"Ephphatha!": Obedience as the Dynamic of Authentic Humanity (Reprise)

Yesterday's Gospel brought us face to face with who we are called to be, and with the results of the idolatry that occurs whenever we refuse that vocation. Both issues, vocation and true worship are rooted in the Scriptural notion of obedience, that is in the obligation which is our very nature, to hearken --- to listen and respond to God appropriately with our whole selves. When we are empowered to and respond with such obedience our very lives proclaim the Kingdom of God, not as some distant reality we are still merely waiting for, but as something at work in us here and now. In fact, when our lives are marked by this profound dynamic of obedience, today's readings remind us the reign of God cannot be hidden from others --- though its presence will be seen only with the eyes of faith.

In the Gospel, (Mark 7:31-37) A man who is deaf and also has a resultant speech impediment is brought by friends to Jesus; Jesus is begged to heal him. In what is an unusual process for Mark in its crude physicality (or for any of the Gospel writers), Jesus puts his fingers in the man's ears, and then, spitting on his fingers, touches the man's tongue. He looks up to heaven, groans, and says in Aramaic, "ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!"). Immediately the man is healed and "speaks plainly." Those who brought him to Jesus are astonished, joyful, and could not contain their need to proclaim Jesus and what he had done: "He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

I am convinced that the deaf and "mute" man (for he is not really mute, but impeded from clear speech by his inability to hear) is a type of each of us, a symbol for the persons we are and for the vocation we are each called to. Theologians speak of human beings as "language events." We are called to be by God, conceived from and an expression of the love of two people for one another, named so that we have the capacity for personal presence in the world and may be personally addressed by others, and we are shaped for good or ill, for wholeness or woundedness, by every word which is addressed to us. Language is the means and symbol of our capacity for relationship and transcendence.

Consider how it is that vocabulary of all sorts opens various worlds to us and makes the whole of the cosmos our own to understand, wonder at, and render more or less articulate; consider how a lack of vocabulary whether affective, theological, scientific, mathematical, psychological, etc, can cripple us and distance us from effectively relating to various dimensions of human life including our own heart. Note, for instance that physicians have found that in any form of mental illness there is a corresponding dimension of difficulty with or dysfunction of language. Consider the very young child's wonderful (and often really annoying!) incessant questioning. There, with every single question and answer, language mediates transcendence (a veritable explosion of transcendence in fact!) and initiates the child further and further into the world of human community, knowledge, understanding, reflection, celebration, and commitment. Language marks us as essentially communal, fundamentally dependent upon others to call us beyond ourselves, essentially temporal AND transcendent, and, by virtue of our being imago dei, responsive and responsible (obedient) at the core of our existence.

One theologian (Gerhard Ebeling), in fact, notes that the most truly human thing about us is our addressiblity and our ability to address others. Addressibility includes and empowers responsiveness; that is, it has both receptive and expressive dimensions. It is the characteristically human form of language which creates community. It marks us as those whose coming to be is dependent upon the dynamic of obedience --- but also on the generosity of those who would address us and give us a place to stand as persons we cannot assume on our own. We spend our lives responsively -- coming (and often struggling) to attend to and embody or express more fully the deepest potentials within us in myriad ways and means.

But a lot can hinder this most foundational vocational accomplishment. Sometimes our own woundedness prevents the achievement of this goal to greater degrees. Sometimes we are not given the tools or education we need to develop this capacity. Sometimes, we are badly or ineffectually loved and rendered relatively deaf and "mute" in the process. Oftentimes we muddle the clarity of that expression through cowardice, ignorance, or even willful disregard. Our hearts, as I have noted here before, are dialogical realities. That is, they are the place where God bears witness to himself, the event marked in a defining way by God's continuing and creative address and our own embodied response. In every way our lives are either an expression of the Word or logos of God which glorifies (him), or they are, to whatever extent, a dishonoring lie and an evasion.




And so, faced with a man who is crippled in so many fundamental ways --- one, that is, for whom the world of community, knowledge, and celebration is largely closed by disability, Jesus prays to God, touches, and addresses the man directly, "Ephphatha!" ---Be thou opened!" It is the essence of what Christians refer to as salvation, the event in which a word of command and power heals the brokennesses which cripple and isolate, and which, by empowering obedience reconciles the man to himself, his God, his people and world. As a result of Jesus' Word, and in response, the man speaks plainly --- for the first time (potentially) transparent to himself and to those who know him; he is more truly a revelatory or language event, authentically human and capable through the grace of God of bringing others to the same humanity through direct response and address.

Our own coming to wholeness, to a full and clear articulation of our truest selves is a communal achievement. Even (or even especially) in the lives of hermits this has always been true insofar as solitude is NOT isolation, but is instead a form of communion marked by profound dependence on the Word of God and lived specifically for the salvation of others. In today's gospel friends bring the man to Jesus, Jesus prays to God before acting to heal him. The presence of friends is another sign not only of the man's nature as made-for-communion and the fact that none of us come to language (or, that is, to the essentially human capacity for responsiveness or obedience) alone, but similarly, of the deaf man's total inability to approach Jesus on his own. At the same time, Jesus takes the man aside and what happens to him in this encounter is thus signalled to be profoundly personal, intimate, and beyond the merely evident. Friends are necessary, but at bottom, the ultimate healing and humanizing encounter can only happen between the deaf man and Christ.

