Feast of the Visitation: On Spiritual Friendship, Formal and Otherwise (Updated)

Jump for Joy  by Eisbacher

Today's Gospel is wonderfully joyfilled and encouraging: Mary travels in haste to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and both women benefit from the meeting which culminates in John's leaping in his mother's womb and prophetic speech by both women. The first of these is Elizabeth's proclamation that Mary is the Mother of Elizabeth's Lord and the second is Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Ordinarily homilists focus on Mary in this Gospel lection but I think the focus is at least as strongly on Elizabeth and also on the place the meeting of the two women has in allowing them both to negotiate the great mystery which has taken hold of their lives. Both are called on to offer God hospitality in unique ways; both are asked to participate in God's mysterious plan for his creation despite not wholly understanding this call and it is in their coming together that the trusting fiats they each made assume a greater clarity for them both.

Luke's two volumes (Luke-Acts) are actually full of instances where people come together and in their meeting or conversation with one another come to a fuller awareness of what God is doing in their lives. We see this on the road to Emmaus where disciples talk about the Scriptures in an attempt to come to terms with Jesus' scandalous death on a cross and the end of all their hopes. They are joined by another person who questions them about their conversation and grief. When they pause for a meal they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and their entire world is turned on its head. That which was senseless is on its way to making a profound sense which will ground the existence of the church. Peter is struggling with the issue of eating with the uncircumcised; he comes together with Cornelius, a Centurion with real faith in Christ. In this meeting Peter is confirmed in his sense that in light of Christ no foods are unclean and eating with Gentiles is Eucharistic. There are a number of other such meetings where partial perception and clarity are enhanced or expanded. Even the Council of Jerusalem is a more developed instance of the same phenomenon.

On Spiritual Friendship, both formal and informal:

I personally love Eisenbacher's picture above because it reminds me of one privileged expression of such spiritual friendship, namely that of spiritual direction. I can remember many meetings with my own director where there was immense surprise and joy at the sharing involved, but one time in particular stands out --- especially in light of today's Gospel. I had experienced a shift in my experience of celibacy. Where once it mainly spoke to me of dimensions of my life that would never be fulfilled (motherhood, marriage, etc), through a particular prayer experience it had come to be associated instead with espousal to Christ and my own sense of being completed and fulfilled as a woman. 

As I recall, when I met with my director to share about this experience (c. 1983), I spoke softly about it, carefully, a little bashfully --- especially at first; but I also gained strength and greater confidence in the sharing of it. (I was not uncertain as to the nature of what I had experienced, but sharing it allowed it to claim me more completely and let me claim a new sense of myself in light of it.) My director listened carefully, and only then noted that she had always prayed for such a grace for all her novices (she had been novice director for her congregation); she then excused herself and left briefly. When she returned she had a CD and CD player with her. Together we sat quietly, but joyfully and even a bit tearfully celebrating what God had done for us while we listened to John Michael Talbot's Canticle of the Bride.

New This Year:

This year, the Feast is again marked by what I have shared a little about this past week, an experience of travelling distances over the years and finally coming together again, reconnecting, with members of my class in the Franciscans. One celebrated her jubilee in the congregation in 2019, and the other, now a Mom with a grown Son, had left the congregation some years after I did. I have already written a little about what reconnecting has meant to me with regard to Sister Christine, but that, and actually being able to reconnect with Norma as well, has caused new life to "leap within me". We are such different people and our spiritualities and histories are very different as well. But God has been working faithfully in our lives and we too have been faithful to our God. As a result, the ability to come together in our differences after years of journeying and growing in our relationship with Christ, to delight in each other in both similarities and differences, and especially, to find that fundamental commitment to love one another was strongly present, affected me in some indefinable way. I felt that something really essential had been returned to me, a part of myself whose loss I had not even known how deeply I suffered.

Several years ago I shared that my director brought me the following poem. It reminds me of the joy of sharing in spiritual direction (accompaniment), but this year it takes on as well the rich resonances of conversations, emails, MP3 files (songs), and pictures exchanged as three undoubted sisters-in-Christ reconnect, fill one another in on who we are today, and share (or begin to share) to some degree how God has been working in our lives since we last saw or spoke to one another:

As Mary faced

        her unexpected future

And hastened to Elizabeth,

        who was similarly expecting,

and shared with her

        her hopes,

        her dreams,

        her concerns,

        her fears;

spoke frankly as sisters

        about their love of God,

        about their future,

        about  their commitment

        to God's mission,

so we two come together today,

        speaking the truth

        in love and faith,

       and God is with us.

