The Peril and Promise of Parish Transitions: Dwelling In Ezekiel's Valley of Dry Bones

There have not been a lot of times in my life when Ezekiel's, "valley of the dry bones" reading has struck me as forcibly as it has in the past week. And this week I surely needed this reading; I needed to spend time with it, to really hear what it promises --- the wonder of what God's Word can do with a collection of dry bones in a world of death and destruction. Because of changes in my parish I am watching  what is, at least potentially, the slow death-by-attrition of a faith community that was once vibrant, excited, faithful, and generous in its use of talents and treasure. 

The valley is not yet covered in dry bones but there is no doubt that there are a number of ministerial dismemberments and liturgical limbs and corpses already moldering on the ground after having been discarded without a second thought, several more that are in their death throes or lined up for destruction, and we could be well on the way to becoming what Ezekiel describes. The slow, "death-by-attrition" way of proceeding is stunning to me in its effectiveness;  the pathogen that is slowly, but inevitably chewing the life and flesh from the bones of our parish, the destructive acid eating away at the sinews of our community and hemolyzing the blood in our very veins is an ancient one. Pope Francis has taken it on after and in the somewhat the same terms that Vatican II did. It is clericalism  possibly undertaken in the name of some version of  a "reform of the reform" or "returning (us) to the diocese" we never actually left. 

The imagery of Ezekiel is strong in my mind and even my ears. In last Friday's reading he is not speaking of those who died a natural death but instead, those who were slain by an enemy. I can see the valley floor littered with the remains of these murdered ones and I can hear the crunch and splintering of their bones as Ezekiel walks through in prayer (or new parish leadership rushes through without slowing, hearing, or seeing). I feel incredibly sad at the needless pain, loss, and at the carelessness and shortsightedness of it all --- as a community of faithful people, nourished consistently and carefully over decades and at different points in their own growth in faith, has the underpinnings of their faith decimated and the victims left to lie and die and disintegrate where they fall. Will something else grow in place of all of this? Yes, very likely; in fact, it is already growing --- much like a garden when it is taken over by an invasive plant like mustard. (The parable of the mustard seed is about the fruitfulness of the tiniest bit of faith, yes, but it cuts another way as well, taking advantage of a property which made the parable scandalous to hearers, namely, the tendency of mustard to choke out less hardy or more fragile plants and established growth and supplant them so gardens or more nutritious crops were impossible.)

And yet, in these parables and the reading from Ezekiel, what is essential for growth and everlasting life is the Word of God -- and that, Ezekiel tells us we have every right to expect, does miracles. So, while it is striking to me that the very first victim of clericalism in our parish is the Word of God, and while it is stunning how little time it takes for death to set in when people are not truly nourished with the Word of God day in and day out, and while yes, there is the odor of disease and death about our community these days, yet, I also believe, God is asking us to come together as church in and through the Word of God. We simply (were it so simple!!) must find ways to allow that Word to live and thrive and bring us (all of us, both clergy and laity alike!) to a new vibrancy as a single pilgrim People of God.

One word we don't hear spoken a lot in our everyday experience is liminality. Liminality is the state of being betwixt and between realities. It is to stand on the margin of one with a foot in the other and to try to stand secure. Celtic spirituality speaks of this way of being in terms of "the thin places" --- when the transcendent is "just there beyond the horizon" of our perception and other references may use the idea of marginality to describe living in liminal spaces. My own director calls it "the muddy middle". Liminality is uncomfortable and Christians are called to become adept at negotiating this reality. When I speak of Jesus' parables as creating a sacred space where one is off-footed or thrown off balance by the second set of values or the second perspective Jesus "throws down" (parable = para=alongside, ballein/ballo=to throw down), I am speaking of Jesus' parables creating and causing us to stand in a liminal space, a space which is on the margins between the world we know so well, and the Kingdom of God we know so much less well. This space created by Jesus' parables is one of Krisis (Gk) or crisis, a place where we are called to make decisions regarding which world we will truly be citizens of and who we will really be.

Our parish stands in a liminal state, a state of transition and crisis; thus, we need to discern carefully and make appropriate decisions regarding who we are and will be going forward. Of course, we know the decisions to be made are not so black and white as all that. After all, the Kingdom of God interpenetrates this world and this world is often falsely clothed in the garb of light. The mustard seed is awesome in its potential for growth and teaches us about the unsuspected and miraculously incommensurate power of just a tiny bit of faith, and at the same time it is dangerous in its capacity to choke out more fragile and established growth. The wheat and weeds of another of Jesus' parables are almost indistinguishable from one another in their earlier stages of growth and, only as the two are allowed to grow to maturity together, can the differences come to be seen truly, the wheat be brought to a fruitful harvest, and appropriate use of the weeds is made possible as well.

But in all of this, I am reminded again and again of the power and place of the Word of God in re-membering dry bones, reknitting their sinews and reconstituting and renewing their flesh and blood. The Word of God has the power to raise from the dead, to bring to new life, to make one of many, and to breathe soul and personal being into the dust of earth and death. This is Ezekiel's promise from last week's readings and while I continue to hear the crunch of dry bones and sorrow over the unnecessary and unnatural loss already very real in our community; it is the promise I know to be true in my own life and which I hope I can convey to those whose faith feels as threatened as my own has sometimes felt in the past several years --- as fragile (and as potentially strong!!) as I feel even in the present circumstances!  For in all of this, when I hear the desperate plaint of Ezekiel, "Can these bones live??", I also draw on Paul's writings, especially the text I chose all those years ago as the motto of my religious life, and I hear God reminding me, "Laurel, My grace is sufficient for you (all), my power is perfected in weakness!!" (2 Cor 12:9) O God, that it may be so, Amen!