In each of our lives there is deafness and "muteness" or inarticulateness. So many things are unheard by us, fail to touch or resonate in our hearts. So many things call forth embittered and cynical reactions which wound and isolate when what is needed is a response of genuine compassion and welcoming. Similarly, so many things render us speechless: bereavement, illness, ignorance, personal woundedness, etc. As a result we live our commitments half-heartedly, our loves guardedly, our joys tentatively, our pains self-consciously and noisily --- but helplessly and without meaning in ways which do not edify --- and in all these ways therefore, we are less human, less articulate, less the obedient or responsive language event we are called to be.  To each of us, then, and in whatever way or degree we need, Jesus says, "EPHPHATHA!" "Be thou opened!" He sighs in compassion and desire, unites himself with his Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, and touches us with his own hands and spittle.

May we each allow ourselves to be brought to Jesus for healing. May we be broken open and rendered responsive and transparent by his powerful Word of command and authority. Especially, may we each become the clear gospel-founded words of joy and hope in a world marked extensively and profoundly by deafness and the helplessness and despair of noisy inarticulateness.

On Calling oneself and striving to be "Nothing"

[[Sister Laurel, I have been reading a hermit who calls and refers to him/herself as "nothing" and who strives more and more to be nothing. This makes the writing sort of hard to read and confusing because sometimes she/he is speaking of him/herself and sometimes referring to the lack of something, but I wondered about how valid such an approach to spirituality is. Should I be striving to be nothing, to lose myself completely if I want to be a hermit? If this is essential I am not sure how to even begin. Can you help me?]]

First, I would recommend you speak to your spiritual director about all of this and get his or her perspective on it. However, I can offer you my own view of such an approach. It is, in my estimation not the most effective approach to spiritual growth and can be seriously counterproductive. It seems to me that it is far better to work to become God's own in everything we do and are rather than to become "nothing." It is a fact that apart from God we are nothing at all anyway. And yet with God and in light of God's adoptive love, we take on very significant and precious identities which should not be minimized even as they challenge us to more. The task set before us by God is, with God's grace, to become fully human in covenant with Him, and therefore fully God's own; I think that keeping this uppermost in mind and in our hearts is far and away a better approach.

One of the problems I have with referring to oneself as "nothing" then, especially if one is a Christian, is that it is simply not true. We are adopted daughters and sons of God, heirs to God's kingdom and those who are charged with allowing it to come definitively. We are a new creation, made new in Christ and so, partial answers (or, perhaps better put, privileged witnesses to God's answer) to the world's domination by sin and death and to that same world's greatest hungers and yearnings. We are light and hope to that world and a sign of its greatest potential. So, while apart from God we are and can do nothing, as baptized heirs of God we are far from that. Humility, remember, is a form of loving truthfulness, not a form of denigration or self-loathing based on a partial and distorting datum --- no matter how subtle those are.

A second problem I have with referring to oneself as "nothing" then has to do with the fact that doing so cripples us and focuses our attentions and energies on deficiency rather than on potential and giftedness. Our world is not served in this way, nor, I think, does it help us to marshal the energy and talents necessary to serve the world by focusing on our complete inadequacy or deficiency. This is especially true in a world where people suffer either from a lack of self-esteem on one end of the spectrum or narcissism on the other. Reflecting the identity which is wholly a gift of God and the deepest truth of who we are empowers us to avoid either of these extremes and will assist us to empower others to do the same. I personally find nothing inspiring in a way of identifying oneself which views oneself in such negative terms and calls others to adopt the same mindset. There is nothing which says "Good news" to me in this.

A third problem then is that because such an approach focuses us away from who and what we are in light of God, it also turns our focus away from God's own grace and "valuation" of us, and therefore away from an attitude of gratitude which is the very heart of Christian existence and prayer. If the summit of Catholic Sacramental life is the Eucharist (thanksgiving), then the summit of spiritual life is a correlative gratitude for God, his creation, and all he has done for and with us. Naming and referring to ourselves publicly as "nothing" is certainly not this. I would argue that neither is it truly humble; it misses the fact that true humility is a form of loving honesty about who we are in God. True humility recognizes both our poverty and our giftedness but it is grounded (humus) in the grace and love of God.