Summary:

 

Elizabeth and Mary come together as women both touched in significant ways by the mystery of God. They have trusted God but are not yet completely clear regarding the greater mystery or how this experience fits into the larger story of Israel's redemption. They are both in need of one another and especially of the perception and wisdom the other can bring to the situation so that they can truly offer God and God's plan all the space and time these require. Hospitality, especially giving God hospitality, takes many forms, but one of the most important involves coming together to share how God is active in our lives in the hope of coming to a greater and more lifegiving perspective, faith, and commitment. It is in coming together in this way that we clarify, encourage, challenge and console one another. It is in coming together in this way that we become the prophetic presence in our world God calls us to be.  The gift of being able to "speak frankly" as sisters (and brothers) is an inestimable gift of God. Let us all be open to serving as friends to one another in this sense. It is an essential dimension of being Church and of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

On taking up our Cross: Accepting the Call to Kenosis and Authentic Humanity

The articles I put up recently on emptiness and the hiddenness of the eremitical vocation are profoundly linked, as I noted, to the theologies of the cross of Paul and Mark. Readers might remember that Mark's Gospel is often called a "passion narrative with a long introduction". But really, it is a passion narrative, a long story of self-emptying that climaxes on the cross. I was thinking about this recently because of one of our Friday gospel lections that had Jesus inviting and calling us to take up our crosses to follow him. Always before I have spoken of crosses as those difficult, challenging, and painful times we associate with suffering. We take up our crosses when we suffer well with the inspiration and empowerment of God in Christ. But I also understand more clearly that when we speak of Jesus taking up his cross it means his relinquishment of all of the ordinary ways to honor and success, power and prestige, relationships, family, even his own People, so that he may be completely transparent to the One he called Abba.

In Mark's Gospel the shadow of the cross marks the whole of Jesus' life. It stands as the summary and culmination, the most radical example of everything Jesus has been, done, said, and experienced until now. It is the symbol of the entire dynamic of self emptying which drove Jesus on as he ministered in compassion, prayed in the silence of solitude, felt the anguish of being rejected in so many ways or celebrated with his friends and disciples. Jesus is the one person in human history who did not only say yes to God, but who emptied himself (allowed himself to be emptied) so completely that in him God might be exhaustively revealed in the senses of both being made known and being made real with a human face in our world. Jesus allowed the will and purposes of God to so overshadow him, he opened himself so completely to God's love and power that he perfectly fulfilled the human vocation to image God. Our doctrine of two natures is one of the ways the Church has tried to speak adequately of this NT paradox that where Jesus was fully and exhaustively human there was God definitively revealed, and where God is definitively and exhaustively revealed there we see authentic humanity.

This is the dynamic Paul is speaking of when he talks of Jesus being obedient (open and responsive) to God even to the point of death, death on a cross. Jesus' entire life is one of taking up the call, task, and challenge to be fully human, and therefore to be imago dei --- not in the weak sense of mirroring God, but in the strong sense of allowing God's power and presence, his love and mercy, to flame up in Jesus without obstacle, obscurity, or distortion so that Jesus is incandescent with God, and so, when we see Jesus' humanity we see Divinity face to face. This is the heart of the Eastern notion of  "divinization and it is something we are each called to allow God to achieve in us in our own way. Humanity and divinity are not in conflict here. They are counterparts in genuine covenant existence.  This is why my most important (and beloved) theology professor (John C Dwyer) was fond of saying, "Human freedom is the counterpart of Divine sovereignty." What must lessen, what we must be emptied and stripped of is our false (or better, falsified) selves so that God may be entirely sovereign. And where God is sovereign we are most truly ourselves.