The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Reprise)

Today's Gospel is one of my all-time favorite parables, that of the laborers in the vineyard. The story is simple --- deceptively so in fact: workers come to work in the vineyard at various parts of the day all having contracted with the master of the vineyard to work for a day's wages. Some therefore work the whole day, some are brought in to work only half a day, and some are hired only when the master comes for them at the end of the day. When time comes to pay everyone what they are owed those who came in to work last are paid first and receive a full day's wages. Those who came in to work first expect to be paid more than these, but are disappointed and begin complaining when they are given the same wage as those paid first. The response of the master reminds them that he has paid them what they contracted for, nothing less, and then asks if they are envious that he is generous with his own money. A saying is added: [in the Kingdom of God] the first shall be last and the last first.

Now, it is important to remember what the word parable means in appreciating what Jesus is actually doing with this story and seeing how it challenges us today. The word parable, as I have written before, comes from two Greek words, para meaning alongside of and balein, meaning to throw down. What Jesus does is to throw down first one set of values -- one well-understood or common-perspective --- and allow people to get comfortable with that. (It is one they understand best so often Jesus merely needs to suggest it while his hearers fill in the rest. For instance he mentions a sower, or a vineyard and people fill in the details. Today he might well speak of a a CEO in an office, or a mother on a run to pick up kids from a swim meet or soccer practice.) Then, he throws down a second set of values or a second way of seeing reality which disorients and gets his hearers off-balance. This second set of values or new perspective is that of the Kingdom of God. Those who listen have to make a decision. (The purpose of the parable is not only to present the choice, but to engage the reader/hearer and shake them up or disorient them a bit so that a choice for something new can (and hopefully will) be made.) Either Jesus' hearers will reaffirm the common values or perspective or they will choose the values and perspective of the Kingdom of God. The second perspective, that of the Kingdom is often counterintuitive, ostensibly foolish or offensive, and never a matter of "common sense". To choose it --- and therefore to choose Jesus and the God he reveals --- ordinarily puts one in a place which is countercultural and often apparently ridiculous.

So what happens in today's Gospel? Again, Jesus tells a story about a vineyard and a master hiring workers. His readers know this world well and despite Jesus stating specifically that each man hired contracts for the same wage, common sense says that is unfair and the master MUST pay the later workers less than he pays those who came early to the fields and worked through the heat of the noonday sun. And of course, this is precisely what the early workers complain about to the master. It is precisely what most of US would complain about in our own workplaces if someone hired after us got more money, for instance, or if someone with a high school diploma got the same pay and benefit package as someone with a doctorate --- never mind that we agreed to this package! The same is true in terms of religion: "I spent my WHOLE life serving the Lord. I was baptized as an infant and went to Catholic schools from grade school through college and this upstart convert who has never done anything at all at the parish gets the Pastoral Associate job? No Way!! No FAIR!!" From our everyday perspective this would be a cogent objection and Jesus' insistence that all receive the same wage, not to mention that he seems to rub it in by calling the last hired to be paid first (i.e., the normal order of the Kingdom), is simply shocking.

And yet the master brings up two points which turn everything around: 1) he has paid everyone exactly what they contracted for --- a point which stops the complaints for the time being, and 2) he asks if they are envious that he is generous with his own gifts or money. He then reminds his hearers that the first shall be last, and the last first in the Kingdom of God. If someone was making these remarks to you in response to cries of "unfair" it would bring you up short, wouldn't it? If you were already a bit disoriented by a pay master who changed the rules of commonsense this would no doubt underscore the situation. It might also cause you to take a long look at yourself and the values by which you live your life. You might ask yourself if the values and standards of the Kingdom are really SO different than those you operate by everyday of your life, not to mention, do you really want to "buy into" this Kingdom if the rewards are really parcelled out in this way, even for people less "gifted" and less "committed" than you consider yourself! Of course, you might not phrase things so bluntly. If you are honest, you will begin to see more than your own brilliance, giftedness, or commitedness; You might begin to see these along with a deep neediness, a persistent and genuine fear at the cost involved in accepting this "Kingdom" instead of the world you know and have accommodated yourself to so well.

You might consider too, and carefully, that the Kingdom is not an otherworldly heaven, but that it is the realm of God's sovereignty which, especially in Christ, interpenetrates this world, and is actually the goal and perfection of this world; when you do, the dilemma before you gets even sharper. There is no real room for opting for this world's values now in the hope that those "other Kingdomly values" only kick in after death! All that render to Caesar stuff is actually a bit of a joke if we think we can divvy things up neatly and comfortably (I am sure Jesus was asking for the gift of one's whole self and nothing less when he made this statement!), because after all, what REALLY belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? No, no compromises are really allowed with today's parable, no easy blending of the vast discrepancy between the realm of God's sovereignty and the world which is ordered to greed, competition, self-aggrandizement and hypocrisy, nor therefore, to the choice Jesus puts before us.