You asked if you should be seeking to lose yourself completely. The answer is no. While this MAY be good Buddhism (and I am not even sure this is the case), etc, it is not good Christianity. Christian monastic life recognizes the ambiguity of human life this side of death and thus speaks of a true and a false self. We are indeed called upon to find ways to enhance the true self through the grace of God, and to allow the false self to be stripped away or, where possible, to be made true by God's love, but this is not the same as losing oneself completely. Instead it is what the scriptures refer to as finding oneself and coming to abundant life in Christ. Again, my own approach to living an eremitical life involves living so that I am wholly God's own, not so that I am nothing at all. It is a challenging task which definitely involves the stripping away of distortions, falseness, darkness, sin and death, but all of this is the means to an end --- that is, to a selfhood which witnesses to God's great goodness and is of almost infinite worth to God and to the world he seeks to bring to fullness. In worldly terms I am not much, but in terms of God's own call I am much much more than "nothing." So are we all called to be.

I hope this is helpful, but again, speak to your own director to help augment this perspective with references to saints who have adopted the language of "nothingness" and the historical circumstances and approaches to spirituality which promoted such. I think you will find they never thought of themselves as merely "nothing" and did not allow such language to wholly overshadow their sense of self, especially in terms of their giftedness in God and value to him.

"Ephphatha!": Obedience as the Dynamic of Authentic Humanity

Tomorrow's lections bring us face to face with who we are called to be, and with the results of the idolatry that occurs whenever we refuse that vocation. Both issues, vocation and true worship are rooted in the Scriptural notion of obedience, that is in the obligation which is our very nature, to hearken --- to listen and respond to God appropriately with our whole selves. When we are empowered to and respond with such obedience our very lives proclaim the Kingdom of God, not as some distant reality we are still merely waiting for, but as something at work in us here and now. In fact, when our lives are marked by this profound dynamic of obedience, today's readings remind us the reign of God cannot be hidden from others --- though its presence will be seen only with the eyes of faith.

In the Gospel, (Mark 7:31-37) A man who is deaf and also has a resultant speech impediment is brought by friends to Jesus; Jesus is begged to heal him. In what is an unusual process for Mark in its crude physicality (or for any of the Gospel writers), Jesus puts his fingers in the man's ears, and then, spitting on his fingers, touches the man's tongue. He looks up to heaven, groans, and says in Aramaic, "ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!"). Immediately the man is healed and "speaks plainly." Those who brought him to Jesus are astonished, joyful, and could not contain their need to proclaim Jesus and what he had done: "He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

I am convinced that the deaf and "mute" man (for he is not really mute, but impeded from clear speech by his inability to hear) is a type of each of us, a symbol for the persons we are and for the vocation we are each called to. Theologians speak of human beings as "language events." We are called to be by God, conceived from and an expression of the love of two people for one another, named so that we have the capacity for personal presence in the world and may be personally addressed by others, and we are shaped for good or ill, for wholeness or woundedness, by every word which is addressed to us. Language is the means and symbol of our capacity for relationship and transcendence.

Consider how it is that vocabulary of all sorts opens various worlds to us and makes the whole of the cosmos our own to understand, wonder at, and render more or less articulate; consider how a lack of vocabulary whether affective, theological, scientific, mathematical, psychological, etc, can cripple us and distance us from effectively relating to various dimensions of human life including our own heart. Note, for instance that physicians have found that in any form of mental illness there is a corresponding dimension of difficulty with or dysfunction of language. Consider the very young child's wonderful (and often really annoying!) incessant questioning. There, with every single question and answer, language mediates transcendence (a veritable explosion of transcendence in fact!) and initiates the child further and further into the world of human community, knowledge, understanding, reflection, celebration, and commitment. Language marks us as essentially communal, fundamentally dependent upon others to call us beyond ourselves, essentially temporal AND transcendent, and, by virtue of our being imago dei, responsive and responsible (obedient) at the core of our existence.

One theologian (Gerhard Ebeling), in fact, notes that the most truly human thing about us is our addressiblity and our ability to address others. Addressibility includes and empowers responsiveness; that is, it has both receptive and expressive dimensions. It is the characteristically human form of language which creates community. It marks us as those whose coming to be is dependent upon the dynamic of obedience --- but also on the generosity of those who would address us and give us a place to stand as persons that we cannot assume on our own. We spend our lives responsively -- coming (and often struggling) to attend to and embody or express more fully the deepest potentials within us in myriad ways and means; we spend our lives calling others to this same embodiment and expression.

But a lot can hinder this most foundational vocational accomplishment. Sometimes our own woundedness prevents the achievement of this goal to greater degrees. Sometimes we are not given the tools or education we need to develop this capacity. Sometimes, we are badly or ineffectually loved and rendered relatively deaf and "mute" in the process. Oftentimes we muddle the clarity of that expression through cowardice, ignorance, or even willful disregard. Our hearts, as I have noted here before, are dialogical realities. That is, they are the place where God bears witness to himself, the event marked in a defining way by God's continuing and creative address and our own embodied response. In every way our lives are either an expression of the Word or logos of God which glorifies (him), or they are, to whatever extent, a dishonoring lie and an evasion.




