Nothing Can Make up for the Absence of Someone Whom We Love

A couple of years ago or so I wrote about Jesus' cry of abandonment on the cross; I suggested that it was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the mutual love of Father and Son  that maintained their bond of love while keeping open the space of terrible separation  experienced as abandonment and occasioning the suffering of both Father and Son which reached its climax on the cross and Jesus' "descent into hell". Both connection and separation are necessary parts of the love relationships constituting Trinitarian life marked by mission to our world and thus, by kenosis eventuating in the cross.

Similarly, in writing about eremitical life I noted that stricter separation from the world was an essential part of maintaining not only one's love for God but also for God's creation because without very real separation we might instead know only enmeshment in that world rather than a real capacity for love which reconciles and brings to wholeness. In everyday terms we know that the deficiencies and losses we experience throughout our lives are things we often try to avoid or fill in every conceivable way rather than to find creative  approaches to genuinely live (and heal) the pain: addictions, deprivations and excesses, denial and distractions, pathological withdrawal or superficial relationships of all kinds attest to the futile and epidemic character of these approaches to the deep and often unmet needs we each experience.

While we may expect our relationship with God to fill these needs and simply take away the pain of loss and grief we are more apt to find God with us IN the pain in a way which, out of a profound love for the whole of who we are and who we are called to become, silently accompanies and consoles without actually diminishing the suffering associated with the loss or unmet needs themselves. In this way God also assures real healing may be sought and achieved. It is a difficult paradox and difficult to state theologically.  Today, I found a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer written while he was a political prisoner of the Nazis and separated from everyone and everything he loved --- except God; it captures the insight or principle underlying these observations --- and says it so very well!

Nothing can make up for the absence

of someone whom we love,

and it would be wrong

to try to find a substitute;

we must simply hold out and see it through.

 

That sounds very hard at first,

but at the same time

it is a great consolation,

for the gap --- as long as it

remains unfilled ---

preserves the bond between us.

 

It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap;

God does not fill it

but on the contrary keeps it empty

and so helps us to keep alive

our former communion even

at the cost of pain.

 

from  Letters and Papers From Prison
 "Letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge: Christmas Eve 1943"

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

 

As a hermit embracing "the silence of solitude" I know full well that this charism of eremitical life is characterized by both connection and separation. It is, as I have written here many times a communion with God which may be lonely --- though ordinarily not a malignant form of loneliness! --- and an aloneness with God which does not simply fill or even replace our needs for friendships and other life giving relationships. Sometimes the pain of separation is more acute and sometimes the consolation of connection eases that almost entirely.

Sometimes, however, the two stand together in an intense and paradoxical form of suffering that simply says, "I am made for fullness of love and eschatological union and am still only (but very really!) journeying towards that." This too is a consolation. Today I am grateful for the bonds of love which enrich my life so --- even when these bonds are experienced as painful absence and emptiness. I think this is a critical witness of eremitical life with its emphasis on "the silence of solitude" --- just as it is in monastic (or some forms of religious) life more generally. Thanks be to God.

Jesus' Descent into Hell (Reprised)

The following piece was written for my parish bulletin for Palm Sunday 2012. It is, therefore, necessarily brief but I hope it captures the heart of the credal article re Jesus' descent into Hell. It also represents an explanation of the significance of Jesus' experience of abandonment by God which itself is an experience of hell or godforsakenness.

During Holy week we recall and celebrate the central events of our faith which reveal just how deep and incontrovertible is God's love for us. It is the climax of a story of "self-emptying" on God's part begun in creation and completed in the events of the cross. In Christ, and especially through his openness and responsiveness (i.e., his obedience) to the One he calls Abba, God enters exhaustively into every aspect of our human existence and in no way spares himself the cost of such solidarity. Here God is revealed as an unremitting Love which pursues us without pause or limit. Even our sinfulness cannot diminish or ultimately confound this love. Nothing, the gospel proclaims, will keep God from embracing and bringing us “home” to Himself. As the Scriptures remind us, our God loves us with a love that is “stronger than death." It is a love from which, “Neither death nor life, nor powers nor principalities, nor heights nor depths, nor anything at all” can ultimately separate us!

It is only against this Scriptural background that we make sense of the article of the Apostles’ Creed known as Jesus’ “descent into hell”. Hell is, after all, not the creation of an offended God designed to punish us; it is a state of ultimate emptiness, inhumanity, loneliness, and lovelessness which is created, sustained, and exacerbated (made worse) by every choice we make to shut God out --- to live, and therefore to die, without Love itself. Hell is the fullest expression of the alienation which exists between human beings and God. As Benedict XVI writes, it is that “abyss of absolute loneliness” which “can no longer be penetrated by the word of another” and“into which love can no longer advance.” And yet, in Christ God himself will advance into this abyss and transform it with his presence. Through the sinful death of God’s Son, Love will become present even here.

To say that Christ died what the New Testament refers to as sinful, godless, “eternal”, or “second death” is to say that through his passion Jesus entered this abyss and bore the full weight of human isolation and Divine abandonment. In this abject loneliness and hopelessness --- a hell deeper than anyone has ever known before or will ever know again --- Christ, though completely powerless to act on his own, remains open and responsive to God. This openness provides God with a way into this state or place from which he is otherwise excluded. In Christ godforsakenness becomes the good soil out of which the fullness of resurrection life springs. As a result, neither sin nor death will ever have the final word, or be a final silence! God will not and has not permitted it!

The credal article affirming Jesus’ descent into hell was born not from the church’s concern with the punishing wrath of God, but from her profound appreciation of the depth of God’s love for us and the lengths to which God would go to redeem us and to bring creation to fulfillment. What seems at first to be an unreservedly dark affirmation, meant mainly to terrify and chasten with foreboding, is instead the church's most paradoxical statement of the gospel of God’s prodigal love. It is a stark symbol of what it costs God to destroy that which separates us from Love-in-Act and bring us to abundant (eternal) Life. It says that forgiveness is not about God changing his mind about us – much less having his anger appeased or his honor restored through his Son’s suffering and death. Instead, it is God’s steadfast refusal to let the alienation of sin stand eternally. In reconciling us to himself, God asserts his Lordship precisely in refusing to allow enmity and alienation to remain as lasting realities in our lives or world.