So, what side will we come down on after all this disorientation and shaking up? I know that every time I hear this parable it touches a place in me (yet another one!!) that resents the values and standards of the Kingdom and that desires I measure things VERY differently indeed. It may be a part of me that resists the idea that everything I have and am is God's gift, even if I worked hard in cooperating with that (my very capacity and willingness to cooperate are ALSO gifts of God!). It may be a part of me that looks down my nose at this person or that and considers myself better in some way (smarter, more gifted, a harder worker, stronger, more faithful, born to a better class of parents, etc, etc). It may be part of me that resents another's wage or benefits despite the fact that I am not really in need of more myself. It may even be a part of me that resents my own weakness and inabilities, my own illness and incapacities which lead me to despise the preciousness and value of my life and his own way of valuing it which is God's gift to me and to the world. I am socialized in this first-world-culture and there is no doubt that it resides deeply and pervasively within me contending always for the Kingdom of God's sovereignty in my heart and living. I suspect this is true for most of us, and that today's Gospel challenges us to make a renewed choice for the Kingdom in yet another way or to another more profound or extensive degree.

For Christians every day is gift and we are given precisely what we need to live fully and with real integrity if only we will choose to accept it. We are precious to God, and this is often hard to really accept, but neither more nor less precious than the person standing in the grocery store line ahead of us or folded dirty and disheveled behind a begging sign on the street corner near our bank or outside our favorite coffee shop. The wage we have agreed to (or been offered) is the gift of God's very self along with his judgment that we are indeed precious, and so, the free and abundant but cruciform life of a shared history and destiny with that same God whose characteristic way of being is kenotic. He pours himself out with equal abandon for each of us whether we have served him our whole lives or only just met him this afternoon. He does so whether we are well and whole, or broken and feeble. And he asks us to do the same, to pour ourselves out similarly both for his own sake and for the sake of his creation-made-to-be God's Kingdom.

To do so means to decide for his reign now and tomorrow and the day after that; it means to accept his gift of Self as fully as he wills to give it, and it therefore means to listen to him and his Word so that we MAY be able to decide and order our lives appropriately in his gratuitous love and mercy. The parable in today's Gospel is a gift which makes this possible --- if only we would allow it to work as Jesus empowers and wills it!

Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Reprise)

The Bible study we began at my parish six or seven weeks ago (this week's sessions are the sixth of eight meetings) has been going well. My sense of the power of Jesus' parables has only been strengthened. In the past two sessions we spent 4 hours on just two parables in Matthew! (Ordinarily we break for 20-25 minutes to do individual lectio but for both of these parables folks were so engaged and the discussion so lively that we continued through the entire 2 hours; it was exhausting and exhilarating all at once.) What we were reading were, 1) Matt 18:23-34, the parable of the unmerciful or unforgiving servant (today's Gospel lection!), and 2) Matt 20:1-15, the parable of the workers in the vineyard. These particular stories of Jesus are often referred to as "antithetical" parables, that is, parables that say, "the Kingdom of God is NOT like this;" or "the Kingdom of God is opposed/antithetical to this."  In both of these I came to see the parable very differently than I once did and certainly came to a more profound sense of why it was Jesus' preaching could have gotten him crucified! Commentators who speak of such parables point out how Jesus' parables are examples of subversive speech, stories which undermine the dominant political, economic, and religious structures of the day. (cf William Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech, Jesus as Pedagogue to the Oppressed)

At the heart of the way Jesus' parables do this is the insight that sometimes we are so enmeshed in a situation that we can't even see ourselves as oppressed. When that is the case we need someone to hold a mirror up which reveals our own situation to us, which allows us to begin to think of ourselves in different terms, and which, when all goes well,  can challenge and empower us to change our society and our own lives to those of greater dignity and freedom. In the parable of the unmerciful servant the key question we must ask ourselves is, "Does the king in this parable represent God?" If the answer is yes, we will be led to say many things about divine justice, divine mercy, the actions taken by the servants, and the nature of the Kingdom of God which we would never say if we answered "No, the king in this parable does not represent God." Beyond this, the next questions we must ask ourselves are, "If the king represents (or does not represent) God, then for whom is this parable good news and why? For whom is it not and why not?"

The general opinion of both our morning and evening group was that the king was not a stand in for God in this parable. (A similar conclusion was shared by most --- but not all -- of us with regard to the Master of the Vineyard in the second parable.) The king did show the servant great mercy but this was sandwiched in between terrible harshness and merely served to demonstrate the tragic inconsistency and instability of a kingdom built around a human autocrat and despot. In the end we discussed the difference between human justice and the powerful and consistent mercy of God that does justice and how very difficult it is in our world to try to accept and live this mercy consistently. We simply do not trust it sufficiently, nor are our institutions structured to mediate this in a consistent or powerful way.

Sin is still at work in our world; it is present in everything we build or create and we are enmeshed in it in ways which make it almost impossible to see ourselves clearly or envision things differently. Jesus' parables -- and this is certainly true of the parable of the unmerciful servant -- give us a unique place to stand from which we can question everything we take for granted otherwise: our notions of justice and mercy, our sense that these complete one another, a sense that God's justice is the same as our own --- only writ very large, the sense that mercy is the weaker and exceptional element in the equation justice and mercy, the notion that if there is a heaven there must also be a hell where we are turned over to torturers as in the parable, and so forth.   If sin is at work, the parables are a place where grace reigns and can be encountered and allowed to embrace and change us. When we step into these unique stories, these sacred spaces where we meet the God Jesus knows intimately, we can begin to allow God to free us of the enmeshment that makes us so blind to the systemic evil that touches and tragically distorts everything we know. This is part of the power of Jesus' parables part of the way these often not-so-simple stories reveal a divine power which is made perfect in weakness.