And so, faced with a man who is crippled in so many fundamental ways --- one, that is, for whom the world of community, knowledge, and celebration is largely closed by disability, Jesus prays to God, touches, and addresses the man directly, "Ephphatha!" ---Be thou opened!" It is the essence of what Christians refer to as salvation, the event in which a word of command and power heals the brokennesses which cripple and isolate, and which, by empowering obedience reconciles the man to himself, his God, his people and world. As a result of Jesus' Word, and in response, the man speaks plainly --- for the first time (potentially) transparent to himself and to those who know him; he is more truly a revelatory or language event, authentically human and capable, through the grace of God, of bringing others to the same humanity through direct response and address.

Our own coming to wholeness, to a full and clear articulation of our truest selves is a communal achievement. Even (or even especially) in the lives of hermits this has always been true insofar as solitude is NOT isolation, but is instead a form of communion marked by profound dependence on the Word of God and lived specifically for the salvation of others. In today's gospel friends bring the man to Jesus, Jesus prays to God before acting to heal him. The presence of friends is another sign not only of the man's nature as made-for-communion and the fact that none of us come to language (or, that is, to the essentially human capacity for responsiveness or obedience) alone, but similarly, of the deaf man's total inability to approach Jesus on his own. At the same time, Jesus takes the man aside and what happens to him in this encounter is thus signalled to be profoundly personal, intimate, and beyond the merely evident. Friends are necessary, but at bottom, the ultimate healing and humanizing encounter can only happen between the deaf man and Christ.

In each of our lives there is deafness and "muteness" or inarticulateness. So many things are unheard by us, fail to touch or resonate in our hearts. So many things call forth embittered and cynical reactions which wound and isolate when what is needed is a response of genuine compassion and welcoming. Similarly, so many things render us speechless: bereavement, illness, ignorance, personal woundedness, etc. As a result we live our commitments half-heartedly, our loves guardedly, our joys tentatively, our pains self-consciously and noisily --- but helplessly and without meaning in ways which do not edify --- and in all these ways therefore, we are less human, less articulate, less the obedient or responsive language event we are called to be.

To each of us, then, and in whatever way or degree we need, Jesus says, "EPHPHATHA!" "Be thou opened!" He sighs in compassion and desire, unites himself with his Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, and touches us with his own hands and spittle. May we each allow ourselves to be brought to Jesus for healing. May we be broken open and rendered responsive and transparent by his powerful Word of command and authority. Especially, may we each become the clear gospel-founded words of joy in a world marked extensively and profoundly by deafness and the helplessness and despair of noisy inarticulateness.

Another Look at Humility from the Perspective of Matthew 23:1-12

Today's Gospel presents us with an analysis of the nature of humility and a reminder about its importance. This lection is concerned with the image of authentic humanity seen in contrast with the inauthentic humanity of the pharisees. Three things in particular struck me about humility as a result of today's gospel passage.

First, while most of us would say the antithesis of humility is pride, and today's gospel certainly portrays pride as a symptom of the lack of humility --- the pharisees love their special seating at the synagogues and places of honor at the banquets as well as their titles and elaborate religious garb --- pride is an aspect of a deeper reality. That deeper reality is the real opposite of humility; it is HYPOCRISY which means play-acting, pretending or dissembling. What the pharisees show us is that there is a kind of forgetfulness in this hypocrisy, a willingness to ignore some aspect of the truth about themselves and others and to play up (or deprecate) other aspects, or the persons as a whole. The pharisees are indeed guilty of pride, but it is a symptom of this deeper problem, this need to pretend and live a lie.

One thing today's Gospel makes clear (and we will hear the same thing in tomorrow's) is that this kind of pretense is always at someone else's expense. If we cannot be truthful about ourselves and accept the whole of ourselves in light of God's love for us, in light of the infinite dignity we possess as his own, neither will we be able to be truthful about others. Because we feel ashamed and threatened on some level, we will need to put others down or oppress them in some way. For the pharisees, treating religion as a means to status for themselves also means making sure others are seen as less religious or even irreligious. The burdens they tie up and impose on others which they then do not lift a finger to help them bear is the burden of religious law. As a result of some of these laws some people cannot worship with their brethren, some are by definition unclean, etc. Their very livelihoods prevent them from being Jews in good standing, so to speak. For them, religion is oppressive and a means of disempowerment. It denigrates rather then exalting and empowering.

It follows then that one of the central signs of a lack of humility (hypocrisy, pretence, dissembling, etc) is seeing others as competitors or rivals. For this reason Jesus directly opposes this with the notion that those who really follow him are brothers and sisters to one another, and have a vocation to serve, that is, a call to ease the burdens of our neighbors. We do that in many ways, but one of the most important is by giving these neighbors access to the life of Christ and his gospel, a life which supports them in their preciousness and allows them to live up to their potential and dignity as human beings. Ironically, the biggest bit of forgetfulness the pharisees are guilty of is how TRULY gifted they were --- they and everyone else. That is, they forgot that where God was concerned they were truly beggars; their whole selves are gifts of God, given at every moment, inspired by his breath, sustained with his mercy and love, and given every good gift from beyond themselves. To say one is gifted requires a giver of gifts, and to acknowledge true giftedness is also to admit one's dependence on the giver.

