Showing posts with label Power of the Word of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Power of the Word of God. Show all posts

13 July 2020

"Beyond Imagining:"Broadcasting the Seed of God's Word

Sunday's liturgy was very powerful, and made even more so by the fact that parishioners could come up to the church after the ZOOM service and safely receive Eucharist for the first time in Four months! (I asked them to honk as they went past my street or hermitage on their way home from receiving!! Some did!!) 

For me personally the readings were incredibly moving, especially since they combined some of my favorite texts and images all on the same day. I was able to lector for the reading from Isaiah 55: God's Word will not return to him void, but then came Paul writing to the Romans about adoption in Christ and how it is God causes all things to work for good in those that love him (that is, in those who allow him to be God for and with them!); I immediately thought of a quote I have used here and used just recently with some new friends, [[ Not everything that happens is the will of God, but inevitably, of all that happens, nothing happens outside the will of God! (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). And then finally, the parable of the soils (sometimes less accurately, I think, called the parable of the seeds)! Our homilist did a terrific job and really did break this word open powerfully and effectively which added to the abundance God showered on us all --- the seeds God broadcast. And so, after today's liturgy, I was left excited --- so much seed, so many possibilities for prayer, reflection, study, and writing! So much goodness and such abundant promise of LIFE! I tried to describe my experience in an email and here is what I wrote:

[[For me the readings were amazing. Every one of them full of promise and assurance. I am usually able to hear a word in the readings, but today it was like God was shaking me and saying, “Do you hear? Do you hear what is possible? Can you really believe this? Please believe this!!” Every reading was full and calling to me --- not without shadows and the inevitability of struggle, but even so --- promise was the last word in every case. I came away feeling bewildered by all of it, overwhelmed and off-balance by it --- by the abundance of it.  It was as though I said I was a bit thirsty and God came with buckets of cold water and let me drink, poured some of them over me, left some next to me so I could drink more later when ever I needed, and then, for good measure, opened the heavens in rain showers just to be sure I actually got the point! And all of this still done gently, emphatically, exuberantly, with God laughing and delighted (“he” does this so seriously!), but gently, care-fully.]]

It is always a surprise to me how powerful and gentle God is at once in any encounter. In this particular experience what was astounding was how serious and also how playful God was, how emphatic and care-full, how commanding but also how vulnerable to me -- as expressed in his earnest appeal and plea that I would believe as deeply as possible what I was being shown. My Director uses the phrase, "Beyond imagining" to describe this God and what he has done in and with her life. This powerful generosity, this love which creates  (or promises to create!) life beyond imagining, is what I experienced yesterday and what Jesus was trying to describe when he referred to the harvest being 100 or 60 or even 30-fold. It's what he was saying in Isaiah's imagery of the word watering the earth and never returning to (him) void or empty; it is what Paul was speaking of when he affirmed that God can bring good out of anything at all if only we allow him to be God --- that is, if only we love him. God, and all he chooses to be for us and make of us, is beyond imagining even as he inspires and fructifies that same imagining. Thanks be to God. 

24 January 2010

Feast of the Conversion of St Paul



Tomorrow is the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, and my own feastday as well. We know Paul's story well. A good Jew, indeed, a scholar of the Law who saw the early Church as a distortion and danger to orthodoxy, one who understood that a crucified person was godless and shameful and could in no way be a faithful Jew or prophet, much less God's anointed one, persecuted the Church in the name of orthodoxy and for the glory of God. In sincere faithfulness to the covenant Paul hounded men, women and children, many of whom were his own neighbors. He sent them to prison and thence to their deaths. He, at least technically And according to Luke's version of things), colluded in the stoning of Stephen and sought to wipe Christians from the face of the earth.

While on a campaign to Damascus to root out and destroy more "apostates" Paul had a dramatic vision and heard someone call out to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Paul inquired who this voice was and was told, "I am Jesus whom you persecuteth." In that moment everything Paul knew, believed, and practiced, was turned upside down. God had vindicated the One whom Paul knew to be godless acording to the Law. He was alive rather than eternally dead, risen through the power of God as the Christians had claimed. For Paul nothing would ever be the same again. So it is with conversions.


Perhaps it is a matter of faulty perception on my part, and if so, I apologize, but it seems to me that conversion is not something most Catholics regard as pertinent to their lives. Conversion is something non-Catholics do when they become Catholics (or vice versa!). It is a onetime event that those "born into the faith" don't (it is thought) need to worry about! Those "born Catholic" may think in terms of "growing in their faith" or "becoming a better Catholic" (and there is certainly nothing wrong with thinking this way!) but "conversion" seems to be a word that is simply little-used for these processes. Somehow (perhaps because of the story of Paul!) conversion is too dramatic and messy a process it seems. It disrupts and is marked by difficult and abrupt discontinuities and conflicts or tensions. It demands a spiritual praxis which sets one apart from the norm, a prayer life which is central, engagement with the Word of God which is profound and more extensive than usual -- not minimal or nominal, and a faith life which does not tolerate compartmentalization. Growth, becoming, etc, are safer words --- demanding, yes, but somehow less total and more socially acceptable than references to "conversion."

In monastic life, and especially in Benedictine monastic life the primary vow is to conversion of life. This vow includes those ordinarily made in religious life, the vows of poverty and chastity. One commits oneself to continually allow God to remake one into the image of Christ (and into one's truest self). There is a sense that such conversion is a gradual and lifelong process of growth and maturation, yes, but there is also an openness to conversion as dramatic and all-consuming. Here conversion is something which does not allow the monastic to divide their lives into sacred and profane or to compartmentalize them into the spiritual and the non-spiritual. Here the Word of God is expected and allowed to convict, challenge, transform, and empower. Here the Spirit of God is accepted as the spirit which moves within us enlivening, edifying, consolidating, and purifying --- the Spirit which humanizes and sanctifies us into the covenant reality we are most truly. It is a pattern which should be true of every Christian.

Paul's initial conversion experience was dramatic by any standards, but drama aside, it did for Paul what encounter and engagement with the Word of God is meant to do to any of us. It caused him to see his entire world and life in terms of the risen and Crucified Christ. It put law completely at the service of love and made compassion the way to accomplish justice. It made human weakness the counterpart of divine strength, mercy and forgiveness the way God's will is accomplished, and in every other way turned the values of this world on their head. May each of us open ourselves to the kind of conversion of life we celebrate today.