Perhaps over time the mirror that Jesus holds up and the mercy he reveals (i.e., the mercy Jesus makes known and makes real in space and time) can lead those who are oppressed to a different world where God's mercy is sovereign, but in the meantime the questions these pose to his hearers include, "Can you believe that the God I reveal is not like this king only writ-infinitely-large? Can you believe that the God whose presence I mediate is not like this Vineyard owner only writ-large? Can you find it within yourselves to trust that the Kingdom I am proclaiming as being at-hand in my teaching and touching is vastly different from and even antithetical to the economic and political realms of this world --- and often to the religious ones as well? Can you trust that the way I assert my rights over this world, the way I do justice and set all things to rights, is through a greater mercy than you have ever known or even imagined? Can you trust that your own value, your own worth and dignity is infinite in my eyes, no matter the ways sin has degraded you?  Can you trust all this and build your lives on it? Will you do this?"

Jesus' parables can easily be domesticated; it takes little effort to turn them into quaint religious stories with some kind of comforting moral. When we do this they are neither truly good news for us or for anyone else except those who are comfortable in their current positions of power and privilege. But Jesus' stories are meant to turn things on their heads, they are meant to subvert the oppressive structures of this world and replace them with the Word of a God who frees and proclaims the dignity of the degraded, the anawim ("little ones") and marginalized of our world. Ash Wednesday found us marked with the cross and commissioned to "Repent and believe in the Gospel." As we move through our Lenten journey to the culmination of Jesus' life in death and resurrection we are asked to examine where we have placed our trust or found our true worth and dignity. If Jesus' parables, including his "antithetical parables" are genuinely Good News to us then perhaps they can empower us to make Jesus' prayer our own in ways that allow God's  "will (to) be done and (his) kingdom (to) come on earth as it is in heaven." I sincerely hope so!

Feast (Memorial) of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD

Today marks the day on which Sister Teresa Benedicta, OCD, was martyred in 1942. "We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God." 

These were the words of Pope John Paul II when he beatified Edith Stein in Cologne on 1 May 1987. When I first began studying theology my major professor told us, [[If you are serious about doing theology you will need to come to terms with the holocaust.  If you can't do that, you shouldn't even try to do serious theology!]] What Dr Dwyer was talking about is the same thing JP II was describing when he spoke of all of those things that came together in Edith Stein's single heart and remained restless and unfulfilled until she finally came to rest in God.]] The holocaust embodied both the most exhaustively ignoble and inhuman aspects of our most venal existence, as well as the noblest aspects of divinely fulfilled humanity. The stories of the holocaust are full of killers and cowards, saviors and martyrs, appalling cruelty and creative, sacrificial courage. As a whole it revealed the depths of our need for a merciful God whose chosen solution to our profound inhumanity was, in Christ and his Cross, to take that terrible depravity into himself so that it could be conquered and transformed with a love that suffers for the sake of the other for God's own sake. All of this did St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross reprise in her own life as a Carmelite nun, philosopher, and martyr for her own Jewish People.

For a terrific biography of Sr Teresa Benedicta, try Edith Stein, The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, by Teresa Renata Posselt, OCD, ICS Publications. Posselt was the Novice Mistress and then the Mother Prioress when Edith Stein lived at the Cologne Carmel. The text has been reprinted and enlarged with scholarly perspectives published in separate "gleanings" sections, so they are available, but do not intrude on Posselt's text. Another excellent biography you might check out is, Edith Stein, A Biography by Waltraud Herbstrith, OCD, Harper and Row. Sister Herbstrith knew Edith Stein well and has apparently spent a large part of her life making sure the story of Sister Benedicta's life and martyrdom was completely told. Finally, for a theology book that takes both the Cross and the Holocaust with complete seriousness check out Regis Martin's, Suffering of Love, Christ's Descent into the Hell of Human Hopelessness. It does just what Prof Dwyer told his own students to aim for.

Feast of the Transfiguration: Learning to See with New Eyes

 Although today's Gospel is Luke's version of the Transfiguration, I am reprising a post I put up looking at Matthew's version of the story. I hope it is helpful. The painting, Transfiguration, is by Lewis Bowman.

Have you ever been walking along a well-known road and suddenly had a bed of flowers take on a vividness which takes your breath away? Similarly, have you ever been walking along or sitting quietly outside when a breeze rustles some leaves above your head and you were struck by an image of the Spirit moving through the world? How about suddenly being struck by the tremendous compassion of someone you know well, or seeing their smile in a new way and coming to see them in a whole new light because of this? I have had all of these happen, and, in the face of God's constant presence, what is in some ways more striking is how infrequent such peak or revelatory moments are.

Scientists tell us we see only a fraction of what goes on all around us. It depends upon our expectations.  In an experiment with six volunteers divided into two teams in either white or black shirts, observers were asked to concentrate on the number of passes of a basketball that occurred as players wove in and out around one another. In the midst of this activity a woman in a gorilla suit strolls through, stands there for a moment, thumps her chest, and moves on. At the end of the experiment observers were asked two questions: 1) how many passes were there, and 2) did  you see the gorilla? Fewer than 50% saw the gorilla.  Expectations drive perception and can produce blindness. Even more shocking, these scientists tell us that even when we are confronted with the truth we are more likely to insist on our own "knowledge" and justify decisions we have made on the basis of blindness and ignorance. We routinely overestimate our own knowledge and fail to see how much we really do NOT know.

