentment, grasped this, recognized it, honored it, rejoiced, and were proud of it! (Emphasis mine.)

Görres says it has become fashionable to show a “virtuous indignation” against “triumphalism,” even though the triumph of Christ is the foundational reality of the Church. That indignant outlook confused me when I came to Catholicism. It surprised me as a new convert to see so many Catholics disclaim, disdain, or downplay what I, from the outside, saw clearly: a Church that had stood firm against a variety of heresies; synthesized the Christian faith with Greek philosophy and Roman law; created civilizing institutions; built breathtaking cathedrals; inspired art, music, and literature; opened the eyes of man to the theophanic world; built traditions; inspired armies to protect that civilization; this and more.

Albeit that none of this was perfect, but through countless imperfections, mixed intentions, and a host of human vice and weakness, the Church responded to God’s call to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living things that moves upon the earth.” This is the creation mandate, and it is not abrogated through Christ’s salvific work. For centuries, the Church knew that truth and sought to cultivate both man and the world.

These days, if you are proud of these accomplishments, are grateful for them, and desire to recover that way of thinking about man and the world, you are told this is “triumphalism” and you are shamed and guilt-tripped for believing such a thing. And if you are a convert, you are often patronized.

The second time “triumphalism” is mentioned is on the last pages of the final chapter, called “Trusting the Church,” just before the appendix, which is Ratzinger’s eulogy for Görres. She writes:

I trust in her invisible allies, in the communion of saints in the old sense, in which we who are living are only a tiny part, embedded in the old image of the “three-story” Church: we the struggling, pilgrim Church between the suffering, where there is purification, and the triumphant (yes, in spite of the foolish narrowing of this forbidden word!), the Church of Heaven perfected in the victory of Christ.

What is this “narrowing” of this ‘forbidden word”—triumphant?

It is constricting for the triumph of Christ to be interpreted only as a spiritual triumph for the individual human soul. As Ratizinger writes in Milestones: Memoirs: 1927-1977, a “narrowly individualistic and moralistic mode of faith,” rather than a “social faith, conceived and lived as a we—a faith that, precisely as such and according to its nature, was also hope, affecting history as a whole, and not only the promise of a private blissfulness to individuals.”

The narrowing of triumph takes us from the we to the I.

By de-emphasising the triumph of God, or emphasising a purely spiritual triumph, we also lose the proper similitude between God and us. The Scriptures state that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Over the years, there has been much theological discussion about the question: “What does it mean for man to be in the image and likeness of God?” This question has profound implications for our understanding of the triumphant aspect of the Church. A proper similitude means that in our being and in our actions in this world, we approximate God in his characteristics both in our personal spiritual lives and as members of the Church in the world: We create, cultivate, build, redeem, nurture, defend, protect, beautify, and multiply.

Görres writes about this diminution, “the leveling urge, which is so powerful in the Church today, that calls itself democratic.” She writes of the “growing individualism,” the “alternative religion of the zeitgeist,” the “moral autonomy,” the obsession “with those who are dissatisfied.” The Church became embarrassed of her past, her grandeur, and her past triumphs in the war between good and evil. Triumph no longer meant acting in the world in such a way as to make the world more glorious; triumph now refers to how relevant the Church can be to the world around it.

Unfortunately, once Catholics begin to suppress the triumphant aspect of Jesus Christ, the work collapses into saving individual human souls, and that is if one stays faithful. Because once the overarching vision of Christ’s triumph collapses, it is not long before he is seen to barely triumph over our personal lives, over suffering, and so forth. By collapsing the triumph of Christ, we create a Christ whose purpose is only to fulfill our personal needs.

Görres’ book is brimming with metaphors that have captured the minds and imaginations not only of the great theologians who admired her and benefited from her work, including Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, but also of one of the great spiritual writers of our own time, Bishop Erik Varden, who wrote the Foreword of this first English translation. Görres was a laywoman whose contribution to the German Catholic scene was significant, as noted by Ratzinger and Balthasar, because she brought what’s called the Augustinian humanity into the theological debates.

Görres’ orientation is triumphant throughout all her writing, especially in the last chapter, where she offers this beautiful passage:

Times of ascent and decay perpetually alternate—spring, naked, bleak, but bursting with buds, alternates with sterile, visually stunning autumn splendor. Time and again, ripeness changes into apparent death, and this breaks open into new life. The Church is the Phoenix.

Loving the world according to John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave us his only son…”), and not only the salvation of our personal soul, means seeking to triumph over the evil in the tangible world as much as the evil in our hearts. And this means embracing a triumphant orientation, which is the vision found throughout Bread Grows in Winter. I pray that many Catholics will read it, for it will be a valuable partner to Pope Leo’s new catechetical series and a challenging corrective to faulty understandings of faith and the Church.

Bread Grows in Winter
By Ida Friederike Görres, with a eulogy by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson
Foreword by Bishop Erik Varden, O.C.S.O.
Ignatius Press, 2025
Paperback, 221 pages

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