The Crucified God, Emmanuel Fully Revealed

Three months ago I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. First we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent rather like air is present in our lives. He seems already to be "Emmanuel". And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who enters exhaustively into the circumstances and lives of his Creation and makes these part of his own life.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God in Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience but in that same Christ God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so in Jesus' active ministry he companions us and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives and sanctifies us. He is mentor and brother and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross having failed in his mission. Had he succeeded there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion. But Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus even failure can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability without mitigation. Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death Jesus again remains open to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin into himself and makes it his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

As I noted back in January, John C. Dwyer, my major Theology professor for BA and MA work back in the 1970's described God's revelation of self on the cross (God's making himself known and personally present even in those places from whence we exclude him) --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal one takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

In Memoriam, John C Dwyer 1930-2016

John C Dwyer, my major Theology Professor for my BA and MA work, died Saturday afternoon (02.January) after a long struggle with Parkinson's. I have never had a finer teacher nor, in many ways, known a finer man. He was also probably the best homilist I have ever heard. It was in his homilies especially that theological content, personal passion (a function of his faith), and the compassion of God in Christ came together in a particularly powerful way.

It was John who first taught me Pauline Theology and especially the Theologies of the Cross of both Paul and Mark. More, John introduced me to the systematic theology of Paul Tillich and in these ways and so many others provided both the biblical and philosophical foundation for everything else I have done either theologically or in spirituality. There is simply not a day that goes by that I do not draw on something John taught, a phrase he regularly used, a question he challenged me to grapple with on my own --- or an example he set. Especially, it was John's insistence that all Theology had to be pastoral, all theology had to be apologetic or "answering" theology in the truest sense (that is, in the sense of the Cross of Christ) that is his lasting legacy to me. It was John who reminded us "budding theologians" that, "Unless your theology can adequately grapple with and address the questions raised by the holocaust [i.e., the very worst human beings can and do visit on one another along with how God in the Christ Event supplies the answers to such inhumanity] it is unworthy of the name."

John had been a Jesuit and did graduate work in Theology at Fordham and a year in Strasbourg followed by Doctoral work at Tübingen University under Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltmann. He received his PhD in 1971. Thereafter, he taught Theology at St Mary's College (CA) in both BA and MA programs, at the SAT program of the GTU's Jesuit School, and at St Bernard's Institute (Graduate School of Theology and Ministry) in the Diocese of Albany, NY. Many religious, priests, deacons and laity had their theological educations given both new life and intellectual and spiritual rigor through their work under John. All were touched by his integrity, humanity, caring, and humor --- as well as by his brilliance and the breadth and depth of both his knowledge and faith. His wife Odile (whom John adored!) was (and remains) as much a part of the life of many of John's students as John was.

I wanted to include a passage from one of John's books, one of my favorites (both the book and the passage!). I think it is the heart of the Christian truth he entrusted himself to and hoped his students would come to understand and make the center of their own faith and theological work. Here John is writing about the fact that on the cross is the one whom the eternal God has sought as his counterpart forever, one who is constituted as human precisely in his dialogue with God. At the same time he is reflecting on what we mean when we identify God as Emmanuel --- God with us. In speaking about the salvific effect of this dialogue, especially as it reaches fullness on the cross, he says,

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal one takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

John Dwyer no longer walks in the shadow of death. For him death has both come and been defeated and entirely transfigured in Christ. The dialogue with God that so clearly characterized John's entire adult life is continued in a new way in the very heart of the God who has taken John into himself. Like many, I grieve his death, but even more I (we!) celebrate a life spent revealing an infinitely loving God in both strength and weakness, wholeness and brokenness, vigor and diminishment. Especially, we each and all celebrate a marvelously gracious God and John's eternal life with(in) him whom John loves and even yet serves so well. Thanks be to God!

Addendum: Mass of Resurrection and Memorial Masses in New York and California

Mass of the Resurrection will be celebrated Saturday, January 23, 2016 at 11 am at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, 125 Eagle Street, Albany, New York.

A Memorial Mass will be celebrated Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 11 am at St. Theresa’s Roman Catholic Church in Windham, New York.

A Memorial Mass will be celebrated Saturday, March 12, 2016 at 2:00 pm at the St Mary's College Chapel, Moraga, CA.

Memorial donations may be made to the Tannersville Fire and Rescue, Tannersville, New York 12485 or Saint Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry, 40 North Main Street, Albany, New York 12230.

Entering Advent: Embracing the Already and Not Yet of Mid-Air Living in Christ

Almost two weeks ago (Saturday evening) my pastor and I had an email conversation about the situation in Paris and Sunday's readings which were so dramatically apocalyptic in tone and content. The underlying Theology we were both challenged by was the Johannine perspective which is sometimes called "realized eschatology" --- a term which captures the "already and the not yet" character of the world in which we live and of the Kingdom of God for which we and all of creation yearn. We recognize clearly that our world is one where Jesus' passion has "defeated death" and thus, everything has changed but at the same time we recognize that death is still with us and our world is not yet all it is meant to be; it is not yet the world in which God is "all in all."

Monks of Tibhirine

Father John shared a quote with me that Saturday evening from John Shea --- the theologian and poet whose poem on the resurrection I shared here around last Easter, (cf., After the End) John Shea speaks of "mid-air living" which is something like when a trapeze artist lets go of one bar and then --- after what seems like a long moment ---  grabs the wrists of the person catching him/her. "This life is/always will be a time of transition./ Change can be quick,/ in the “blink of an eye,”/ but transition is slow."

Thus, John began his homily with a reference to the Cirque de Soleil and drew out this image of a change that happens quickly "in the blink of an eye" but a transition that can (seemingly at least) take forever." I thought the image and Father John's use of it were truly brilliant as an illustration of the situation in which we Christians find ourselves today. In the face of the apocalyptic tone of so many of the readings over the past two weeks John Shea's reference to mid-air living and Father John's images from the Cirque de Soleil have stayed with me these last couple of weeks. That was especially true as we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. Once again the contrast between the world of everyday reality and the world where God is sovereign in Christ, worlds which interpenetrate one another but are not yet one spoke of "mid-air living".