Secondly then, it is from an examination of its opposite, and also from looking to Jesus that we come to see humility as a loving truthfulness about ourselves, especially vis-a-vis God and others. To be humble requires an awareness and acceptance of who we really are, not just in terms of limitations, brokenness, sinfulness, and the like, but our strengths, talents, and gifts as well. This is true not only because simple awareness is important in the spiritual life and pretense is disastrous, but because this kind of awareness and acceptance allows us to really live for others. For the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of our brothers and sisters and with the knowledge that we are essentially no better nor worse than anyone else, we are free to work on our limitations, whether that be with therapy, spiritual direction, education, etc. And for the sake of our brothers and sisters and the building up of the kingdom we will be free to develop and use our gifts, talents, and strengths --- but not if we remain either reticent or embarrassed about admitting them, or if we claim them as our own possessions and the means to self-aggrandizement.

Thirdly then, we have to renounce the notion that humility is about self-denigration or self-deprecation. It is not about putting ourselves down, and particularly not in hypocritical or insincere ways. Humilty is not about a lack of self-esteem or feeling and operating out of a lack of personal dignity. Instead, humility is about being exalted in the truest sense, that is accepting our identities, our preciousness and dignity in God, letting him lift us up from the dust of the earth and breath into us a spirit which sets us apart from the rest of creation making us uniquely gifted for the sake of the whole of his creation. Humility allows our greatest truth to be the fact that God is continually merciful to us, continually regards us as and makes us precious, continually loves us beyond and in spite of anything unworthy of his love in a way which makes us the very result of that love.

Genuine humilty recognizes and accepts both dimensions of our lives, the limitations and sinfulness, AND the giftedness and strengths, particularly since the latter do not come from us, but from the giver of all gifts. It is for this reason that other signs or symptoms of a lack of humility besides pride, competitiveness, and rivalry include false modesty, perfectionism (a lack of honesty about our own giftedness and its imperfection), a lack of self-esteem and all the actions that come with these. Embracing the whole truth of ourselves is both freeing and empowering. Not least it opens us to accept and use God's gifts (for which we need no longer be ashamed or self-conscious) on an ongoing basis. (After all, it is not easy to be rescued or saved, but for the humble person, it is the simple fact of who they are and who they will continue to be.) Further, it allows us to accept others for who they are as well, neither threatened by their gifts nor repulsed by their limitations and weakness. This empowers us to really be brothers and sisters to one another, and to serve as best we can.

We should always bear in mind that the word humility comes from the Latin, humus, which means earth or ground or soil. Humility reflects several senses of this word: 1) it recalls that we are creatures made from the dust of the earth, but also spirit-breathed, inspired beings with an innate dignity which is incomparable to any other creatures we yet know. 2) humility is the soil out of which all other virtues grow. It is akin to the good soil in the parable of the soils which allows the Word of God to take root and grow deeply and lastingly without being stunted or distorted while we proclaim it boldly with our very lives, and 3) it is indeed the ground of our salvation in the sense that it is the precondition, the loving truthfulness necessary for receiving fully the gift of salvation.

One final word on the last line of today's Gospel. We might be tempted to read this line as punitive (or alternately implying reward): if we lift ourselves up, God will knock us down, whereas if we denigrate ourselves, God will exalt that and us as a reward. I think this is a serious misreading of the line. What Jesus (via Matthew) is giving us here is the PARADOX of humility: if you are honest about yourself and who you really are, God's work to gift you will bear incredible fruit. His Word within you will be ABLE to exalt you further and further and make you even more who you are called to be. You will truly be God-breathed or inspired dust of the earth, and your inheritance will be eternal. If, on the other hand, you are unable to admit or accept the truth of yourself God's loving mercy will not be able to find a place to grow in you and will not bear fruit in abundance. If, and to whatever extent you cannot be gifted by and dependent upon God, then life and death will eventually take whatever status you have enjoyed away from you, and you will return to the dust of the earth as nothing more lasting than that.

Humanity as Covenant reality: "If you See me, you see the Father who sent me"

In today's first reading from the "letter" (it is more a homily) to the Hebrews, as a piece of extolling the fullness of the revelation of God in Christ, the author contrasts this with the "partial" revelations associated with the prophets, with Israel more generally (and even, some commentators suggest, with other religious traditions).

Now revelation is a tricky word. It has a number of meanings including some of progressive depth, extension, and intensity. For instance, it can mean to show or make manifest, to divulge, or lay bare, and is often limited to the idea of telling us about something or someone. A magician may reveal the secret of a signature trick. The last few pages of a mystery novel may (and we hope does!) reveal the killer of the Lord of the Manor. A Catholic catechism may reveal truths about God that some religions simply don't reflect and so, in this sense, be a "fuller revelation" of God than those other traditions. As important as this sense of revelation is (and it is genuinely important!), it is relatively superficial, partial and fragmentary. Discipleship therefore includes this kind of knowing and revelation but is not limited to it.