For the past two weeks we have been reading the central chapter of Matthew's Gospel --- the chapter that stands right smack in the middle of his version of the Good News. It is Matt's collection of Jesus' parables --- the stories Jesus tells to help break us open and free us from the common expectations, perspectives, and wisdom we hang onto so securely so that we might commit to the Kingdom of God and the vision of reality it involves. Throughout this collection of parables Jesus takes the common, too-well-known, often underestimated and unappreciated bits of reality which are right at the heart of his hearers' lives. He uses them to reveal the extraordinary God who is also right there in front of his hearers. Stories of tiny seeds, apparently completely invisible once they have been tossed about by a prodigal sower, clay made into works of great artistry and function, weeds and wheat which reveal a discerning love and judgment which involves the careful and sensitive harvesting of the true and genuine --- all of these and more have given us the space and time to suspend our usual ways of seeing and empower us to adopt the new eyes and hearts of those who dwell within the Kingdom of God.

It was the recognition of the unique authority with which Jesus taught, the power of his parables in particular which shifted the focus from the stories to the storyteller in the Gospel passage we heard last Friday. Jesus' family and neighbors did not miss the unique nature of Jesus' parables; these parables differ in kind from anything in Jewish literature and had a singular power which went beyond the usual significant power of narrative. They saw this clearly. But they also refused to believe the God who revealed himself in the commonplace reality they saw right in front of them. Despite the authority they could not deny they chose to see only the one they expected to see; they decided they saw only  the son of Mary, the son of Joseph and "took offense at him." Their minds and hearts were closed to who Jesus really was and the God he revealed.  Similarly, Jesus' disciples too could not really accept an anointed one who would have to suffer and die. Peter especially refuses to accept this.

It is in the face of these situations that we hear today's Gospel of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain apart. He takes them away from the world they know (or believe they know) so well, away from peers, away from their ordinary perspective,  and he invites them to see who he really is. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus' is at prayer --- attending to the most fundamental relationship of his life --- when the Transfiguration occurs. Matthew does not structure his account in the same way. Instead he shows Jesus as the one whose life is a profound dialogue with God's law and prophets, who is in fact the culmination and fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the culmination of the Divine-Human dialogue we call covenant. He is God-with-us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. This is what the disciples see --- not so much a foretelling of Jesus' future glory as the reality which stands right in front of them --- if only they had the eyes to see.

For most of us, such an event would freeze us in our tracks with awe. But not Peter! He outlines a project to reprise the Feast of Tabernacles right here and now. In this story Peter reminds me some of those folks (myself included!) who want so desperately to hang onto amazing prayer experiences --- but in doing so, fail to appreciate them fully or live from them! He is, in some ways, a kind of lovable but misguided buffoon ready to build booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, consistent with his tradition while neglecting the newness and personal challenge of what has been revealed. In some way Matt does not spell out explicitly, Peter has still missed the point. And in the midst of Peter's well-meaning activism comes God's voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!" In my reflection on this reading this last weekend, I heard something more: "Peter! Sit down! Shut up! This is my beloved Son! Listen to him!!!"

The lesson could not be clearer, I think. In this day where the Church is conflicted and some authority seems incredible, we must take the time to see what is right in front of us. We must listen to the One who comes to us in the Scriptures and Sacraments, the One who speaks to us through Bishops and all believers. We must really be the People of God, the "hearers of the Word" who know how to listen and are obedient in the way God summons us to be. This is true whether we are God's lowliest hermit or one of the Vicars of Christ who govern our dioceses and college of Bishops. Genuine authority coupled with true obedience empowers new life, new vision, new perspectives and reverence for the ordinary reality God makes Sacramental. There is a humility involved in all of this. It is the humility of the truly wise, the truly knowing person. We must be able to recognize how very little we see, how unwilling we are to be converted to the perspective of the Kingdom, how easily we justify our blindness and deafness with our supposed knowledge, and how even our well-intentioned activism can prevent us from seeing and hearing the unexpected, sometimes scandalous God standing there right in the middle of our reality.

Jesus and the Canaanite Woman (reprise)

If we're looking for a Gospel lection that breaks all stereotypes today's is one of these! This reading is sometimes categorized among the "difficult sayings of Jesus" because it has Jesus characterizing a Gentile woman as a dog (a typical epithet of his day when referring to Gentiles) and refusing to extend healing to her daughter because HIS mission is first of all to the lost of Israel, not to the Gentiles. And so, the woman, who has already silenced Jesus with a terrific act of faith, "Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David," answers Jesus' instruction on this point with a bit of instruction of her own: [[ Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table!]] Jesus, already silenced and now thoughtful, seems even to reconsider and expand the scope of his own ministry in light of it. If Jesus can grow in grace and stature in this way through the mediation of a completely disenfranchised woman, then is anyone in the Church really beyond being instructed by the women standing (at best) on the margins of power and authority or the Christ standing as their Master? I don't think so.

What happens to Jesus is as instructive for the contemporary Church as all of Jesus' words, all his parables, discourses, instructions, imprecations, and remonstrances. For (again) in today's gospel story Jesus hears and is silent! He is stopped, arrested by a woman's compelling act of faith. It is a pregnant silence because it is the result of truly listening and leads both to further listening and to a fundamental shift or variation in Jesus' ministry from the lost sheep of Israel to the lost of all the nations. It is the silence of a teacher who is truly effective not because he has all the answers but because he is willing to listen, reconsider the answer and ministry God has given him, and learn! It is the silence of a docile teacher who truly hears the commission of God coming from the least and the lost; it is the silence of one who can change his mind and even the direction of his ministry as a result of an encounter with the truth a woman and outsider carries! Certainly that is precisely the kind of teacher the Church itself is called to be! After all, the Church is not greater than her Master; instead she is called to embody and mediate him. In light of today's Gospel lection the challenge to embody and mediate the DOCILITY of Christ seems compelling!