Today's readings underscore the same imagery and dynamic. Daniel is actually recognized as the "already but not-yet" book of the Old Testament. It speaks of two very different Kingdoms, both present in this same world of ours. One is all-too-recognizable. Originating from the four winds and drawn from the sea (a symbol of primordial chaos and too, sinful reality) are four monsters, four rulers which are "like men" or become "like men" but are characterized as less than and other than that at the same time. One has a human-like brain and is seriously smart, one is "like a bear" and characterized by his cruelty, He is a devourer of much flesh. A third is drawn as a leopard with four heads; to him all dominion is given. A fourth is very like a man but again, is not human; he is incredibly strong and arrogant.

And finally, in Daniel's picture of the world he knows, there is another truly sovereign Ruler called the Ancient One or the Ancient of Days. When thrones are set up this ruler's trappings are marked by flames and incredible whiteness --- symbols of power, judgment, mystery, life, and purity. The throne itself has "wheels of fire" --- a symbol whose meaning is now uncertain. Some say it symbolizes the notion that the throne is moveable and will no longer be in Jerusalem --- an idea supporting the notion that God will be Lord over all nations, not just Israel; others suggest that this Ruler, God's very self, has taken the throne of heaven and moved it to earth. In any case, this Ruler and his Kingdom are present alongside the "monsters" described in the first part of the lection and their Kingdoms. Daniel thus describes an ambiguous world in which there are two kinds of kingdoms, two kinds of sovereignty and even two kinds of time existing alongside one another. As Daniel puts it, the kingdoms standing in opposition to the Kingdom of the Ancient One have already been judged and the great beast (Death itself?) has been slain but, [[The other beasts, which also lost their dominion,were granted a prolongation of life for a time and a season.]]

The significant lesson in this is twofold: 1) our God is and will always be with us in the midst of this world's trials, and 2) one day God's kingdom will be established in a way which transforms us and our world completely. Judgment, the making right of all reality has begun, and we ourselves will be made truly human only in light of the sovereignty of God. In Daniel it is from the Sovereignty of the Ancient One that the Son of Man comes. Originally the term "son of man" meant one who is truly human and it had messianic connotations. Eventually, in light of the Christ Event, it came to be seen to refer to Jesus, God's anointed One. This Son of Man is seen as the  destroyer of death and the redeemer of our world, the one in whom reality is set to rights.

Today's Gospel underscores the sense that in Christ God's Kingdom has come upon us in a truly unexpected way. Jesus has been healing and preaching the Kingdom. The blind see, the deaf hear and crippled people walk because of him. But many remain blind and in bondage; many refuse to see. All the signs are that the Ancient One has "moved his throne" and Jesus iterates that people must learn to see these signs right in front of them. And of course, in a world filled with terrorism and death it is not always easy today either to see the signs that the Kingdom of God has come amongst us. It is not always easy to hold onto the hope Daniel wanted to inculcate in his own people and which Luke and John with his Gospel of "mid-air living" (realized eschatology) proclaims. It is not easy to claim the humanity which is ours in Christ who is the Son of Man so long hoped for when that contrasts so wildly with the other sovereignties of our world. The change we were looking for came quickly and definitively in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It came in wholly unexpected ways, in incarnation, powerlessness and self-emptying; in relative obscurity, poverty and shameful death. In Christ eternal death has been destroyed. Transition though takes a long time.

This weekend we begin the new liturgical year as we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. Once again the Church offers us the chance to "begin at the beginning" and allow ourselves and our world to be further transformed by the God who has set up his throne amongst us. Today's readings remind us what Daniel and Israel hoped for, what they saw all of creation moving towards in a long moment of trial and transformation. Let us enter into this season with joy and hope as those who see reality with new eyes, the eyes of the dreamer and prophet Daniel, the eyes of Jesus whose vision is filled with the love of his Father, the eyes of those who have been made a new creation in Christ. Let us commit to working toward that day when God will be all in all.  Let us commit to being People who live fully in that long and difficult, but also joyful moment of already and not yet.

Central Theological Insights around Which My Life Spirals Ever Deeper

[[Dear Sister Laurel, since you have studied Theology I wondered what are the most important lessons you have learned over the years. It may be these are theological or spiritual but are there certain lessons you keep coming back to, you know, points around which you circle and go ever deeper? Are any of these specific to your life as a hermit?]]

 What a terrific set of questions! I especially like the image of circling and going deeper because both my director and other friends and I sometimes speak of the spiral pattern to growth. We return to the same pieces of growth, the same insights, the same bits of clarity but each time from a different and deeper perspective. Each time the center is closer or I exist closer to the center. That happened once recently as I wrote about the gift of emptiness and the linkage between the hiddenness of the eremitical vocation and the work of God within us. At the time I noted that all the pieces had been there and I had written and spoken of each of them before --- often many times --- but I had never placed these two together in exactly this way before. They glowed for me with a kind of new incandescence  -- as though a blue piece of the theological puzzle and a red piece, once joined together, glowed with a purple light. A handful of the more significant lessons I have learned --- usually both theologically and spiritually --- are as follows:

The  human heart is a theological reality:

One of the most personally and professionally important pieces I can point to is the notion that the term "heart" is a theological term, and the human heart is, by definition, the place where God bears witness to Godself. The corollary is also important, namely, it is not so much that we have a heart and God comes to dwell there but that where God dwells we have a (human) heart! It was from this bit of theology taken from a footnote in an article on kardia (Kαρδία) in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament that a number of other emphases in my life and writing come. The notion that human beings ARE a covenant reality, a dialogue with God, a language event called to be Divine Word incarnate, comes from this insight (though they are related to other things as well). When coupled with the notion that God is ever new because God is eternal and eternal because God is ever new, this all led me to a notion of my own life which never allowed the sense that I was wounded beyond the capacity for new life, or the sense that there was nothing more to hope for.