Another (and related) meaning of the word revelation is to make known. Thus, a child who is loved deeply and effectively by her parents will make that love known in many ways throughout her life. In such a situation we can know about the parents’ love without ever really knowing the parents except as the author of Hebrews describes as partially and in fragmentary ways. A person of faith will make known the effects of God's mercy and grace in her life, and so forth. Revelation in this sense is a matter of witnessing to something WE KNOW, something that is real for us in more than an intellectual or notional sense. It goes beyond divulging information or laying bare secrets, and it goes beyond simply sharing things (like the identity of the murderer in the novel, or even the idea that God is Triune, for instance), but it remains a partial or even fragmentary revelation, and once again, Christian discipleship includes but is not limited to this sense of revelation.

But in the New Testament revelation has another meaning as well, a meaning which includes, but also deepens, and intensifies both of these other senses of the word while going beyond or transcending them. It is this sense especially that refers to the Christ Event and revelation in its fullness. For revelation in the NT also means to make something (in this case, GOD) real in space and time. By analogy, at some point, for instance, a bud will spring forth as the realization or making real of something which was only potential before. A human being who is deeply loved or known by another will become someone she only had the potential to become apart from this being loved, and will, to some extent, actually become an image of the one who has loved her so. This is similar to revelation in the example of a child loved by parents above, but it goes beyond it as well. What the author of the letter to the Hebrews is concerned with is a spectrum of meanings, but especially this last sense. This form of revelation, this making real, is not merely about knowing God, therefore, but about being known by him in that uniquely intimate Biblical sense of the term "to know", and then living out that reality, that BEING KNOWN so exhaustively that God himself is met in the one so known.

According to the author of the "letter" to the Hebrews, the prophets were revelatory and spoke God's Word into their own situations with power, but this revelation was partial or fragmentary. Sometimes it was merely about God, often it witnessed TO God, and in ways it was God's own word as well, but never was it more than partial. God was not incarnate here, he was not allowed to actually live amongst us fully, nor were the prophets known fully BY God. The Scriptures themselves tell us this about the prophets by making the Word they spoke foreign to them and often spoken in spite of themselves. Similarly the covenant they and their people celebrated was still somewhat external to the Israelites; it was not exhaustively embodied by them, their humanity itself was not a matter of BEING covenant (though it clearly pointed to this and called for it as its own completion and perfection). Again, it was a more partial or fragmentary revelation of God’s presence and power.

Jesus, on the other hand, concerned himself with making God real among us in a way God willed to be, but could not be apart from another's cooperation. Jesus gave his entire life and his entire self to this. He was attentive and responsive to (that is, through the power of the Holy Spirit he ALLOWED HIMSELF TO BE ADDRESSED AND KNOWN BY) the Word of God in a way which put God first and gave him unhampered access to us and to our world. Jesus was human in a way which defined a new and authentic humanity in terms of complete transparency to God and this meant in terms of covenant or communion with God; likewise it defined God similarly --- as Communal or relational, dialogical, and covenantal. He was human, that is, he was one who was KNOWN BY GOD in a way which allowed God to be Emmanuel, someone he had not been before. In the process this BEING KNOWN by God made of Christ a new Creation, the new and everlasting covenant, a new and exhaustively human being which makes God real amongst us in a fresh, authentic, and definitive way.

Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension is the "event" where God is allowed to assume a human face, speak with a TRULY human voice, love and heal and support those he loves with human hands, provide a hearing for those needing it with human ears and a human heart. More, he is implicated into the realm of human sin and death, places he could never go himself (by definition these are literally godless places apart from Christ); he is made real as God-With-Us even there and transforms and defeats them with his presence. It is the place where human and divine destinies are inextricably wed and made one. And all because Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, was exhaustively responsive to the Word of God and embodied or becomes the COMMUNION which is true humanity and (the sacrament of) true divinity all at one time.

In today’s Gospel this fullness of revelation with its call to discipleship, this call to become "fishers of men," is a call to this kind of humanity: a humanity constituted as covenant life where the very nature of both humanity and divinity, different as they are from one another, are revealed as Communion with one another, not as some form of solitary splendor or autonomy; humanity here is defined in terms therefore of knowing and BEING KNOWN BY GOD, not as an activity we engage in (as, for instance, might be true of a prayer period during our day), but as someone we ARE. To be human and to become fishers of men in this sense is not merely to let others know about God, or to bring others to a new religion with doctrines they have never heard; more, it is to bring them to a new humanity, a humanity which is defined as communion with God, and means embodying the Word of God as exhaustively as we are capable of in the power of the Spirit.

It is an immense challenge and vocation, one we share with Christ and only achieve in Him and his unique incarnation of the God who would be God-with-us. This is a humanity where God in Christ will be allowed to walk where he could not walk otherwise, where he is made real where otherwise he would and could not be (the Greek notion of omnipresence notwithstanding!). It is a humanity which itself is a sacramental reality and where --- if, and to the extent, we live out this vocation fully by becoming disciples in THIS sense --- God in Christ turns a human face to the world and that face is our very own.