The emptying of self happens throughout Jesus' life and reaches its furthest points, its most radical form, in his crucifixion. Because Jesus embraces the godlessness of sin and death while trusting his Abba completely this kenosis is similar to that of the rest of his life. For this reason, although it is especially true that we can speak of taking up our crosses to refer to those times of significant suffering we might have in our lives, taking up our cross also means taking up the task, challenge, indeed the very vocation we have to be authentically human. We take up our cross every time we consent to being emptied and to allow God to be God, every time we allow the mercy of God to transform us or the love of God to empty and strip us of all falseness --- as well as to fill and make us whole and true with Divine meaning and purpose. To take up our cross daily is to take up the continuing call to become the persons God wills us to be whether this process is marked by the suffering of various forms of emptying and being made true, or the joy of completion and personal fulfillment we know in union with God. Taking up our cross is simply the task of embracing a life entirely committed to trusting and mediating the love of God as imago dei.

On Being Counterparts and Collaborators: I Call you Friends, Not Servants

Throughout this Easter Season the Church gives us a chance to come to terms in a more exhaustive way than we might have until this point with the fact that in light of the Cross, the world in which we live is not the one that existed before Jesus' death and resurrection. In the world in which we live in light of the Cross, while death and sin are still realities, they are not dominant; they do not have the last word or create a final silence. Instead, the grace of God, God's powerful presence is dominant and sin and death have been defeated in a way which promises that life in abundance is the true hope and promise of this world. The prayer we say daily, "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (That is, may your love be real for us here and now in space and time just as it is real within your own eternal life; may you be sovereign here and now in space and time just as you are in eternity), is something we see not merely as possibility but as promise which is already realized in a partial way in our own lives and communities.

Similarly, these fifty days give us the chance to grasp and claim more fully the fact that we baptized human beings are not the same either. We are a new creation, not just created by God but recreated by his life within us and by our baptism into the death and resurrection of God's own Christ. If sin and death have lost their dominion in our world more generally, God's love has been poured into us in a way which allows our hearts and lives to truly transcend sin and death more specifically. The petition that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven is also the promise we claim that God's love will be sovereign in our own hearts just as it is sovereign in the life of the Trinity. We were originally made to be counterparts of God in our world; we were made to walk and talk with God in the cool of the evening, to be friends and partners with God in all we were and did in our world. That friendship was realized most fully and exhaustively in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is that friendship which baptism into his death reestablishes and reclaims --- not as a mere metaphor for a life without serious sin, but as a literal description of who we are and how God regards us. "I call you friends," is the NT's highest formulation of the love and delight with which God regards us.

It is also something which marks an identity far beyond that defined by law or measured by the necessary legal categories of worthiness or unworthiness. I wrote a couple of months ago that Christian humility was the result of being lifted up by God so we could see ourselves in light of his own gaze. Here we have the confession of the truly humble: I am called "Friend" by God; it is my identity and my destiny. From the face-in-the-dirt humiliation we often visit upon ourselves and upon others --- or they us, God lifts us up to our knees. It is the place of inestimable dignity his love carves out for me and the role it empowers. Beyond any thoughts of worthiness or unworthiness God delights in me and calls me friend. Beyond failure or success, guilt, shame, humiliation, or pride, God delights in me and calls me friend. Beyond law to the empowerment of grace, the whole purpose of my (or any Christian's) spirituality is that we allow that to be true here and now in space and time just as it is on God's eternal side of things so that one day God will be all in all.

But it is not easy to let go of law to accept grace. It is not easy to let go of self-judgment, blame, lack of self-esteem or its opposite in narcissism to receive the pure gift of friendship and the esteem and dignity which is part of that. It is not easy to treat the Good News of what God has done in Christ as something which stands on its own and is not to be added onto our own performance under the Law. It is not easy to let the scales drop from our own eyes and see ourselves as God sees us, or to let His Word pierce and clear away the blockages of our own ears, minds, and hearts so that we can truly receive the message of today's Gospel pericope:

[["I call you friends!" --- that is how I regard you, you to whom I have revealed my own heart and will, my own plans for the world and the cosmos, my own deepest desires and most profound dreams and delight. You are no longer merely servants; in my Christ you are my counterparts and collaborators in making these things real in space and time --- on earth as it is in heaven. Love one another as I have loved you. As I have loved you in Christ so let others know that same love in and through your own life. As you have known my delight, let others know my delight in them. See them as I see them --- beyond any thoughts of worthiness or unworthiness, success or failure, guilt or innocence, shame or honor, beyond even sin and death --- reveal the ground of your own new-found dignity and identity, the world-shattering vocation you share with them: "I call you friends!" It is thus that My Reign is established.]]