The notion of heart as the place where God bears witness to Godself allowed me to see myself as having a deep place or reality within me where not even human woundedness and sinfulness can touch. There are darknesses in me, of course, but deeper than those is the light of God. There are distortions and untruths, but deeper than these is the God who is truth and who continually summons to truth, the One who creates new life with this Word and redeems the whole of reality. That God, whether I speak of him as Ground and Source of Being (cf. below) or as the center and depth dimension of my own heart, is the One who brings life out of death and makes hope rather than despair the pedal tone of my life.

God is Verb More than God is Noun:

As part of this theology is the notion that God is verb as much or more than God is noun. The dynamism of this idea, that God is not just Love but even more is Love-in-Act has been central for me. In thinking of the human being as a covenant or dialogical reality with Love-in-Act dwelling in the core of her being I also saw clearly that there was a dynamic and inalienable part of me that was constantly moving (or summoning) the whole of me towards abundant life and holiness. Speaking of God as a living God, thinking of the human soul as the constantly renewed breath of God, realizing that God was never summoned into action but was already moving, acting, healing, touching, etc, was important in the same way the idea that the word heart is a fundamentally theological term was important. Among other things, I realized I could never think of myself as wounded beyond the capacity to respond or beyond hope. There was always an unquenchable source of life living in my heart transcending the capacity of sin or death (in all its forms and variations) to stop or paralyze it. Moreover, this way of conceiving of God is both profoundly Scriptural while at the same time comporting with the "event nature" of the "true self" and the whole of reality we are dealing with more and more because of contemporary physics. It invites further theological reflection while taking quantum mechanics, etc, seriously. The same is true of the next bit of theology.

God is Ground and Source of Being; God is not A Being:

It is hardly possible to say all the ways this bit of theology has been crucial for me. Recently in explaining about the fact that miracles are not the result of a God who intervenes in and contravenes the laws of nature but is rather the revelation of the deepest "law" of reality I had occasion to refer to this famous bit of Paul Tillich's systematic theology. My understanding of and insistence that the whole of reality is at least potentially sacramental is rooted in this piece of theology. My work and reading regarding the relationship of science and faith --- the fact that these two are different ways of knowing the same reality, both with their own strengths and deficiencies, is built on this notion of God as Transcendent ground and source of being and meaning. The notion that God is the ground and source of all that is truly personal is another side of this foundational theological datum. Above all, perhaps, my sense that God is omnipresent but also summoning us each to enflesh "him" and bring him to a unique articulation in the ways only human beings seem able to do that is related to the notion of God as Ground and Source.

With regard to eremitical life it is the fact that union with God implies and in fact establishes our communion with others that is the primary key to my understanding eremitical solitude in terms not of aloneness so much as in terms of communion with God and all that is precious to God. Worldly solitude (and external or physical solitude) have more to do with being isolated from others than with communion and relatedness, but in Christian eremitical life solitude moves from and through this external solitude to a deep relatedness with God and others. Anyone can leave people behind and embrace a self-centered 'spirituality' marked by a selfish piety --- at least for a time --- but the paradox of authentic eremitical solitude is that when one embraces external or physical solitude in order to pray and be made God's own prayer, one also becomes more compassionate.

This is why canon 603 specifies a life "lived for others" --- not first of all because one's life is that of an intercessor (though one will surely pray for others) but because external solitude is the means to a literal compassion, a literal feeling with and for others involving the desire to alleviate suffering and mediate God and the hope God brings the isolated and marginalized to others. All of this is rooted in the fact that God is the ground of being and meaning; to move more deeply into union with God means to become more truly related to all else that is similarly related to and grounded in God.

Divine Sovereignty is the Counterpart of Human Freedom:

So often we pose our own freedom as something in conflict with the sovereignty of another but with God the opposite is true. The last three pieces of theology combine to reveal that human beings are truly themselves when God is allowed to truly be God. Because God is not A Being he never comes into competition with human beings --- as would inevitably and invariably happen if God were a being among other beings --- maybe especially as A supreme being. Instead though, God is the power underlying and within reality, the power driving and summoning to abundant life, to authenticity and to the reality of future and completion. This means (especially if the other insights are true) that if freedom is really the power to be the ones we are called to be, it must be seen as the counterpart to the sovereignty of God and God's call to be. So often it has been critically important that I understand that the will of God is the deepest law of my own true Self. Discerning the will of God means discerning where I am truly free, giving myself over to that will means giving myself over to my own deepest truth, giving myself over to the One who grounds my being and dwells as the core of my Self.  I am free when God is Lord. God is Lord to the extent I am truly free to be myself. So too for each and all of us.

Gospel Truth is ALWAYS Paradoxical:

When I began studying Theology my professor gave a lecture on two ways of thinking, the Greek way and the Biblical way, the way of compromise (thesis + antithesis ---> synthesis) and the way of radical relatedness where two apparently opposing realities are held together in tension and identity (thesis + antithesis does not equal conflict but = paradox). The most radical formulation of paradox living at the heart of Christianity is the Incarnation where Jesus is the exhaustive revelation of God to the extent he is exhaustively human, and where he is exhaustively human to the extent he reveals God. Jesus is strongest where he is weak, fullest where he is empty, richest where he has nothing at all to recommend him in worldly terms. The Trinity is also paradoxical rather than being some weird kind of new (or very ancient) math: where God is One, God is a Trinitarian Community of Love and where God is a Trinitarian community of Love God is truly One. Christianity is rooted in paradox and is always expressed in paradox: we have ourselves only to the extent we give ourselves away, insofar as we are mourners we will also know a deeper and more extensive joy, where we are rich in worldly terms we are poor in divine terms, etc, etc.

I always look for the paradox involved when I am doing theology --- so much so that I know if there is no paradox I have very likely transgressed into some form of heresy or other. Docetism, for instance, which takes its name from the Greek verb δοκεῖν (dokein) "to seem," takes the divinity of Jesus seriously at the expense of his humanity (he only seems human). Arianism, for instance, takes his humanity seriously at the expense of his divinity. The Christological task which confronts the systematic theologian, but also the ordinary believer in faith, is to hold the two things together in both tension and identity --- so that where Jesus is exhaustively human, there he is also the exhaustive revelation of God (despite the fact that humanity and divinity are not the same things).

