Death as the Last Enemy: On the Relationship of God to Death

[[Dear Sister, I read something you wrote about God not willing the torture and death of Jesus. (I'm sorry for being vague here; I can't cut and paste from your blog.) That was not what I was taught. In fact, I was told when at different times two of my children died of serious illness that God "had taken them" and also was reminded that I should not be angry with God because after all, "he had not spared his only begotten Son." Are you saying that God does not will our deaths either? That God did not take my daughters from me? And if God did not do this, then where are my children? What hope do any of us have??!!]]

First, I am terribly sorry for your loss!! Please know I will hold you in my own heart and prayer. Meanwhile, yes, I have written that Jesus' torture and death by crucifixion were not willed by God; these were inhuman acts dreamt up and made as sophisticated and ingenious a way of killing someone in horrendous torture --- i.e., in as unspeakable degradation, pain, and shame, as was (in)humanly possible. The first thing I think we must accept is that our God is a God of love and life and that, as Paul tells us, death is the last enemy to be brought under God's feet (1Cor 15:25-26). What God is is Love-in-Act and what God wills is life, abundant, integral life in dialogue and union with Himself. He does not will the death of anyone, including his only begotten Son. 

The second thing we must see and embrace then, is a somewhat different way of understanding Jesus' prayer and God's silence in the Garden of Gethsemane. Remember that there Jesus prays three times that his Abba allow this cup to pass him by. He does not pray that the cup not be given him by his Abba, but that God would remove it if possible. It is possible here to hear Jesus struggling in the presence of the One he loves and is loved by  best --- the One who always hears him --- to find another way forward, another way to live his life and vocation with integrity without running headfirst into the powers that will kill him --- and this includes not only the religious and political authorities, but the powers of sin and death as well. But God does not remove or take from Jesus the cup of integrity --- the cup of a life lived with integrity in dialogue with God drunk to its very dregs. 

Does God will Jesus' horrendous and shameful death by torture and/or crucifixion? No. We can't accept he does nor does any text say this specifically is the will of God. To believe it is the will of God is to accept as well that those who betrayed, rejected, lied about, abandoned, spat upon, tortured, and executed Jesus were fully cooperating with the will of God. That is simply impossible, and if true, would give us a God few of us could believe in or trust. Where is the "good news" in that? To struggle in the way Jesus does in Gethsemane is to engage with God in order to come to terms with God's actual will; here Jesus struggles to come to clarity about and embrace fully what it means to live one's life and vocation with complete and exhaustive integrity --- especially when that life/vocation is defined in terms of dialogue with and complete dependence upon God. Jesus' life certainly is about this and our own lives are meant to be the same. It is not Jesus' torture and death that God wills but his absolute integrity and exhaustively authentic God-dependent humanity. This is the cup God cannot, and will not remove from him.

In Jesus' passion, we must learn to tease apart the things that are of man, and especially of man's inhumanity versus what is authentically human, and those which are truly of God or are the will of God. What I find of God in the crucifixion is the affirmation and reassurance that God, the One Jesus calls Abba, does not despise even the most godless of situations, places, persons, and events. Our God is the one is who absolutely determined to be found in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Jesus, precisely as truly and authentically human, reveals this God to us and in the power of the Holy Spirit lives his life and speaks truth to power in a way which means that God does not despise the godless places in our lives; they are, in fact, the places God chooses to reveal his love and mercy most exhaustively.

Regarding the things of mankind, there are two aspects we must be able to see in Jesus' passion and death: first, there are the inhuman or less than truly human actions and attitudes of most of the actors in the narrative. These have to do with all the things I mentioned above in the second paragraph and several more besides -- the hunger for power and the correlative thirst for control at the expense of others, the fear associated with life in such a society for those who are diminished, oppressed, and exploited, the tendency to join in when a mob yells angry, bloodthirsty, and thoughtless slogans because otherwise we feel powerless, have no true sense of ourselves or of  genuinely belonging, and believe we can achieve these things by joining ourselves to such groups even when that leads us to harm others. All of these tend to dehumanize us. The instances of inhuman and dehumanizing behavior and attitudes in the passion narratives are legion. 

Secondly, there are examples of true or authentic humanity, human humility, integrity, faithfulness, generosity, and courage. Jesus is the primary exemplar here, but the beloved disciple, Jesus' Mother, and a few other women along with Joseph of Arimathea and the Centurion who proclaims Jesus the Christ/ Son of God are also participants modeling some of these virtues and dimensions of authentic humanity. What is especially true of authentic humanity is the way it is entirely transparent to God --- something I believe Catholic Christological dogma tried to express in the non-paradoxical language of hypostases, etc. So, the more truly human one is, the more transparent to God. And because this is so, when we see Jesus' helplessness, weakness, shame, brokenness, and so forth, we should also be able to see the paradoxical power of love that does not despise weakness, brokenness, or anything else that might once have been a sign of God's disfavor and absence. Instead, in the crucified Christ God makes these his own and there on the cross heaven and earth are drawn together in the very heart of Jesus precisely as crucified. (cf., 2 Cor 12:8-9 "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.")