All kinds of situations reduce us to silence but only sometimes do we really listen therein, only sometimes are we genuinely obedient. Ordinarily today silence is something that occurs momentarily while we plug in a different device or while we take a breath during a conversation in order to "let someone else have a turn". Rather than listening to that other person in the profound way Jesus listens in today's Gospel, too often our silences tend to be filled with mental machinations as we gauge where and how we can reenter the "conversation" and continue our own discourse or argument! Conversations with Church leaders can sometimes give us the sense that we are speaking to a clerically-clad wall. Nothing, especially the living God, is truly heard in these conversations, no minds or hearts are changed, connections and bonds of charity are not made, aliens do not become neighbors, neighbors do not become brothers and sisters, and brothers and sisters especially do not become colleagues in the service of the Gospel!

But Jesus' example condemns such an approach. In this lection one of the lowest and the least becomes the One by which Jesus truly hears the voice of his Father and comes to modify his own understanding of his mission. After his silence at her first words to him Jesus rehearses the standard Jewish arguments for her and for his disciples, arguments that make sense in THIS worldly terms and in terms of an Israel threatened by outsiders, but not in terms of the Kingdom of God: "I was sent only to the children of Israel; It is not just (right or fair) to take the food from the children (Israel) and throw it to the dogs (Gentiles)." (We might hear common arguments for excluding folks from Eucharist today --- arguments that make good sense in worldly terms: "We cannot pretend there is a unity that doesn't really exist. We cannot defile the Eucharist by giving it to public and obstinate sinners. It wouldn't be just to do these things!") But in Matthew's telling of the Gospel story, Jesus has already fed the five thousand (apparently mainly Jews) and found there was plenty left over. He has also just preached that it is what comes out of us that defiles, but to eat with unwashed hands does NOT defile. . . The Canaanite women's response is a reminder of Jesus' great Eucharistic miracle as well as the infinite value and power to heal of even the smallest crumb that comes to the most unworthy from God.

But it reminds us of much more as well. For those, for instance, who object that women cannot teach (or preach!), we have an example of a Gentile woman teaching Jesus about the will of God and helping to reshape his mission. In so doing she reminds Jesus of a different "justice" in which all are therefore welcome at Christ's table; similarly she reveals that the way Israel is first may not be precisely the way the world (or Israel herself) sees or has seen such matters. Israel is to be first in including, ministering to, and serving the outsider and the unworthy, not in excluding them until some other day of the Lord is at hand. That day is here, NOW, and, with the Canaanite woman's intervention, Jesus too comes to see this more clearly and embrace it more fully. In some ways this shift in vision, a shift the Church herself is called upon to make, parallels the two different ways we have of understanding the term Catholic: the first is the Latin sense of universalis which of course means universal and draws a huge circle representing the universal but inevitably leaves some outside the circle however large it is drawn, and the second is the Greek sense of Katholicos which is universal in the sense of leaven in bread where, in terms of the church and analogous to a leavened loaf, no one and nothing is left excluded, remains untouched or unchanged, and no one is left unfed.

So, through the intervention of the faith of a woman and "outsider" or alien, Jesus' understanding of God's will and perhaps too, the nature of the People of God continues to grow; Jesus continues to grow in grace and stature.  A couple of years ago my former pastor gave me a card which read, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you are called to be." So it was for Jesus; so it is for each of us. When we muster even the smallest bit of faith or courage we will be astounded at what comes from the seeds we plant. This courage is called faith and our openness to growing in response to God is called obedience.  We must learn to speak our own truth, more and more truly and profoundly, more and more courageously. Only in this way will our church and world become the realities God calls them to be.

More Questions on Inner Work and Becoming Transparent to God

Sister, when you write about stricter separation from the world does the inner work you have been doing have a place in it? As I read your last post entitled, "Why isn't it enough?" I thought I got, just for a moment, a glimpse of why that would be important not only so you could live as a hermit, but also as an integral part of the eremitical life. This glimpse came and went in a flash so I can't say more about what I mean but maybe you know just what I am trying to say here. I know you have been criticized by readers in the past for needing to do such work and that you wrote it was integral to your vocation. I think re-reading your last post helped me understand this a little better because I saw you, and myself, and everyone else as having been distorted by the world and needing to do the inner work you speak of to become more clearly ourselves. That was the glimpse I got while reading what you were saying. I don't know if this is something you could write about, but my question is do I have this right? Does the inner work you speak of allow you to become "transparent to God" (your phrase) as you become more truly yourself?

Thanks for your questions. Yes, I definitely think you got it!!! The post you referred to re criticism of my own engagement in what I call "inner work" is found here: On Justifying Inner Work and it contains other links to related articles. It was also prompted by my discovery that the inner work I had been doing for a couple of years at that point might have shown me I had made a mistake in my discernment of an eremitical vocation; instead it affirmed this vocation again and again. And regarding your second question, YES!!! Absolutely, the inner work is part of what allows me to become transparent to God as I become more truly myself. This transparency to God is the very nature of what it means to be truly human, so the more truly human I become, the more transparent to God. 

We speak about this phenomenon of transparency in a number of ways. The main ones affirm us as imago dei, and incarnations of the Word of God -- especially to the extent we live in light of and through Christ!! I believe the story of Jesus' Transfiguration is a story of his (eventually!!) perceived transparency to God by the chosen disciples. Recently Sister Susan gave me a mirror medallion developed by Richard Rohr. I believe that this too reflected (no pun intended) the notion of becoming transparent to God. It also reminds us that others are, to varying degrees, also transparent to God. The side of the mirror medallion facing one's own heart/self has a symbol of the Trinity on it; it represents the gaze of God and the way God sees us at every moment; the side facing outward is a plain mirror reflecting everything as it is without distortion or judgment. Rohr had experienced the Trinity as a dynamic reality moving through him --- in and out. This experience developed into a practice of receiving beauty and breathing it back out to others. I recognize it as a symbol of transparency to God and to being the imago dei to others, one who sees as God sees and also one who is seen as God sees.