Henri de Lubac once noted that one does not resolve or answer a paradox (to do so would compromise one or, more likely, both of the truths involved); rather, the only appropriate approach to paradox is contemplation. Pope Francis recently reminded us of the same thing. It is paradox which eventually allowed me to think of chronic illness as divine vocation (though I don't accept God wills illness), or to understand that in eremitical life the inability to minister to or love others in all the usual ways was, when lived with integrity, itself the ultimate ministry and love of others --- not in some bloodless and abstract way (not that that would be love anyway) but in the sense of living the deepest truth of human existence for the sake of others --- especially those who are without hope and those who, on the other end of the spectrum, believe they are their own best hope!

I am the Same as Everyone Else:

There were (and I guess still are) many things in my life which made (and make) me different from the people around me: family, interests, gifts, illness, desires and dreams and eventually even vocation. Though I always got on well with others, was well-liked, and did well in school, in athletics, music, work, etc, so I also stood out or apart. When I developed a seizure disorder it turned out not to be a kind of run-of-the-mill epilepsy (sorry, but some epilepsies really are kind of "run-of-the-mill" to my mind) but a medically and surgically intractable epilepsy whose seizures were rare and often initially unrecognized. Everything in my life seemed to point to my "difference". But at one point, perhaps 35 or so years ago I came to see myself clearly as the same as everyone else --- even in my differences most fundamentally I was the same.

As a result, I came to experience a profound empathy with others and a sense that the things which seemed to set me apart were, in one way and another, little different from the things which seemed to set others apart. I suppose I discovered paradox here too. I suspect when people write of Thomas Merton's experience on that street corner in Louisville, they are describing something similar to what happened to me. I can't point to a single event  as the focus of this shift, nor can I say I realized I loved everyone at that moment as happened to Merton, but the compassion and empathy Merton experienced sounds similar to what I experienced. Moreover, I believe Merton, especially as monk and (potential) hermit schooled in a "fuga mundi" way of approaching the world outside the monastery and wounded by his Mother's death and other circumstances from childhood and young adulthood, was coming from a place where he felt profoundly alien or different in many of the ways I had myself done. (N.B. Some Cistercians eschew the fuga mundi approach to monastic life on the basis of Trappist and Trappistine authors; Merton too seemed to eschew this approach when he wrote about "the problem" of the World, but my sense is he was still schooled in it in his early years at Gethsemani.)

In any case, the source of my worst suffering --- not least because it is self-reinforcing and self-isolating --- turned out to be seeing myself as different from everyone else, and the source of greatest joy came to be seeing myself in terms of my commonality with others. This is not an abstract truth (that would never have touched me) but is at least partly due to being profoundly understood by others who did not share the same differences (though no doubt they had their own). In any case, as a result (and to the extent I truly know this), I am not threatened by others' gifts, frightened by their differences, nor driven to despair by my own differences and deficiencies. Neither do I have a need to use my own gifts as weapons to humiliate others or prove my own superiority (or even my own competence). All of these are are part of our more profound "sameness" or commonality. This was a central piece of coming to truly love myself and others as myself.  It is the sine qua non without which no one can truly minister to others. Again, I am not entirely certain how I came by it, but I recognize it as a great gift and something that makes living Christianity and religious (and especially eremitical) life really possible.

Our God Reveals Godself in the Unexpected and Unacceptable Place:

I won't write a lot about this here except to say please check out posts on the theology of the Cross. There is no part of my life that is untouched by Paul's Theology of the Cross. Every part of my own theology is informed by the Cross. Recently I wrote about kenosis and the possibilities which still exist when one has been entirely emptied of every discrete gift and potential for ministry --- if only one can remain open to God. It is from such a position of emptiness, incapacity, and even certain kinds of failure, that Jesus' obedience (openness and responsiveness) to God opens our broken and sinful World most fully to God's redemption.

It is Mark's similar theology that gives me a sense that when all the props are kicked out God's faithfulness is the single thing we can count on, the thing that brings life out of death, communion with God out of godlessness, meaning out of absurdity and so forth. The notion that God becomes incarnate, that God does not hesitate to do what no other merely putative god would do, that the God of Jesus Christ accepts dishonor and shows a power which is truly perfected in weakness --- and that this God can be found in the unexpected and entirely "unacceptable" place --- is the source of all my hope and strength. It is an immeasurable mystery I am happy to reflect on, walk into and explore for the whole of my life. Such a God is paradoxical and so is such a gospel. In truth it is this theology of the cross and the paradoxical God it reveals that is the real source and ground of all of the other things I have already spoken about here.

There are probably a few other pieces of theology that are pivotal in my own life. One I haven't mentioned here is the notion that humility is a name we give the the dignity we possess as those accepting the God of Jesus Christ and ourselves in light of that God; humility is something God raises us to and the appropriate verb is to humble, not to humiliate. The second truth I have always clung to is that anyone seeking to do serious theology must come to terms with the Holocaust. It is here that the Theologies of the Cross of Paul and Mark and so many of the other pieces or insights I have mentioned find their ultimate test of theological validity --- far more, of course, than they do in the much smaller struggles of my own life. In any case, I will leave this here for now and  come back to finish later --- I need to think about which of these are specific to eremitical life. In the meantime I hope what I have written so far is helpful.

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.

Followup Questions on the notion of Bringing "One's Entire Availability"

[[Sister Laurel, Can it be that simple - that God just wants me to live "on friendly terms" with him? (It brings tears to my eyes to just write this sentence.) Is that what the "abyss" is all about? Just to live with him even when I don't feel him present and only know by faith he has promised to be there - "on friendly terms?" To  do all the mundane things "with him" - not even "for him" - because I can't bring anything worth having except my being entirely available to him? So where, then, does the "doing" fit in -- the seeking/seeing him in others, serving him by serving others? Since I am not a hermit, how does this translate to the active life - because I think it must. How do I "spend myself" if I bring nothing worth having to him? ]]

Thanks for your questions and the chance to reflect on all this further. My own thought is coming together in new ways in all of this so I offer this response with that in mind. Here is a place where words are really critical. First, yes, it is that simple but no one ever said simple meant easy or without substantial cost. Neither does simple mean that we get there all at once. This is simple like God is simple, like union with God is simple, like faith is simple. In other words it speaks as much of a goal we will spend our whole lives attaining as it does the simplicity of our immediate actions. That quotation (from The Hermitage Within regarding bringing one's entire availability and living on friendly terms with God) is something I read first in 1984 some months after first reading canon 603. I posted it in the sidebar of this blog in 2007 as I prepared for solemn profession. And now I have returned to it yet again only from a new place, a deeper perspective. It represents one of those spiral experiences, the kind of thing T.S. Eliot writes about when he says: [[We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.]]