Posts on Vocations: Political Correctness or the Way of the Kingdom of God?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, what you write about [vocational] equality and so forth sounds very pleasing and politically correct, but it conflicts with what the Scriptures say. Matthew 22:14 says that many are called, but few are chosen. Many are called to lay life, but few are chosen to  be Brides of Christ.  Every Christian is called to Baptism but very few are chosen for religious life or the priesthood. I'm sorry but what you write says to me that maybe you don't even appreciate enough the gift of your own call to religious life. Plus you are a hermit! How rare is that??? God has chosen you to be his Bride. You are like the beloved disciple!! How often do you thank God for such a special vocation?]]

First, thanks for your comments. I suspect a number of people who read my recent posts may have felt the same way about them. We are truly "wedded" to the notion that God calls people and then, out of that number, chooses a few to be his elect --- as though the meanings of being called or elected means for God or for Christians (or for Matthew in the passage you cited) what it means in the world at large --- namely, that if I am chosen, then someone else must be left "unchosen", if I am special, then someone else must be ordinary, etc. Add to this the notion that too often the Church's theology has not done justice to ALL vocations while stressing the specialness of a few and it is no wonder we tend to be unable to see the specialness of one vocation without denigrating others. In other words we tend to see with the eyes, heart, and mind of the world rather than those of the Kingdom. In my recent posts I have tried to present a different way of seeing, a paradoxical, Kingdom way of seeing that does justice to the specialness of every vocation and affirms their common source, meaning, and goal.

One source of real difficulty is using sayings like the one you cited from Matthew out of their historical and cultural context as a bit of "bumper sticker theology" and thus accepting our ordinary world of competition, elitism, individualism, etc. as the normal context driving our interpretation. When we do this we read this line as though it says God calls everyone to ordinary life and then somehow, he sorts folks out and, based on some obscure calculus (better scores on some secret Sanctity Aptitude Test) and the notion that God loves them better because of this, decides that some are called to something "more", some to greater intimacy, some to more radical discipleship, etc. while the rest are simply consigned to second class vocations (and thus, one can only presume, the "cheap seats" in heaven)! But Matthew's use of being called and being among the chosen (the elect) in the parable of the wedding guest does NOT support such a view.

Remember the way the parable goes (Matthew 22:1-14): a king invites people to his Son's wedding banquet and all of those who are invited first have more important things to do. They decline the invitation and some of them actually seize and kill the slaves bearing the invitations. (In other words they are called but will not be among the elect or chosen because they refuse to be.) The King punishes the guilty and then sends his servants out to invite everyone they find to the wedding banquet. The wedding hall is thus filled with guests. In the third act of the parable though the King notices that a guest is present without a proper wedding robe and confronts him. The man is speechless (always a sign of disobedience, lack of faith, and ingratitude in the NT) and the King is upset.  He has the man thrown out into the "outer darkness" and concludes the story with the statement, "For many [meaning the all composed of multitudes] are called, but few are chosen."

For the purposes of this post we especially need to see clearly that the distinction between called and chosen is one of response. ALL are called, not all respond as is appropriate. Some put the wedding banquet lower on their list of priorities than it deserves. Some respond with violence and kill the messengers. Some receive the invitations, prepare themselves appropriately to honor and thank the King and his Son, and enter the banquet properly attired. And one guest receives the invitation but does not honor the occasion, the King, or his Son properly; he simply comes improperly attired, and ultimately he is thrown out into the outer darkness.

To be chosen in this parable is not about God calling some to a more radical discipleship than others; it is not about being called to a more intimate relationship with God; it is about accepting the invitation God has extended and thus living in a consistent, thoroughgoing way a life which IS an appropriate (i.e., a grateful) response to such a wonderful invitation. It is about living in a way which does not shame the King or his Son but instead delights them and becomes a source of real joy for them and inspiration for others. (Recall that Matthew was dealing with a community in which Christians had fallen away from their faith in the face of persecution, and yet had returned to the community and were very much like the guest without the proper attire. Their behavior was inappropriate and ungrateful; it dishonored the King and his Son, and the Church struggled with what to do with these Christians whose lives had been so disedifying.)  [Addendum  2/11/2013 :  Please note, I just read today that Richard Rohr in Immortal Diamond, The Search for our True Self offers the following translation of Matt 22:14, "I am calling all of you,  but very few of you allow yourselves to be chosen"!  I could not agree more with the sense it conveys so well!]