The Good News of the Cross

For purposes of this essay, again, it is critically important to remember that death is not some sort of weapon God wields to punish, but again, is an event linked consequentially to estrangement and alienation from God, self, and others.  As noted above, it, along with Sin, is a power or principality which is a consequence of human sinfulness which Paul identifies as the last enemy to be put under the feet of God. It is imperative that we understand death, and especially what the NT calls "eternal death,"  "sinful death," or again, "godless death," as something linked to sinfulness with which God contends. God does this throughout the history of Israel's struggle against idolatry and he does it in Jesus' miracles, exorcisms, and in every other choice for life and love which Jesus makes on God's and others' behalf.  

What Paul also tells us is that the cross is precisely the place where God's ultimate victory over the powers of sin and death is won. It is the place where humans beings do their worst to an innocent other and it is a place where authentic humanity is made definitively real in space and time in Jesus in spite of the very worst human beings can do and experience. Finally, it is the place where God's love is revealed in its greatest depth and breadth; here we see God revealed definitively (i.e., made definitively real and known in space and time) as the One who will not allow sin  or death to have the final word or be the final scream or silence. Here on the cross Jesus remains obedient (that is, open and attentive) to the God who wills to be present to, with, and for us without condition or limit. In other words here on the cross heaven and earth come together as God has always willed. Paul says it this way: [[Very rarely will someone give his life for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God proves his love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,]] and again, [[God was in Christ, drawing all [creation] to Himself,]] and too, [[Jesus, the Christ was obedient unto death, even (godless, sinful) death on a cross."]] In all of this God is at work bringing a new heaven and new earth into existence where God will be all in all. More, God does this for us so that, as my major theology professor used to put it, human beings might "live in joy and die in peace."

Your Questions:

So, with all of that as background, let me try to respond to your questions more directly.  Yes, in light of this theology of the cross I am saying that God does not will Jesus' death or the death of any other person. Our God, the God and Abba of Jesus wills life --- full and abundant life, not death. He wills that Jesus live his life with integrity and that he bring God's love to the whole sweep of human existence, every moment and mood of it. This is Jesus vocation and the way he proclaims the coming of the Reign of God. He wills that Jesus oppose Sin -- that state of estrangement and alienation that occurs whenever human beings fall short of their truest humanity and choose idols instead of God. But death itself is not "of God" and godless, final, or eternal death, even less so. The truth is that while death invariably intervenes in and destroys life in a bewildering variety of ways, God in/through Christ and his cross intervenes in death and brings eternal life, meaning, and hope out of that. Tragically, Death did indeed take your daughters, but in Christ God has taken death into himself and transformed it entirely with his own presence, life, and love. In so doing he rescues your daughters from death and welcomes them into his own very life. The hope this makes possible extends to all of us in Christ.

Your children are well and entirely safe in God as well. That is the hope that we all share because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us all. God in Christ loves us so exhaustively and effectively that he will allow nothing to stand in the way of this love, not sin or death, not anything created or supernatural. We are made for God and nothing at all can prevent us from reaching that goal. Again, to quote Paul, [[Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. . .For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.]] (Romans 8: 35-39)

I sincerely hope this is helpful! It is meant not only for you but for any who have been taught some version of God using death as "punishment" or, when this doesn't fit the context, that he "calls us home" by causing our death. God calls us to himself, always and everywhere, including in our godlessness and relative inhumanity, but death is not his weapon or instrument in this; rather it is the enemy that he vanquishes in Jesus' own obedient (open to God) death.

Putting "Redemptive Experience in the Silence of Solitude" at the Center of Definitions of Eremitical Life

[[Dear Sister, thank you for answering my question about the meaning of "being a hermit in an essential sense". I think I get it now. I always have thought that a hermit is someone who lives in solitude and maybe too in silence but you are saying it is the redemptive experience which defines the essence of the term hermit for you and also for the church. Does the canon (603?) also say this? Is this what is implied with the term "silence of solitude"? (I think you have suggested this.) Are you at all concerned that you are narrowing the meaning of the word in a way most people will not have thought of and that may not coincide with the dictionary definition of the term "hermit"?]]