Secondly, the quotation referred to bringing " my entire availability" not just to "being entirely available". While these two realities are profoundly related and overlap, I hear the first as including the second but therefore as committing to something more as well. I think bringing one's entire availability means bringing one's whole self for God's own sake so that God might really be God in all the ways that is so. As you say, it implies being available to God, doing things with God, being open to awareness of God and God's will, but more, it says "I bring you all my gifts, all my neediness and deficits, myself and all the things that allow you to be God. I open myself to your love, your recreation, your healing, your sovereignty, your judgment; I bring myself in all the ways which might allow you to be God in my life and world." It means, I think, that I allow myself to be one whose entire purpose and meaning is in the mediation of God's presence and purposes. And this, I think, is a commitment to being entirely emptied and remade so that my whole life becomes transparent to God.

As I think more about this it seems to me "my entire availability" is something we can only offer God.  "My entire availability" seems to me to mean bringing myself to God in ways which would possibly be an imposition, unsafe (for them and for me), and pastorally unwise or simply unloving in the case of others. "Being entirely available," on the other hand, sounds to me like bringing myself as I am and allowing God to share in my activities and life as it is but, for instance, not necessarily giving God my entire future and past, my entire self -- body and soul, physically, mentally and spiritually. It also sounds like the focus is on gifts, but not on emptiness and need. Our world is certainly familiar with the idea of bringing one's gifts, but to bring one's "weakness," "shame", and inabilities is rarely recognized as something we are called to sign up for at church (or wherever) to offer to others. Despite the importance of vulnerability in pastoral ministry bringing one's "weakness," "shame", deficits, and inabilities is rarely recognized as something we must offer to God if we are to bring others the Gospel as something whose truth we know intimately.

Thus, I think, that "entire availability" means that I also bring my deficits and deficiencies and that I do so trusting that God can make even these bits of emptiness something infinitely valuable and even fruitful to others. To be available to God and to bring one's entire availability may indeed be the same thing but they sound different to me --- overlapping, yes, but different. Whether I am correct or not in this, the formulation in the passage quoted from The Hermitage Within pushes me to envision something much more total and dynamic than the other formulation. Other things push me to this as well, not least Paul and Mark's theologies of the cross, Jesus' kenosis even unto godless death and descent into hell, and the conviction I have that every hermit must be open to being called to greater reclusion.

Entire Availability for Jesus and for the Hermit:

In light of these, I think for the hermit "my entire availability" means bringing (and maybe relinquishing or actually being stripped of) precisely those discrete gifts which might be used for others, for ministry, for being fruitful in the world. Gifts are the very way we are available to others. Alternately, those ways we are available to others are our truest gifts (including --- when transfigured to mediate the love and mercy of God --- our emptiness and incapacity). This is why a person claiming to be a hermit as a way of refusing to use her gifts or simply failing to be available to others, a way of being selfish and misanthropic, is one of the greatest blasphemies I can think of. But to be stripped of gifts or talents in solitude so that God's redemption is all we "have" is an entirely different thing indeed --- and one which absolutely requires careful and relatively lengthy mutual discernment. In any case, the eremitical life means bringing to God every gift, every potentiality and deficiency one has so that God may do whatever God wishes with them. Eremitical solitude is not about time away so one becomes a better minister (though that may also happen), nor greater degrees of prayer so one's service of others is better grounded (though it will surely do that as well). For those called to these eremitical solitude and commitment to eremitical hiddenness reflect an act of blind trust that affirms whatever God does with one --- even if every individual gift is left unused --- will be ultimately significant in the coming of the Kingdom because in this way God is allowed to be God exhaustively in these lives.

When we think of Jesus we see a man whose tremendous potential and capacity for ministry, teaching, preaching, simple availability and community, was stripped away. In part this happened through the circumstances of his birth because he was shamed in this and was seen as less capable of honorable contributions or faithfulness. In part it was because he was a carpenter's son, someone who worked with his hands and was therefore thought of as less intellectually capable. In part it was because he was more and more isolated from his own People and Religion and assumed a peripatetic life with no real roots or sources of honor --- except of course from the One he called Abba. And in part it was because even his miracles and preaching were still insufficient to achieve the transformation of the world, the reconciliation of all things with God so that God might one day truly be all in all. Gradually (or not so gradually once his public ministry began) Jesus was stripped of every individual gift or talent until, nailed to a cross and too physically weak and incapable of anything else, when he was a failure as his world variously measured success, the ONLY thing he could "do" or be was open to whatever God would do to redeem the situation. THIS abject emptiness, which was the measure of his entire availability to God and also to us(!), was the place and way he became truly and fully transparent to his Abba. It also made the effectiveness of his ministry and mission global or even cosmic in scope.

This, it seems to me is really the model of the hermit's life. I believe it is what is called for when The Hermitage Within speaks of the hermit's "entire availability."  One traditionalist theology of the cross suggests that Jesus raised himself  from godless death to show he was God. The priest I heard arguing this actually claimed there was no other reason for the resurrection! But Paul's and Mark's theologies of the cross say something very different; namely, when all the props are kicked out, when we have nothing left but abject emptiness, when life strips us of every strength and talent and potential, God can and will use this very emptiness as the source of the redemption of all of reality --- if only we give that too to God. Hermits, but especially recluses, are called by God to embrace a similar commitment to kenosis and faith in God. We witness to the power of God at work when perhaps all we can bring is emptiness and "non-accomplishment".