This is who you are!

Icon of the Transfiguration


Throughout the last two weeks' readings Paul has been trying to speak to the Church in Rome (both ancient and modern!), and getting them to understand who they really are now in light of their Baptisms, in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus and their incorporation into that reality. I was particularly struck by how he emphasizes, despite all his seeming equations between the old Adam and the new, our slavery to sin and slavery to righteousness, the power of sin and the power of grace, the old law and the new, just how truly different and incommensurate are all the things on the second side of these equations. Paul builds on equations where the second term is completely unequal to the first. He is not really building equations but comparisons of qualitative disparity. And this is what he really wants us to get: Who we are in Christ is a new kind of humanity. Paul's term is "a new creation," but how often do we really take this seriously?

When I was originally catechized I was taught the older theology of baptism that described the Sacrament in terms of the "washing away (of) the stain of original sin", or, "the restoration of our friendship with God," and the reestablishment of a state of Grace. It seemed to me that in Baptism, I had been restored to something very near the state Adam and Eve (not understood as a corporate identity) found themselves in in the Genesis narratives. When the newer theology of Baptism came to accent our being incorporated into the Body of Christ, and baptized into his death and resurrection, it added an important ecclesial and communal aspect to things for me, but it was not radically different than what I had been taught before. But Paul's theology is far more radical, I think.

In every case, with every one of his comparisons, Paul ends the discussion by emphasizing the qualitative difference between the old and the new. He says that "grace abounded all the more"; he says we are now the slaves or servants of God rather than of the lesser, though terrible, power of sin; he says that despite what happened in Adam, how much more in much greater measure is given (lives and reigns) in Christ Jesus, and of course, he says that we are a new creation, not simply the restoration of the old. How are we to think of this, and doesn't it sound elitist or exclusivist to suggest that in Baptism we are so radically remade as to become a new kind of humanity whose truest end is the Kingdom of God, and, in fact, life within the very heart of God?

First, in thinking about this new creation we become, let's be clear that Paul ALSO says that we remain at war within ourselves. There is the inner (or true) person, the person who truly exists in Christ and in the power of the spirit, and there is the "person" (the unverified, not yet made true person) who is still subject to sin, who does what she does not want to do, and fails to do what she really wishes. Paul is not unrealistic about our ambiguous existence in this world. Eternity has broken in on us, yes, but it is not yet all in all. God is not yet all in all. The yeast (to use another and non-Pauline image) has been included in the dough, and it is therefore a completely different dough than it would have been otherwise, but the yeast is not yet all in all. I admit, the analogy limps (I would be more concerned if it did not!), but it helps me think of the paradox that is involved here.

One of the newer readings of the Genesis narratives associated with theological reflection on the theology of original sin and the reality of Adam and Eve is diachronic rather than synchronic. It looks at Adam and Eve, not simply as corporate identities (another new feature of theological reflection on this whole constellation of problems), or as individual ancestors in the past, but as a reality which stands in our future, a reality which all human beings are called to, the seeds of which exist in the heart of each and every one of us. It is, in some way a different reality, a different humanity than we actually know here, an "evolutionary" leap, even while it is also consistent with who we are now. Except that this evolutionary leap is not accomplished by shifts in DNA as the shift from homo erectus to homo sapiens was accomplished. This shift is accomplished in Christ, in being baptized and living into his death and resurrection.

But, isn't this elitist? No, I don't think so, at least not so long as with Paul we ALSO realize that Christ's death and resurrection was for ALL persons, and that at some point God truly WILL be ALL in ALL. Every person is MEANT for this "evolutionary leap." Every person is called to this transformation, however it is to be accomplished. (For us Christians it has been accomplished in Baptism and continues to be worked out or realized in our lives on a daily basis, and in a conscious way through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a very great gift which allows us to walk through the world differently than those who do not know God as we do, but God is not constrained in this way and ultimately, in ways we may never even imagine, he will accomplish his purposes for each and every person that exists.)

Also it is not elitist because, of course, it imposes a tremendous responsibility on Christians to really BE who they are at the deepest core of their being, to really embody or incarnate this new humanity FOR others! Others will be brought to this new life in God only to the extent we do this credibly and cogently, only to the extent we, like Christ, live our lives truly FOR THESE OTHERS. (We call the Jews God's chosen people, and we call Christians today by the same title, not in an elitist sense, but in the sense that we are forerunners of something that will be extended to everyone through us. In the case of Christians, we are responsible for extending this new humanity to the rest of the world. One real betrayal of our "status" as chosen people (or as "New Creation") is to suggest or imply in any way that others are NOT also and equally called to this, and that we are not responsible for mediating this call to them with our lives.)