Thanks for following up. You will note I condensed your email a little. What I have been saying is that while all hermits live in silence and solitude, not all those who live in silence and solitude are hermits  --- at least not as the church defines the hermit, yes. You've got that too! As I have written here many times over the years, not every form of silence and solitude is eremitical and not every form of life that has been called "hermit" over the centuries has either the character or the dignity and meaning of the life the Church identifies as eremitical. Some are transitional forms of solitude occasioned by grief or depression, for instance; similarly then, some are necessary to get one's bearings and come to know oneself anew as one prepares to move on in one's life. Others are forms of misanthropy, or are rooted in personal failure and fear of living, for instance. Some are matters of temperament, or dictated by personal woundedness alone. Others are defined by artistic and literary pursuits of various kinds. None of these, of themselves, are eremitical and several can never become  authentically eremitical.

Similarly, not all forms of silence are eremitical. Some are rooted in personal muteness --- in the inability to address or be addressed by others --- whatever the etiology; some are a form of despair and a related inability to be related to others or, therefore, to oneself and the dialogue with God, others, and self which authentic human life actually is. Thus too, not every form of withdrawal is eremitical or worthy of eremitic life with its characteristic anachoresis. Some is unhealthy (see other posts on this) or outright pathological, cynical, and embittered. While the dictionary definition of hermit may have the effect of lumping all of these forms of life together with the life c 603 identifies as eremitical, and while the stereotypes we all know regarding what a hermit is, how they behave and are motivated, do the same, I don't think this serves the vocation of hermit. We can neither understand nor appreciate the eremitical vocation, whether communal or solitary unless we draw a strong red line between common definitions and the more narrow one I am using. Especially we cannot know eremitical life as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and world unless we take this more finely defined notion as our criterion of understanding.

What distinguishes all of these various forms of solitary and silent life at this level is the redemptive element and experience which either stands at or is missing from the heart of each of them. I do believe canon 603 points to this reality even though it never says "redemptive experience" in so many words. What it does say however is, "the silence of solitude" rather than silence and solitude, and also "for the salvation of the world". Both of these phrases point to something which is greater than the sum of either their parts (as in the case of the silence of solitude) or all of the central elements of the canon as a whole (i.e., vows, Rule of life, assiduous prayer and penance, silence of solitude, stricter separation, and supervision by bishop/delegate). Both phrases point to something which all of the central elements in the canon serve, support, and allow to emerge both in the life of the hermit (especially there) and for those to whom the hermit witnesses. I believe what they serve, support, and allow to emerge is the redemptive experience which is central to eremitical life in the silence of solitude.

I am not concerned that my way of understanding the meaning of "hermit" or "eremitical life" is narrower than a dictionary definition's might be. Remember that common dictionaries provide descriptive meanings --- that is meanings which describe how most people use these terms. They are not primarily prescriptive --- that is, they do not prescribe how words must be used. In some areas (faith, theology) common dictionary meanings significantly betray the more accurate meaning of terms because what is given are "the ways most folks understand and use these terms." If you ask someone (or a common dictionary) what a parable is you are apt to get the following, "a brief  religious story with a moral". But in the NT, Jesus' parables are decidedly not stories with a moral. Similarly, some dictionaries might define faith as "belief without evidence" or some form of unreasonable assent. Again, however, in Christianity, faith is neither of these but a profound and "transrational" form of  trust involving both knowing and being known. In the case of the term "hermit" I am speaking of a vocation summoning one to wholeness in Christ which is sought and lived on behalf of others as opposed to a choice for isolated existence "off the grid" which benefits oneself alone. In the case of the Catholic hermit solitude is a profoundly related and interrelated reality and a generous one as well. We point to this truth when we identify it as an ecclesial vocation. 

I am also not concerned with with what could be construed as a narrower way of defining hermits and eremitism because I believe this definition is 1) consonant with and rooted in an explication of c 603, which 2) I have come to from my personal experience of living the life (rather than from merely reading about it for instance), and 3) as note above, this definition reflects the gift this life is from the Holy Spirit to the church and world, and allows the eremitical life to be truly esteemed as a healthy, lifegiving, genuinely kerygmatic, and inspiring way of life. Again, it is a vocation which can console and challenge many and I believe it speaks especially to the chronically ill, those who are living alone after losing a spouse, for instance, and many others who might be wondering if their lives are meaningful because they can't or don't compete according to this culture's dominant paradigm of success or achievement, prestige and power. Stereotypes of "hermit life" and more common notions of what a hermit is cannot do this.

I hope this is helpful. Blessings on your Lenten journey!

Another Look: What does it mean to be a Hermit in an Essential Sense?

[[ Dear Sister, I wondered if you could say what you mean by the term "being a hermit in an essential sense"? I am just not "getting" it. Thank you.]]