Questions on Active Ministry:

Nothing in this means the non-hermit is not called to use her gifts as best she can. Of course she is called to minister with God, through God, and in God. Her availability to others is meant to be an availability to God and all that is precious to God. We all must spend ourselves in all the ways God calls us to. But old age, illness and other circumstances make some forms of this impossible. When that is true we are called to a greater and different kind of self-emptying, a different kind of availability. We are called to allow God to make of us whatever he wills to do in our incapacity. We are called to witness to the profoundest truth of the Gospel, namely, that not only does our God bring more abundant life out of life and move us from faith to faith but he will bring life out of death, meaning out of absurdity and senselessness, and hope out of the desperate and hopeless situations we each know.

All we can bring to these situations is our entire availability whether measured in talents or incapacity. For Christians our human emptiness is really the greatest form of potential precisely because our God is not only the one who creates out of chaos, but out of nothing at all. Our gifts are wonderful and are to be esteemed and used to serve God and his creation, but what is also true is that our emptiness can actually give God greater scope to be God --- if only we make a gift of it to God for God's own sake. (Remember that whenever we act so that God might be God, which is what I mean by "for God's own sake," there is no limit to who ultimately benefits.) The chronically ill and disabled have an opportunity to witness to this foundational truth with the gift of their lives to God. Hermits, who freely choose the hiddenness of the silence of solitude, I think, witness even more radically to this truth by accepting being freely stripped of every gift --- something they do especially on behalf of all those who are touched by weakness, incapacity, and emptiness --- whenever and for whatever reason these occur.

The Abyss:

You and I have spoken about the "leap into the abyss" in the past and you ask about it specifically so let me add this. For those not part of that conversation let me remind you that I noted that while leaping into the abyss is a fearful thing (i.e., while, for instance, it is an awesome, frightening, exhilarating thing), we don't have to hope God will eventually come to find us there; God is already there. God is the very One who maintains and sustains us in our emptiness and transforms that emptiness into fullness. That is the lesson of Jesus' death, descent, resurrection and ascension. There is no absolutely godless place as a result of Jesus' own exhaustive obedience (openness and responsiveness) to God.

Yes, I believe the emptiness I have spoken of through this and earlier posts is precisely the abyss which Merton and others speak of. Kenosis is the way we make the leap. The notion of "entire availability" involves a leap (a commitment to self-emptying and stripping) into the depths of that abyss we know as both void (even a relatively godless void) and divine pleroma. (In Jesus' case his consent to enter the abyss of sinful death was consent to enter an absolutely godless void which would be transformed into the fullness of life in and of God). It is first of all the abyss of our own hearts and then (eventually) the abyss of death itself. We ordinarily prepare for the abyss of death to the degree we commit to entering the abyss of our own hearts. Whether we experience mainly profound darkness or the glorious light of Tabor, through our own self-emptying in life and in death we leap securely into God's hands and take up our abode in God's own heart.

Thomas, Called "Didymus": What was his Doubt Really About? (Reprise with Postscript)

Today's Gospel focuses, as readings all week have done, on the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, and one of the lessons one should draw from these stories is that we are indeed dealing with bodily resurrection, but therefore, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. It is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, in other words, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we as embodied persons will come to perfection beyond the limits of death. It is not just our souls which are meant to be part of the new heaven and earth, but our whole selves, body and soul.

The scenario with Thomas continues this theme, but is contextualized in a way which often leads homilists to focus on the whole dynamic of faith with seeing, and faith despite not having seen. It also makes doubt the same as unbelief and plays these off against faith, as though faith cannot also be served by doubt. But doubt and unbelief are decidedly NOT the same things. We rarely see Thomas as the one whose doubt or whose demands SERVE true faith, and yet, that is what today's Gospel is about. Meanwhile, Thomas also tends to get a bad rap as the one who was separated from the community and doubted what he had not seen with his own eyes. The corollary here is that Thomas will not simply listen to his brother and sister disciples and believe that the Lord has appeared to or visited them. But I think there is something far more significant going on in Thomas' proclamation that unless he sees the wounds inflicted on Jesus in the crucifixion, and even puts his fingers in the very nail holes, he will not believe.

What Thomas, I think, wants to make very clear is that we Christians believe in a crucified Christ, and that the resurrection was God's act of validation of Jesus as scandalously and ignominiously Crucified. I think Thomas knows on some level anyway, that insofar as the resurrection really occured, it does not nullify what was achieved on the cross. Instead it renders permanently valid what was revealed (made manifest and made real) there. In other words, Thomas knows if the resurrection is really God's validation of Jesus' life and establishes him as God's Christ, the Lord he will meet is the one permanently established and marked as the crucified One. The crucifixion was not some great misunderstanding which could be wiped away by resurrection. Instead it was an integral part of the revelation of the nature of truly human and truly divine existence. Whether it is the Divine life, authentic human existence, or sinful human life --- all are marked and revealed in one way or another by the signs of Jesus' cross. For instance, ours is a God who has journeyed to the very darkest, godless places or realms human sin produces, and has become Lord of even those places. He does not disdain them even now but is marked by them and will journey with us there --- whether we are open to him doing so or not --- because Jesus has implicated God there and marked him with the wounds of an exhaustive kenosis.

Another piece of this is that Jesus is, as Paul tells us, the end of the Law and it was Law that crucified him. The nail holes and wounds in Jesus' side and head -- indeed every laceration which marked him -- are a sign of legal execution -- both in terms of Jewish and Roman law. We cannot forget this, and Thomas' insistence that he really be dealing with the Crucified One reminds us vividly of this fact as well. The Jewish and Roman leaders did not crucify Jesus because they misunderstood him, but because they understood all-too-clearly both Jesus and the immense power he wielded in his weakness and poverty. They understood that he could turn the values of this world, its notions of power, authority, etc, on their heads. They knew that he could foment profound revolution (religious and otherwise) wherever he had followers. They chose to crucify him not only to put an end to his life, but to demonstrate he was a fraud who could not possibly have come from God; they chose to crucify him to terrify those who might follow him into all the places discipleship might really lead them --- especially those places of human power and influence associated with religion and politics. The marks of the cross are a judgment (krisis) on this whole reality.