There are so many theological problems to work out and think through with regard to all this. But despite all of these, I think what is clear from the lections we have read in Paul's epistle to the Romans in the past couple of weeks is how qualitatively different he believes the new creation is from the old. We who are baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, have also been remade, not simply restored to an older or more original wholeness (though this is also true, of course). This talk of being a "new creation" is not just poetry, or rather, it is deadly serious poetry which is also to be taken with a kind of literalness we often miss. When Paul says "how much more did grace abound" he is not merely saying God's love is extravagant; where Grace abounds all the more, something new comes to be!

We are a new humanity charged with the responsibility of embodying this in our world in an authentic way. We say of Christ: ECCE HOMO! And, unlike when these words were first spoken, we mean that he is TRULY or AUTHENTICALLY human. For us it is a proclamation, not a condemnation, something to be awed by and to wonder at, not a source of shame. The Pauline (and derivative) truth is that in him (and to the extent we are truly in him), this is who we are as well. This is the identity and vocation Paul is asking us to claim and incarnate as fully as possible in our world. A new creation. A new Adam. A new humanity. Not homo erectus, and not even homo sapiens, but homo Christus. This is who we are, and for the sake of the world and Kingdom, who we are called to be.

Magnificat: On the song Which IS the Hermit

Theologians often think of the human being as a "word event," that is, we are responses to the words and being of others, crafted and shaped by those words and persons and creating ourselves (or being created) in response to reality around us. We can wander lost through the world, unformed and unknown, we can even impinge on others' lives without the dynamic of dialogue, or address and response, but it is only in response to another person's address that we actually have a personal place to stand, or that we come to be the persons we CAN be. More fundamentally, theologians recognize that we are each the answer or response to a divine word of address and summons spoken in the very core of our being. We speak of this reality variously: "God calls us by name to be"; "we have a vocation or call to authentic humanity"; "the human heart is, by definition, a theological reality and the place where God is active and effectively present in the core of our being", etc.

Of course, the definitive image of authentic humanity is Christ, Divine Word-made-flesh. Theologians reflect that each of us are called to be "Word made flesh" --- though not as definitively as that incarnation accomplished in the Christ Event, still with coherence and cogency, articulateness, truth, and power. Throughout our lives the incarnational word we are is shaped and formed, redacted and composed, in response to the Name or summons God speaks in the core of our being, and which ALSO comes to us (or is sympathetically sounded in us) in a variety of forms and intensities from without in the Scriptures, Sacraments, other people, nature, etc. And of course, it is also distorted and falsified by our own sinfulness, and by our defensive responses to the sinfulness and influence of others in our lives. While we are called to be joyful and coherent embodiments of the Word of God incarnated in our world, we are as often cries of anguish, snarls of anger, sobs of pain, and the lies of insecurity and defensiveness which so lead to the falsification of our being.

Ordinarily, of course, the responsive composition we each are is a mixture of true and false, real and unreal, coherent and incoherent, articulate and inarticulate, anguished and joyful. Only in Christ are we rendered more and more the response we are MEANT to be. And yet, deep within us God speaks the Name we are to embody, the vocational summons we are to incarnate in all of its uniqueness AS our own lives in this world. It is an unceasing, unremitting hallowing right at the core of who we are, and when we are truly in touch with this and truly responsive we become the Word event which God wills us to be. If, as Fr Robert Hale, OSB Cam, once remarked, it is true that "God sustains us as a singer sustains a note," then we are each called to become a song, a particular fiat witnessing to the grace (that is, the powerful presence) of God in our lives. God is the breath which sustains us moment by moment, and we are the song which embodies this breath.

The hermit's existence is paradigmatic of this reality. She really is called to be the song at the heart of the church. Birthed in silence and solitude, shaped by obedience to the Word and breath of God, exercised in the singing of psalms daily --the regular chanting or recitation of the divine Office, the reading of scripture both aloud and in silence, held in the heart of God and steeped in the formative rests of contemplative prayer and shaped by the stories of all those persons she holds in her own heart, the hermit moves day by day towards becoming the articulate and coherent expression of God's creative providence we recognize as a magnificat.

Of course, gestation and birth are both (or together) demanding, painful, and messy businesses. So is the composition of a truly responsive life. Those cries of anguish, snarls of anger, defensive lies, and sobs of pain we ALSO ARE, don't simply "go away" of themselves without the hard work of recognition and repentance. Healing, sanctification, and verification (making whole and true) is God's work in us, but it requires and involves our active cooperation. It is this dynamic that makes of the eremitical silence, solitude, prayer, and penance a therapeutic crucible or editor's desk where we are --- sometimes ruthlessly --- revised, redacted, and recreated. Evenso, at bottom eremitic life (indeed ALL christian life!) is a joy-filled reality; we incarnate the merciful love of God which heals and sanctifies, enlivens and sustains. We become a coherent articulation or expression of the breath and word of God spoken both in the core of ourselves, and in so many ways in our church and world. We ARE the songs which God sings in the heart of his church, magnificats of God's love and mercy sounding in (and out of) the silence of solitude.