Thanks for your question. I am going to repost something I wrote several years ago which I hope will be helpful. It responds to a question very like your own. In particular it speaks of the redemptive experience which must be at the core of an experience of the silence of solitude in an eremitical context. It is this experience and the fruit of it which will allow a person to identify a hermit (or someone who could consider themselves a hermit because essentially they are one) vs a non-hermit or mere loner. If this experience and its fruit are missing from a person's life -- no matter how much silence or solitude they live daily --- I believe they are not a hermit in the way the Church understands the term and certainly not as I write about hermits. When Canon 603 uses the term "the silence of solitude" it is speaking of a reality beyond mere external silence and physical solitude; it is speaking of the fruit of a redemptive process which has occurred through the grace of God in silence and solitude. If this piece raises questions for you or is unclear in some way I hope you will write back with those specific questions! Thanks yourself.

[[Dear Sister when you have spoken of readiness for discernment with a diocese and even temporary profession as a solitary hermit you have said it is necessary for a person to be a hermit in some essential sense. Could you say more about what you mean by this phrase? I think maybe I know what you are talking about but I also find the phrase difficult to define. Thanks!]]

Introduction:

That's such a great and important question! For me personally, articulating the definition of this phrase or the description of what I mean by it has been a bit difficult. It is a positive phrase but in some ways I found my own senses of what I meant by this come to real clarity by paying attention to examples of inauthentic eremitical life, individuals who call themselves hermits, for instance, but who, while nominally Catholic, are isolated and/or subscribe to a spirituality which is essentially unhealthy while embracing a theology which has nothing really to do with the God of Jesus Christ.  To paraphrase Jesus, not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" actually  has come to know the sovereignty of the Lord intimately. In other words it was by looking at what canonical hermits were not and could or should never be that gave me a way of articulating what I meant by "being a hermit in some essential sense." Since God is the one who makes a person a hermit, it should not surprise you to hear I will be describing the "essential hermit" first of all in terms of God's activity. 

Related to this then is the fact that the hermit's life is a gift to both Church and world at large. Moreover, it is a gift of a particular kind. Specifically it proclaims the Gospel of God in word and deed but does so in the silence of solitude. When speaking of being a hermit in some essential way it will be important to describe the qualities of mission and charism that are developing (or have developed) in the person's life. These are about more than having a purpose in life and reflect the simple fact that the eremitical vocation belongs to the Church. Additionally they are a reflection of the fact that the hermit precisely as hermit reflects the good news of salvation in Christ which comes to her in eremitical solitude. If it primarily came to her in another way (in community or family life for instance) it would not reflect the redemptive character of Christ in eremitical solitude and therefore her life could not witness to or reveal this to others in and through eremitical life. Such witness is the very essence of the eremitical life.

The Experience at the Heart of Authentic Eremitism:

Whenever I have written about becoming a hermit in some essential sense I have contrasted it with being a lone individual, even a lone pious person who prays each day. The point of that contrast was to indicate that each of us are called to be covenantal partners of God, dialogical realities who, to the extent we are truly human, are never really alone. The contrast was first of all meant to point to the fact that eremitical life involved something more, namely, a desert spirituality. It was also meant to indicate that something must occur in solitude which transforms the individual from simply being a lone individual. That transformation involves healing and sanctification. It changes the person from someone who may be individualistic to someone who belongs to and depends radically on God and the church which mediates God in word and sacrament. Such a person lives her life in the heart of the Church in very conscious and deliberate ways. Her solitude is a communal reality in this sense even though she is a solitary hermit. Moreover, the shift I am thinking of that occurs in the silence of solitude transforms the person into a compassionate person whose entire life is in tune with the pain and anguish of a world yearning for God and the fulfillment God brings to all creation; moreover it does so because paradoxically, it is in the silence of solitude that one comes to hear the cry of all in union with God. 

If the individual is dealing with chronic illness, for instance, then they are apt to have been marginalized by their illness. What tends to occur to such a person in the silence of solitude if they are called to this as a life vocation is the shift to a life that marginalizes by choice and simultaneously relates more profoundly or centrally. Because it is in this liminal space that one meets God and comes to union with God, a couple of things happen: 1) one comes to know one has infinite value because one is infinitely loved by God, not in terms of one's productivity, one's academic or other success, one's material wealth, and so forth, 2) one comes to understand that all people are loved and valued in the same way which allows one to see themselves as "the same" as others rather than as different and potentially inferior (or, narcissistically, superior), 3) thus one comes to know oneself as profoundly related to these others in God rather than as disconnected or unrelated and as a result, 4) chronic illness ceases to have the power it once had to isolate and alienate or to define one's entire identity in terms of separation, pain, suffering, and incapacity, and 5) one is freed to be the person God calls one to be in spite of chronic illness. The capacity to truly love others, to be compassionate, and to love oneself in God are central pieces of this.