As I have said here many times, Vatican II asserted clearly that ALL are called to an exhaustive holiness, and all-consuming union with God. The chosen, the elect, are those who accept this call and live their entire lives as a wholehearted response to it. What is meant to be radical here (meaning at the root where radix equals root) is one's following of Christ WITHIN this specific vocation. With regard to the recent discussion on consecrated virginity of women living in the world this means not only living out one's consecration, but doing so in a secular life which wholly honors the Incarnation and the Sacramental character of all of creation. Turning a secular life into a Religious or quasi religious one could actually be ungrateful --- a way of refusing to live their discipleship radically or coming to the banquet clothed as truly honors the King and his Son.

Similarly, for a person called to marriage, embracing celibacy is not a more radical form of discipleship, but a less radical form. Instead they are called to live out the gift, challenge, and sacredness of sexual or married love in a way which images Christ's exhaustive love for each and all of us. For parents Religious poverty would not be a more radical form of discipleship, but a less radical one. Instead they are called to live the evangelical counsel of poverty in ways which allow them to raise children (a constantly sacrificial way of living), do business justly in the secular world (also sacrificial),  and contribute in a multitude of ways to a world where everyone has what they need and the Kingdom of God is made real. In these ways and others married persons live a radical discipleship.

When I consider the sacrifices married couples and parents make on a daily basis I am personally struck by just how radical a call to follow Christ this is. The degree of sacrifice seems to me to be much greater than anything Christ asks for from me. Each vocation has tremendous sacrifices and rewards of course; in each one to the degree we accept the invitation of intimacy with Christ we experience being truly chosen. Still, I honestly cannot say that the vows I have made call for a greater sacrifice, much less greater holiness than two people giving their lives for their families, children, and God. In fact, in many ways I think that God has asked me for far less --- though this too is a worldly way of thinking and I try to resist it. The truth is God asks for everything from us in WHATEVER vocation he calls us to. If what one lives is a less-than-radical discipleship it is because they refuse to live as God's chosen ones in whatever state of life they are called to.

Does this mean I don't esteem the vocation God has called me to? Just the opposite I think. I do not honor or delight God when I treat other vocations as less radical, less significant, a less exhaustive call to holiness or intimacy with God. How does it honor God to make him into a completely worldly character who parcels out his love, indeed, his very self, a little to this person, more to another, a lot to a third, etc? I don't believe it does. I believe it substitutes worldly values for those of God's Kingdom. The hierarchy in the Church is a hierarchy of service, not of value or the specialness of vocation. Beyond this, it is NOT the way the Kingdom will be structured; the Kingdom is anti-hierarchical and wholly egalitarian.

Yes, indeed I am "the" beloved disciple --- no less and no more than the person in the Gospel of John. At least I am called to live out and to live out of this truth; thus, if there is a difference between us it is in our responses to God's invitation. Notice in the Scriptures that this beloved disciple is never named; s/he is marked out by his/her faithfulness to Christ. This allows and even summons us to imagine ourselves in this position. Likewise we are called to see that this is equally true of the person sitting behind the "I need food" sign on the sidewalk outside the local grocery store or stumbling drunk in the alley behind it. After all this is God's truth!! The Scriptures invite us to this; to become the elect of God we "simply" have to accept the truth of it and live in light of that truth. I thank God almost every day for this special vocation, but I also thank God almost every day for the specialness of every other vocation --- just as I pray that we can each realize how truly special the call we have been given. (With regard to this last prayer I also pray that the Church will do a better job of portraying the amazing paradox involved: each vocation is unique and very special and each vocation in God's eyes is of the same value as every other.) I am convinced that what I have been writing here about vocations is not a matter of political correctness. No, quite the contrary; it is instead the way of the Kingdom of God and, for that reason, radically countercultural and prophetic.