Transparency is something that happens, something we become as more and more we become persons who allow the presence of God to be mediated through and in us. Transparency is a means of revelation, but also of standing truly and honestly as our deepest selves. God seeks to reveal Godself at every moment and mood of our lives and in many ways, we occlude or distort that revelation. Part of all of that "occlusion" comes from our own woundedness and the resulting fear of allowing God (and sometimes, anyone at all) to love us and fill us with God's life and light. Sometimes we have lost so much in trying to be open and trust or love that we cling tightly to the superficial image of who we truly are, even when that "self" is but an echo of who we once were and a shadow of who we are truly called to be. Letting go to allow something so marked by newness, dynamism (change!!), and Mystery, is simply terrifying. And so, when people look at us, they mainly see echoes and shadows, scars, woundedness, and diminishment because that is all we feel free enough to allow ourselves to reveal.

Pope Francis Says Vespers with the
Camaldolese Nuns and Monks in Rome

Sometimes our failure to allow the transparency and revelation God yearns for with each of us comes from other forms of rigidity and arrogance. We believe we know who God is because we were taught about who God is in religion or theology classes. We take refuge in formulae and rituals which at least as easily distance us from the real God as they draw us closer. We have learned these things, sometimes with great effort, and we feel safe with them where the "living God" is more Mysterious and awesome even while he is also intriguing to us (mysterium tremendum et fascinans); they are therefore hard to let go of and can occlude the revelation of the living God we are meant to become. It is the "inner work" I have written about several times now that allows the necessary healing and strengthening of ourselves so that we can live from our deepest potential and love as we are meant to love.

Because God is the source of the potential I am speaking of, and we are the persons who are created as we listen to and respond to that source. We are never ourselves alone (except to the extent we are sinners or impaired by the sin that has touched us) because God is a constituent dimension of who we are. The more truly ourselves we become, the more clearly and truly present God becomes within us. We become more and more transparent to the God who is, as Tillich put the matter, the ground and source of our being. God is not alien to us, nor is God some sort of weird or supernatural parasite within us. When we speak of God dwelling within us, we are speaking of something that is most deeply and truly an essential or fundamental part of ourselves. We cannot be "us" (or even alive at all) without this presence and the opposite is also true: the more we become our truest selves, the clearer and stronger this presence within us becomes. We are truly ourselves, truly holy and truly human when people look at us and see God in everything we are and do. This is what revelation is about and it is what transparency is about. 

The inner work I and others do and that I write about here, allows this to be realized in our lives and all we touch!! It allows us to be healed of all of those forms of woundedness that cripple or otherwise limit us and it opens us to the deepest potential that is ours so that we can live from that for the sake of others. Once I thought of this work as something I could do and finish with so that I could live my vocation as I am called to do. Now I understand that this inner work is part of the "asceticism" or even "penance" that necessarily accompanies my prayer and is essential to my vocation. In other words, I will not finish it -- though I will move through different stages of this work at various times throughout my life; instead, I will continue doing it as a foundational part of my life because in conjunction with prayer, as you say, it is essential to my vocation and does indeed allow me to become transparent to God ---  which is the very meaning of eremitical hiddenness, and the goal of my call to holiness and creation as imago dei.

Why isn't it Enough. . .?? On Stricter Separation from the World (Reprise from 2008)

I received the following question via email: [[How does one determine one is called to an eremitical vocation? Why isn't it enough to be uncomfortable with the world or to desire to avoid it, and to wish to retire to solitude? Is this at least a sign of a genuine eremitical vocation?]]

In order to answer this (or at least the second part of the question, because I will need to answer the first part, the "how" question, separately), I want to first reprise what I wrote in an earlier post (cf., Post on January 14, 2008, The Unique Charism of the Diocesan Hermit) : [[One embraces eremitical silence, solitude, prayer, penance and greater separation from the world in order to spend one's life for others in this specific way. Whatever FIRST brings one to the desert (illness, loss, temperament, curiosity, a maturing need for the silence of solitude, etc) unless one learns to love God, oneself, and one's brothers and sisters genuinely and profoundly, and allows this to be the motivation for one's life, I don't think one has yet discerned, much less embraced, a call to diocesan (Canon 603) eremitism.

[[. . . let me say something here about the phrase "the world" in the above answers. Greater or stricter separation from the World implies physical separation, but not merely physical separation. Doesn't this conflict with what I said about the unique charism of the diocesan hermit? No, I don't think so. First of all, "the world" does NOT mean "the entire physical reality except for the hermitage or cell"! Instead, the term "the world" refers to those structures, realities, things, positions, values, etc which are antithetical to Christ and PROMISE FULFILLMENT or personal [dignity and] completion APART FROM GOD in Christ. Anything, including some forms of religion and piety can represent "the world" given this definition. "The world" tends to represent escape from self and God, and also escape from the deep demands and legitimate expectations others have a right to make of us as Christians. Given this understanding, some forms of "eremitism" may not represent so much greater separation from the world as they do unusually embodied capitulations to it. (Here is one of the places an individual can fool themselves and so, needs the assistance of the church to carry out an adequate and accurate discernment of a DIVINE vocation to eremitical life.)

reprise continues:

[[Not everything out in the physical world is "the World" hermits are called to greater separation from. Granted, physical separation from much of the physical world is an element of genuine solitude which makes discerning the difference easier. Still, I have seen non diocesan hermits who, in the name of "eremitical hiddenness" run from responsibilities, relationships, anything at all which could conceivably be called secular or even simply natural (as opposed to what is sometimes mistakenly called the supernatural). This is misguided, I believe, and is often more apt to point to the lack of an eremitical vocation at the present time than the presence of one.]]