The Critical Question in Discernment of Eremitical Vocations:

 What is critical for the question at hand is that the person finds her/himself in a  transformative relationship with God in solitude and thus, eremitical solitude becomes the context for a truly redemptive experience and a genuinely holy life. When I speak of someone being a hermit in some essential sense I am pointing to being a person who has experienced the salvific gift the hermit's life is meant to be for hermits and for those they witness to. It may be that they have begun a transformation which reshapes them from the heart of their being, a kind of transfiguration which heals and summons into being an authentic humanity which is convincing in its faith, hope, love, and essential joy. Only God can work in the person in this way and if God does so in eremitical solitude --- which means more than a transitional solitude, but an extended solitude of desert spirituality --- then one may well have thus become a hermit in an essential sense and may be on the way to becoming a hermit in the proper sense of the term as well.

If God saves in solitude (or in abject weakness and emptiness!), if authentic humanity implies being a covenant partner of God capable of mediating that same redemption to others in Christ, then a canonical hermit (or a person being seriously considered for admission to canonical standing and consecration MUST show signs of these as well as of having come to know them to a significant degree in eremitical solitude.  It is the redemptive capacity of solitude (meaning God in solitude) experienced by the hermit or candidate as  "the silence of solitude"  which is the real criterion of a vocation to eremitical solitude. (See other posts on this term but also Eremitism, the Epitome of Selfishness?) It is the redemptive capacity of God in the silence of solitude that the hermit must reflect and witness to if her eremitical life is to be credible.

Those Putative "Hermits" not Called to Eremitical Solitude:

For some who seek to live as hermits but are unsuccessful, eremitical solitude is not redemptive. As I have written before the destructive power of solitude overtakes and overwhelms the entire process of growth and sanctification which the authentic hermit comes to know in the silence of solitude. What is most striking to me as I have considered this question of being a hermit in some essential sense is the way some persons' solitude and the label "hermit" are euphemisms for alienation, estrangement, and isolation. Of course there is nothing new in this and historically stereotypes and counterfeits have often hijacked the title "hermit".  The spiritualities involved in such cases are sometimes nothing more than validations of the brokenness of sin or celebrations of self-centeredness and social failure; the God believed in is often a tyrant or a cruel judge who is delighted by our suffering -- which he is supposed to cause directly -- and who defines justice in terms of an arbitrary "reparation for the offences" done to him even by others, a strange kind of quid pro quo which might have given even St Anselm qualms. 

These "hermits" themselves seem unhappy, often bitter, depressed and sometimes despairing. They live in physical solitude but their relationship with God is apparently neither life giving nor redemptive -- whether of the so-called hermit or those they touch. Neither are their lives ecclesial in any evident sense and some are as estranged from the Church as they are from their local communities and (often) families. Because there is no clear sense that solitude is a redemptive reality for these persons, neither is there any sense that God is really calling them to eremitical life and the wholeness represented by union with God and characterized by the silence of solitude. Sometimes solitude itself seems entirely destructive, silence is a torturous muteness or fruitlessness; in such cases there is no question the person is not called to eremitical solitude. 

Others who are not so extreme as these "hermits" never actually embrace the silence of solitude or put God at the center of their lives in the way desert spirituality requires and witnesses to. They may even be admitted to profession and consecration but then live a relatively isolated and mediocre life filled with distractions, failed commitments (vows, Rule), and rejected grace. Some instead replace solitude with active ministry so that they really simply cannot witness to the transformative capacity of the God who comes in silence and solitude. Their lives thus do not show evidence of the incredibly creative and dynamic love of God who redeems in this way but it is harder to recognize these counterfeits. In such cases the silence of solitude is not only not the context of their lives but it is neither their goal nor the charism they bring to church and world. Whatever the picture, they have never been hermits in the essential sense.

Even so, all of these lives do help us to see what is necessary for the discernment of authentic eremitical vocations and too what it means to say that someone is a hermit in some essential sense. Especially they underscore the critical importance that one experiences God's redemptive intimacy in the silence of solitude and that one's life is made profoundly meaningful, compassionate, and hope-filled in this way.

A Contemplative Moment: Being Led into the Desert

 With joy and by the Spirit led the Church of Christ seeks desert paths,

all else forgotten, God alone to worship and to follow there. Amen

There silence shall set free the will,

the heart to one desire restore.

There each restraint shall purify

and strengthen those who seek the Lord.

There bread from heaven shall sustain

and water from the rock be struck

There shall his people hear his word,

 the living God encounter there.