There are many gods and even manifestations of the real God available to us today, and so there were to Thomas and his brethren in those first days and weeks following the crucifixion of Jesus. When Thomas made his declaration about what he would and would not believe, none of these were crucified Gods or would be worthy of being believed in if they were associated with such shame and godlessness. Thomas knew how very easy it would be for his brother and sister disciples to latch onto one of these, or even to fall back on entirely traditional notions in reaction to the terribly devastating disappointment of Jesus' crucifixion. He knew, I think, how easy it might be to call the crucifixion and all it symbolized a terrible misunderstanding which God simply reversed or wiped away with the resurrection -- a distasteful chapter on which God has simply turned the page. Thomas knew that false prophets showed up all the time. He knew that a God who is distant and all-powerful is much easier to believe in (and follow) than one who walks with us even in our sinfulness or who empties himself to become subject to the powers of sin and death, especially in the awful scandal and ignominy of the cross --- and who expects us to do essentially the same.

In other words, Thomas' doubt may have had less to do with the FACT of a resurrection, than it had to do with his concern that the disciples, in their loss, grief, desperation, guilt, and the immense social pressure they faced to renounce Jesus and the God he revealed, had truly met and clung to the real Lord, the crucified One. In this way their own discipleship will come to be marked by the signs of the cross as they preach, suffer, and serve in the name (and so, in the paradoxical power) of THIS Lord and no other. Only he could inspire them; only he could sustain them; only he could accompany them wherever true discipleship led them.

Paul said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified" because only this Christ had transformed sinful, godless reality with his presence, only this Christ had redeemed even the realms of sin and death by remaining open to God even within these realities. Only this Christ would journey with us to the unexpected and unacceptable places, and in fact, only he would meet us there with the promise and presence of a God who would bring life out of them. Thomas, I believe, knew precisely what Paul would soon proclaim himself, and it is this, I think, which stands behind his insistence on seeing the wounds and put his fingers in the very nail holes. He wanted to be sure his brethren were putting their faith in the crucified One, the one who turned everything upside down and relativized every other picture of God we might believe in. He became the great doubter because of this, but I suspect that instead he was the most faithful and astute theologian among the original Apostles. He, like Paul, wanted to know Christ Crucified and ONLY Christ Crucified.

We should not trivialize Thomas' witness by transforming him into a run of the mill empiricist and doubter (though doubting is an important piece of growth in faith)!! Instead we should imitate his insistence: we are called upon to be followers of the Crucified God, and no other. Every version of God we meet should be closely examined for nail holes, and the lance wound. Every one should be checked for signs that this God is capable of and generous enough to assume such suffering on behalf of a creation he would reconcile and make whole. Only then do we know this IS the God proclaimed in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, the only one worthy of being followed even into the darkest reaches of human sin and death, the only One who meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place, the only one who loves us with an eternal love from which nothing can separate us.

Postscript, 12 April. 2015. Fr Bob O'Donnell, CSP, made a great point today which fits with the rest of this piece but which I had never really focused on, namely, that Jesus's disciples were still cowering in a locked room when Thomas is told the risen Christ has appeared to them. (Fr. Bob also reminded us that Thomas was an undoubted leader in faith before this. cf, Jn 11:16) How can he believe this is true when the disciples are still so very fearful and isolated? Resurrection is something which in part occurs within us as Christ assumes personal power and presence in our lives. As we begin to live and act in his name, the bodily resurrection is realized there as well as in the breaking of the bread or the breaking open of the Scriptures, for instance. A sign that Christ is risen then is our transformation from frightened disciples to those who speak the truth with boldness (parrhesia). It is, as Fr Bob said today, in the transformation of the "timid ten" (for Judas was gone too) that Thomas and we too meet convincing signs of the truth of the resurrection appearances.

The Cross: Revelation of a Humility that Stands in Spite of Humiliation (Reprise)

Because it is Holy Week and we are approaching the Cross, I will be reposting several pieces on the theology of the cross. This will include a couple of pieces written just recently as in the instance of the following posted only a month ago at the end of February.  Especially I want to look at the cross from the vantage point of shame or dishonor vs humility and glory, a dimension which is often absent from systematic presentations of this theology.

[[Dear Sister, when we look at the cross I don't think your distinction between humiliation and humility holds. Jesus suffers all kinds of humiliation and is humbled. He shows real humility as a result of his humiliation.]] (cf. From Humiliation to Humility: Resting in the Gaze of God)

Thanks for your comment. I get what you are saying: it is in being humiliated that Jesus shows great humility, right? At the same time you are saying, I think, that humiliation leads to humility. In this you have actually put your finger on one of the most destructive confusions and interpretations of the cross ever imagined. You see, while I would agree that Jesus shows incredible humility in the midst of great humiliation, where we seem to disagree is that his humility is a result of his humiliation. Remember that Jesus possesses great humility throughout his life. He possesses it in spite of temptation, trial, and in spite of humiliation. Humiliation leads to or results in shame; humility, on the other hand, is a form of graced dignity.

Jesus knows who he is in light of God's love, "You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased", and he holds onto that sense of identity, that dignity we know as humility even in the midst of shaming torture and crucifixion. When others are betraying him, abandoning him, and trying him for blasphemy and betrayal of the God he knows as Abba, that is when others are shaming him, Jesus counters all of this by holding onto who he knows himself to be in the light of God's love.

It is important in reflecting on the cross that we distinguish between the judgment and activities of a sinful body-and-soul-murdering mankind and what is of God. The humiliation and arena of shame is created by human beings who see Jesus' incredibly wonderful works and deem him demonic and blasphemous. When they raise a person up it is to the heights of degradation and shame. But at that same point God sees most clearly his beloved Son, loving and obedient even unto death on a cross. From THAT vantage point what is revealed to us, what empowers Jesus even in his dying, is the epitome of humility --- a transcendent dignity which is perfected in weakness.

Again then, when you look at the cross and find humiliation you can trace that to the soul-killing judgment of men and women and to their murderous "execution of judgment." As I wrote recently, God NEVER humiliates. NEVER! Human beings demean, degrade, or hold us up to shame (as they did Jesus on the cross). God raises to humility. When you look at the cross and find genuine humility you must trace that to the graced knowledge of self that comes ultimately from God. It would be an incredibly destructive reading of the events of the cross to see humiliation as the cause of humility. Humility is the incredible dignity Jesus possesses in spite of the shaming humiliation human judgment subjected him to.

I sincerely hope this is helpful.