Proclaiming the Feast of Christ the King: On Becoming the persons we are Called to Be

 Every year when we reach this last feast of the liturgical year I ask myself if Christ is more sovereign in my life than in past years. Have I grown in my openness to allowing Christ to be King or Ruler in my own life? Have I let go of the practices and attitudes that resist Jesus' sovereignty or the holy-making power of the mercy and love of the God Jesus calls Abba? A few years ago (about 5 and 1/2 years actually) I began writing about a process of inner growth and healing, a process of personal formation I had begun with my own director and I have commented on that a few times during these last years. The past year has been intense and of a somewhat different quality than the previous 4+ years; in October it was marked by a miracle --- yes, a literal miracle (there is no hyperbole or figurative language involved in that label) --- and throughout the year I experienced Jesus' presence in other ways that changed me, healed me, and too, challenged me to grow and mature in his love and friendship. The work I had undertaken proved to be powerful, and powerfully fruitful, and while the process continues (as a Sister friend recently reminded me, formation never ends!), its natural rhythm has led rather "neatly" (not that I really find anything about this work "neat") to this year's celebration of the feast of Christ the King, and a new liturgical year focusing on new beginnings, new life, and especially on a God who brings life out of barrenness!

One of the things I write about a lot in this blog is the way the phrase "stricter separation from the world" does not mean simply closing the hermitage door on the world around us. Instead it means changing one's heart, allowing our hearts to be loved into a wholeness that sees the world around us with the eyes of God rather than with the eyes of neediness, greed, acquisitiveness, and fear. To enter a hermitage or convent, for instance, without undergoing a significant metanoia of our own heart, is to make of the hermitage or convent an outpost of that world we shut the door on; to shut the door on "the world" in this way is to shut it up inside ourselves -- potentially a truly miserable-making situation for a hermit living physical solitude and external silence!! If our hearts are full of the woundedness and delusions regarding what is true, and which "the world" can cause, to live in silence and solitude within a hermitage can (will!) allow the screams of anguish one has distracted oneself from (or that one has become!), to come up freshly with increasing intensity and dominate one's personal reality. (Folks will know something of this experience because of the COVID-19 pandemic's need for social distancing and even outright "lockdown.")

But the world of the hermitage also provides the graced place and freedom to work with and in Christ to heal one's woundedness and to do battle (!) with the demons of one's own heart. This is the struggle to achieve what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude" and requires of our lives as the charism and goal of diocesan eremitical life; it is also the gift a hermit will bring to her community whenever her vocation is lived rightly and well. I was very fortunate, the last few years especially, to have a director who either travelled to my hermitage every week or met with me by ZOOM so that we could work together with the frequency and personal accompaniment the work demanded. (It was a gift simply to find we could do this work via ZOOM!!!) 

I was aware that when the Church professed me under c.603 I had been given permission, indeed I had been commissioned to work with God in Christ to become the person he had made and called me to become! What other vocation allows for the space and time to attend to a call to holiness/wholeness in quite the same way as eremitical life? So, while I had never really anticipated doing the work I was doing, and despite some real risk that it could even mean I would need to consider leaving eremitical life for something else, the effectiveness of this work actually underscored my vocation rather than contradicting it. This year that means that I have come to a place where "stricter separation from the world'' means "greater adherence to the incredible life and potential of a God-given Self." It means "allowing God to empower and complete me" so I can be entirely myself and thus too, a clear expression of "God with us." 

And so, this year, as I review what has been during this past year, I am looking at a card my pastor gave me more than a year ago for my birthday. On the front it has a quote from e. e. cummings: [[It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.]] And that is certainly true; I have looked at that card several times a day this last 15 months, and been reminded of its deep truth. The world apart from God misshapes and distorts us each in all kinds of ways and still we are called to mature into the ones only God can fully envision, create, and complete. He is the potter, after all, and empowered by God's Spirit of Holiness we must find ways to allow ourselves to be clay --- God's own clay. This kind of growth and healing takes the grace of God in Christ who summons, accompanies, heals, transforms, and perfects us with his love and presence; often mediated by others who work diligently with us, it is this that empowers us to become the persons we are called to be. Letting the deepest, God-given truth in us --- the imago dei/imago Christi we are most truly --- live as abundantly as God wills it to is the work of a lifetime --- and the work of the God in Christ we are called to allow to be sovereign.

In some ways this piece feels to me like it is "all over the place" --- probably because there is so much to say in a brief space, along with the need to be discreet (and especially reverent) about some of it. But I need to return to writing regularly on this blog; I am hoping this is an opening piece which will allow me to do that. Sharing the spirit of this day then, I sincerely invite readers to regard your own lives and ask yourselves if Jesus is more truly King or Ruler in/of your life on this Feast day than he was at the beginning of Advent last year? Are you more fully alive? More true? More fruitful? Do you regard "the world" around you as something to be despised,  or do you view it more rightly as something to be loved because you see it with the eyes of God and engage creatively with it according to your calling? 

Human perfection is a matter of being in the process of coming to committed maturity (or responsible freedom!!) and fullness of life; it is about being on the path to that. Are you more perfect today than you were last year?  More complete or whole (because this truly indicates the sovereignty of God in your life)? Do you know (and so, accept) your own innate poverty and the mercy of God more fully? Are you more yourself, more moved by truth, generosity, courage, and compassion? Are you less tolerant of untruth in all of its various, subtle and not-so-subtle forms even as you love better those somehow wed to untruth? If, and to the extent you are any of these things, you know what it is to acclaim -- and proclaim with your life -- Christ as King/Ruler of creation. Alleluia, Alleluia! Let us celebrate this truth together!!