All praise to God who calls his church

to make exodus from sin,

that tested, fasting, and prepared,

she may go up to keep the feast. Amen.

from the Camaldolese OSB office book

Lauds Lenten Hymn for Mondays and Thursdays

Looking Toward the Second Sunday of Lent: Thinking About the Transfiguration (Reprise)

Transfiguration by Lewis Bowman

Have you ever been walking along a well-known road and suddenly had a bed of flowers take on a vividness which takes your breath away? Similarly, have you ever been walking along or sitting quietly outside when a breeze rustles some leaves above your head and you were struck breathless by an image of the Spirit moving through the world? I have had both happen, and, in the face of God's constant presence, what is in some ways more striking is how infrequent such peak moments are.

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

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

Taking Offense at Jesus:

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

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

Learning to See With New Eyes:

I watched a video today of a man who was given Enchroma glasses --- a form of sunglasses that allows colorblind persons to see color, often for the first time in their lives. By screening out certain wavelengths of light, someone who has seen the world in shades of brown their whole lives are finally able to see things they have never seen before; browns are transformed into yellows and reds and purples and suddenly trees look truly green and three-dimensional or the colorful fruit of these trees no longer simply blend into the same-color background. The man was overwhelmed and overcome by what he had been missing; he could not speak, did not really know what to do with his hands, was "reduced" to tears and eventually expressed it all as he hugged his wife in love and gratitude. Meanwhile, family members were struck with just how much they themselves may have taken for granted as everyday they moved through their own world of "ordinary" color and texture. The entire situation involved a Transfiguration almost as momentous as the one the disciples experienced in today's Gospel.

For most of us, such an event would overwhelm us with awe and gratitude as well. But not Peter --- at least it does not seem so to me! Instead he outlines a project to reprise the Feast of Tabernacles right then and there. In this story Peter reminds me some of those folks (myself included!) who want so desperately to hang onto and even control amazing prayer experiences --- immediately making them the basis for some ministerial project or other; unfortunately, in doing so, they, in acting too quickly and even precipitously, fail to appreciate these experiences fully or learn to live from them! Peter is, in some ways, a kind of lovable but misguided buffoon ready to similarly build booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus in a way which is consistent with his tradition --- while neglecting the qualitative newness and personal challenge of what has been revealed and needs to be processed in personal conversion. In some way Matt does not spell out explicitly, Peter has missed the point. And in the midst of Peter's well-meaning activism comes God's voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!" In my reflection on this reading this last weekend, I heard something more: "Peter! Sit down! Shut up! This is my beloved Son! Listen to him!!!"

Like Peter, and like the colorblind man who needed to wear the glasses consistently enough to allow his brain to really begin to process colors in a new way, we must take the time to see what is right in front of us. We must see the sacred which is present and incarnated in ordinary reality. We must listen to the One who comes to us in the Scriptures and Sacraments, the One who speaks to us through every believer and the whole of creation. We must really be the People of God, the "hearers of the Word" who know how to listen and are obedient in the way God summons us to be. This is true no matter who we are or what our usual station in life. Genuine obedience empowers new life, new vision, new perspectives and reverence for the ordinary reality God makes Sacramental. 

There is a humility involved in all of this. It is the humility of the truly wise, the truly knowing person. We must be able to recognize how very little we see, how unwilling or unable we often are to be converted to the perspective of the Kingdom, how easily we justify our blindness and deafness with our supposed knowledge, and how even our well-intentioned activism can prevent us from seeing and hearing the unexpected, sometimes scandalous God of newness (kainetes) standing there right in the middle of our reality.

Reflections on the Eremitical Vocation from the perspective of Allegri's "Miserere Mei, Deus"

Recently, in part because of the question I was asked about whether or not a hermit could or should sing office, I have been thinking more about the various tensions that exist in the eremitical vocation, especially the tension that exists between ecclesiality and solitude and also that between physical silence and what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude". While I was listening to a favorite piece of music -- Allegri's Miserere Mei, Deus done by the Tenebrae Choir  under the direction of Nigel Short -- I thought I could see a perfect representation of these elements and the tensions that exist between them at work in what is one of the most beautiful pieces I know. In some ways they reflect in a more vivid way the dynamics I know personally not only from living as a hermit with an ecclesial vocation, but also from playing violin both alone and in chamber groups and orchestras. I'll say a little about what I heard and saw in this production that was helpful to me in thinking about these central vocational elements and tensions below, but for now you might listen to this piece once or twice before reading on.