But not today! John 13:21-33, 36-38

Today's readings are both moving, and challenging. Not really surprising as we move through the most Holy Week of our liturgical year, and see reflected in Judas and Peter our own less-than-human capacity for betrayal of self, God, and others. In the first lection Isaiah reminds his subject that as wondrous as his vocation to service in restoring Israel is, he (and we!!) are called to a weightier vocation: to be a light to the nations, and to bring God's own salvation to the whole world!

Jesus reminds us that this same vocation is quite simply to be friends of God, not mere servants. Of course, he calls us friends, naming us this way, and it is a wonderful thing, but he also calls us TO REALLY BE friends of his. It is the summons which constitutes the most fundamental challenge and task of our existence. We are to love God with our whole heart and mind and soul, and in fact, we are quite literally called upon to give our lives for him in whatever way the Kingdom of God requires for its fulfillment. This is what the love of friendship, as Jesus demonstrates the real thing, is all about.




But today's Gospel reminds us how difficult this vocation is. Not only must we be taught what it means, but our poor hearts and minds are dense and divided, our wills weak and unfocused, and often we are simply too frightened, or too ambitious, too greedy, or simply too caught up in a different vision of reality, a different idea of what our vocations are (if, indeed we even think in terms of vocation!) to really give ourselves to this summons and the one who makes it. Afterall, if we are really to give ourselves over to this call, we must be empowered to do so; we cannot do it of ourselves!

One of the things which most struck me about today's Gospel was the tug, the apparent clash or tension between Jesus' prediction of Judas' and Peter's betrayals and what they are really called or meant to do. I have heard this passage read as though once the predictions are made, once Jesus hands Judas the morsel dipped into the bowl, or told Peter what he will do that night in spite of his self-confidence, neither man has a real choice left: they are seen as destined to do what Jesus has said they will do. I think that sometimes we get ourselves into similar predicaments and interpret these situations in the same way: we may have a pattern of failure in a certain area, weakness or frailty --- including illnesses --- which make certain things unavoidable, or almost unavoidable in the long term, or at least from time to time. We may get ourselves enmeshed in situations from which we see no real way out, or where we are simply too afraid to do what is demanded, and so perpetuate and exacerbate those situations in our blindness and lack of nerve. And of course, in terms of failing to be friend of God, betraying his own love for us, there IS an inevitability about it. Jesus IS speaking to us, just as he was speaking to Judas and Peter: "this day one of you will betray me!" or, "before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times!"

But in light of the Palm Sunday gospel from Matthew, something else was also clear to me. Both Judas and Peter remained free NOT to betray Jesus, even after the predictions were made. Each man's actual fulfillment of Jesus' predictions took place in stages, steps, or increments and AT ANY POINT they COULD have turned back, they COULD HAVE RETURNED TO JESUS or (after Jesus had been arrested) to their witness to Jesus and to the love which he bore them and desired them to reciprocate. Each man remained completely free to take a different course IN SPITE of their weakness, cowardice, avarice, ambition or whatever. Would it have been difficult to turn away from a course of action already begun, an enmeshment already established to whatever degree, a pattern of collusion and betrayal already begun? Absolutely. But would it have been possible? In the power of Jesus' love, I have no doubt whatsoever that it would. Repentance means a change of course, a shift in our minds and hearts and a turning from one path to another. We are surely always free to repent!

So how do we reconcile in our own lives this seeming contradiction between the inevitable and what we are free to change? Afterall, I don't think we can deny that betrayal of God's love for us, and repudiation or betrayal of our friendship to and with him is inevitable or (even apparently) "destined". I suggest we keep Peter and Judas in mind: remember the increments and steps involved in any significant betrayal, any really serious sin. Remember there ARE those stages and let us remind ourselves that at any point, if only we have the courage, we can take a different course to SOME EXTENT OR OTHER. Afterall, we are weak and changeable, but God's love for us is strong and constant; it is there to empower us at every moment and mood of our lives if only we will allow it! Remember that while betrayal is inevitable, it does NOT have to be this night! Failure will occur, but it does not need to be THIS failure. Yes, I who have drunk from the very cup he offers, and taken the morsel he hands me daily am going to betray my friendship with God; I am going to fail him. It IS INEVITABLE, but NOT today! Not this morning! Not here or NOW.