The simple answer in light of what I have said before, then, is no, it is not nearly enough. We are speaking of a religious hermit --- one for whom the heart of her vocation is love, not only of God, but of all that God cherishes as well. I am interpreting your question to mean that avoidance of the world (in this case I mean the whole of reality outside the hermitage) is the dominating, even sole reason for embracing an eremitical life, that no other reason even comes close. Even if one finds oneself out of step with that world, determines she cannot fathom it, is misunderstood herself by it, and desires nothing more than to retreat from it, this is NOT the basis for an eremitical life, nor is it, all by itself, a sign of a genuine vocation. In fact, it is more likely a sign one is NOT called to such a vocation. This is especially true if one who is a novice to spirituality and eremitism takes one's sense of being out of step with the world, misunderstood by and unable to fathom it, as a sign one is radically different than it.

It is true because it neglects the simple fact that we are each and all of us part of the world, shaped and formed by it, and so, to greater and lesser extents, we carry it deeply in our own hearts, minds, and limbs. This is true whether one is speaking of the world as all of reality outside the hermitage, or "the world" in the strict monastic sense of "contemptus mundi" --- that which promises fulfillment apart from God. We carry the world within us in both senses, and of course, are called to love, transform and heal the world (in both senses) outside of the hermitage. In the negative or monastic sense of the term (that which promises fulfillment apart from God) we bring this to the hermitage in order to deal with it, to subject it to God's love and healing touch. We bring it to the hermitage not because we cannot understand it --- or it us, but because we understand it all too well and know that God's love is the only alternative to our own personal enmeshment in it. The dynamic you described is of a person running from this reality (and, in fact, from the whole of God's world), but the hermitage cannot be used to run FROM ONESELF, nor from God's good creation; it cannot be used as a place of escape but must instead be a place of confrontation and transformation, of love and healing.

To attempt to escape from the demands of the physical (spatio-temporal) world outside the "hermitage" is really to actually transform the "hermitage" into an outpost of what monasticism calls "the world." This is so because one of the signal qualities of "the world" and "worldliness" in the monastic sense is a refusal to face reality, which thus will also involve an inability to love it into wholeness. Therefore too, if the "hermitage" is merely or even mainly a refuge from all that one cannot face, understand, or deal adequately with, it has ceased to be a genuine hermitage in any Christian sense and instead is predicated on the very values of distraction, avoidance, escape, and inability to face forthrightly or love truly or deeply that which constitutes "the world". It is itself an instance of that very same world, an outpost of it and no true hermitage. To bring "the world" into the hermitage in this sense is far and away more dangerous and destructive than bringing in aspects of it openly and cautiously like TV, movies, news programs, computer, etc --- and we know how assiduously careful we must be about (and even generally resistant to) these latter inclusions!

There is a reason hermitages have been characterized as places of battle, as crucibles as well as oases of God's peace. Above all they are the places where, in the clear light of God's truth and love, one is asked to confront the demons one carries within oneself. Thomas Merton once wrote that the purpose of the hermitage was to allow a hermit to face the falseness, and distortions in oneself: "the first function of the hermitage is to relax and heal and to smooth out one's distortions and inhumanities." This is true, he says, because the mission of the solitary in the world is, "first the full recovery of man's natural and human measure." The hermit "reminds (others) of what is theirs to use if they can manage to extricate themselves from the web of myths and fixations which a highly artificial society has imposed on them." However, Merton knew all too well that the battle is waged inside the hermitage as well. One cannot witness to a world one refuses to understand as though one were really all that different from it. One cannot do so because one has not dealt with "the world" one carries deep within oneself, and which, in fact, one IS until one has been completely remade by God's love.

By the way, it is, of course, true that the hermit comes to love the solitude and silence of her hermitage, and she desires to be there, to go about her daily routine, to do all the small and large tasks and chores that come as part of the life there. A certain degree of discomfort with the world outside the hermitage will exist since she wants always to get back to the sacred space of silence and solitude which is her cell. However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, when she is outside the hermitage, she is completely capable of relating empathetically to others and so, understanding them and what drives them; she is able to delight in this world to the extent it is evidence of God's creativity and wonder, and to care deeply for it when it falls short of that glory. These people, places, and things are given her to love, to cherish in so far as they are God's own, and in so far as they possess the potential, no matter how yet-profoundly-unrealized, to mediate God's presence and love. This is a world the hermit knows to be very like herself in every way. Her vocation may be unique, but she is not. To the degree she is really a hermit she carries these persons, places, and things with her back to the hermitage to continue to love them, to pray for them, and also to let them love and shape her own life to the degree that is appropriate.

In NO WAY is the hermitage an escape from the world in this sense. It is the place from which the hermit lives to allow God's presence greater intensity and scope so that he might one day be "all in all" as the Pauline phrase goes. Again, this all gets back to what I said at the beginning: The basis for the eremitical life must be love; it cannot be escape. We are called to greater separation from the world only because love requires distance as well as closeness. But we embrace this separation in order that we may allow God's love full rein and scope, first in our own lives, and then, in the lives of all those others for whom we live.