 

What struck me first is the dialogical nature of the work --- dialogical in a broad yet still profoundly personal sense of the term. Each and every person is dedicated to listening and responding on a number of levels, first of all to the composer and his music, notations, and text, but also to the director who interprets these realities and communicates this to the singers in gestures and expressions.  Every person is listening not only to themselves and the quality of sound they are producing, but to every other person in the ensemble. Each person is listening to a pulse within themselves which moves through the music and silences (rests) as well as to a mental sense of the music-as-heard over many different and differing performances. These will all guide the music each singer makes in response as they perform or live this work with personal and musical integrity.

What also struck me about this particular performance is the way one can hear the massed sound of all the voices but also clearly distinguish the individual voices (sometimes with the aid of one's eyes as different singers enunciate different syllables and/or notes in time --- we listen with all of our senses). The singers blend perfectly but they only do so insofar as they sing their own part in careful response to the the dynamic context which lets them be themselves alone in relationship. I was reminded most of the ecclesial nature of the eremitical vocation as I thought about this --- the way a beautiful performance is enhanced and completed only as it is sung/lived as an integral part of the whole. I thought this was especially true of the young male soloist whose silence was as critical to the balance and completion of the music as were his solos.

The way the schola in the main stands apart from the larger choir and at times is entirely silent but still very much part of the music as they listen so as to respond appropriately also made me think of the distinction between physical silence and the silence of solitude. And again, that was even more clear to me with the single voice of the young man standing up and "apart" in the arches above the nave and schola. His voice was often "heard" only in its silence and always in relation to others' welcoming  or receptive silence. How very much more than simple physical silence is this listening and participative silence!! It is foundational to the whole piece. When I think as well of the hidden but still-startlingly pervasive presence of the composer, his music, notations (not always easy to imagine what is meant here or there!), and depth of meaning of the text he is communicating, I think of the presence and place of God in the hermit's life --- and again, of the meaning of being bound to obedience in all of the myriad ways we must each allow and achieve if the music we are called to be is to be realized in all of its potential.

And finally, I was struck (and moved with a kind of poignant joy) at the way the now-silent soloist remained apart but very much present in the performance as the schola moved closer to the choir during the last portion of the piece and joined them in singing it. Again, a striking symbol or image for me of the profound difference between eremitical solitude or eremitical anachoresis (withdrawal) and being a lone person or individualist. It is the distinction between belonging integrally to the choir while making music in one's silence and merely standing apart mutely. It is this kind of silence the hermit brings to the Church as a whole, the charism or gift quality of eremitical life c 603 calls "the silence of solitude". As I have written here before, my very first experience of solitude (as opposed to isolation) and also of genuine community was of playing violin, both alone and in orchestra. That was in grade school when I was nine or ten. Now, all these years later music is still the most vivid symbol for my own understanding the nature of eremitical life and what canon 603 could well refer to instead as "the deep music of personal wholeness and holiness in God".

N.B., I am aware there were things which struck me about the Allegri which I haven't mentioned here --- not least the incredible control, power, and brilliance of the diminutive soprano doing the very high solo line. I thought how incredibly suited the human voice is for this and what an incredible instrument God has made in us as I watched and listened to her sing. In this way too we are language events. I was also struck afresh at how it is the way tensions are created and resolved in music that makes the most wonderful harmonies and create moments of real transcendence. Perhaps some of you will have other observations or reflections on the way the piece resonates with your own understanding of eremitical life or prayer, etc.

The text in both Latin and English can be found online (or cf. Psalm 51). Gregorio Allegri: Miserere Mei, Deus

Can/Should Hermits Sing Office??

[[Dear Sister, I do have a question, or rather a question put to me by some people. My prayer-life is structured around the Liturgy of the Hours, which I chant/recite and sing out loud on my own. When hearing about how I pray the Hours vocally, the questioners (priests) could not get their heads wrapped around the fact that I could try and live a life of silence and then not pray the Hours silently(!). I think their surprise mostly has to do with how they perceive silence and the silent life. Their question has set me thinking. I am planning to give them an answer.

There are some points I want to address in my answer. - The difference between personal prayer and the prayer of the Church. - How the Church’s liturgy presupposes a holistic (non-dualistic) anthropology. Celebration/worship is therefore not just something cerebral or disembodied, but uses all our senses and physical, mental and emotional faculties, and sanctifies our entire person. - How silence can lead to song, and in fact is a prerequisite for true sound/song/speech/word/Word. - How the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours speaks of moments of ‘Sacred Silence’ and in doing so therefore implies vocal prayer. - How although external silence is an important instrument in prayer-life, it does not determine and qualify the silence of solitude.

How would you react? What would be the points you would want to make clear? Perhaps you feel the Hours should indeed be prayed silently by a hermit? And if so, why? Are these suitable questions for a nice long blog-posting?! I hope so👌 If they are, there is no rush. First enjoy Christmas as well as enjoying rounding off your Mark-studies! (I have a another question up my sleeve, but will reserve that for 2021.....)]]

Many thanks for your question and your patience. We did finish the Gospel of Mark about a week and a half ago and are preparing to do the Gospel of Matthew now. But I have some weeks before that needs to be ready so here I am, finally getting to your question!!! Moreover, it's my Feast Day (Conversion of  St Paul in case I don't get this finished this evening) so it's a very good day to think and write about singing Office and the place of singing more generally in my own life!

 When I think of the way folks reacted to you I would be inclined to react myself by laughing a bit and commenting on how little hermits and their lifestyle are understood today (and have been all through history for that matter)! All of your points are fine; any complete response would include them or some version of them. (I have a quibble or question regarding your use of the term "qualify" in your observation on the silence of solitude and its relation to physical or external silence, but I get your main point and agree with that.) What seems especially important to me are your emphases on the whole person and the relation of physical  or external silence to Word; the distinction (and overlap) between physical silence and what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude" is also critical. In order to speak about these important elements, I would contextualize them within a theology of the obedient life (the life of prayer) and of human being as a dialogical reality or language "event" which is meant and called to mediate the presence of the real God in space and time. So, does the silence of eremitical life prevent hermits from singing Office? Why or why not?

First of all then, I suppose I would not say that I live a life of silence so much as I live a life of prayer centered on God which is open, attentive, and responsive to God. More, I live this life within an ecclesial context of physical solitude. That, of course absolutely requires physical silence, but important as it is, the eremitical life is not primarily about silence. If your friends, for instance, believe that silence is the overarching value of your life or is something you value without reference to a larger reality, viz, the call to obedient life, it could lead  to their misunderstand the nature of eremitical life. On the other hand, if they understand that it is seeking or being open to God that is primary,  that we are committed to learning to listen for/to as well as to respond fully to the One who reveals Godself in Christ to/in every person as well as in the whole of creation, they might have a bit easier time understanding the relative importance of silence and too, the difference between physical or external silence and the silence of solitude. 

My first point would be then that in the eremitic life obedience is more primary than silence; silence serves obedience in the eremitical life, both in terms of listening and in terms of being appropriately responsive. Both dimensions are included in the Christian notion of "hearkening" or "obedience". Thus, precisely because silence serves obedience (as does physical solitude in this context), it means that other things can and will relativize the hermit's physical silence. This is especially true if these things also contribute not only to her prayer, but to becoming God's own prayer in the world.

This last week I was rereading Wencel's book on Eremitic Life and I came across a passage I had once marked: "To search for God means above all to enter the way faith and silence that releases the spring of prayer at the bottom of the human heart." I believe, though, that he would agree with me that once it is released, it may express itself in song. (It may also express itself in poetry, painting, music, writing, etc.) Wencel also identifies God as the original abyss of silence, and in the same sentence he refers to this same reality as a "song of love." Wencel understands the Mystery which is at the heart of eremitic life and finds no conflict in identifying the deepest silence one can know with the song of love it also is. He is not concerned about the paradox he has constructed here because he knows these two things held together in tension express a larger and ineffable truth. Prayer shares the same paradox and is moved by the same Mystery. Hermits know silence. They move in it and through it and look for it to help transform them into an expression of the "silence of solitude" -- something much richer than the sum of physical silence and aloneness. It seems to me then that as I point to and then celebrate the coming to be of that deeper, richer reality canon 603 calls  "the silence of solitude," it is entirely  appropriate, even necessary that one will often do so in song!

Another piece of my own thought on this is the notion that human beings are dialogical at their very core. We are, in Gerhard Ebeling's terms, "language events" --- brought into being by the Word/Logos of God and brought to ever greater maturity and articulateness by every lifegiving word spoken to us and every integral response we make. We are beings who are summoned into existence and called to ever greater authenticity and fullness of being by God and our lives are shaped by the way we hearken to this Presence. We begin our lives incapable of speech or of choosing our own direction or allowing God to shape our lives. Circumstances may keep us relatively incapable, relatively mute -- though at the same time they may wound us so seriously that we are little more than a defensive "No!" or a scream of anguish. When we are loved, however --- consistently, truly, and profoundly loved, more and more we will find our own voice and express the love that has called us to growing wholeness. 

Sometimes our expression of this true existence will be silence, but it will not be the silence of muteness. Rather it will be the silence of a heart too full of awe and gratitude to express with words. Other times we will (try to) find words for it and write poetry or prose commensurate with what we are trying (and always failing) to express. And sometimes it will be in music or song. This does not mean we only sing when we are joyful; sometimes what we sing will have the character of lament, for instance. What is always true is that as we respond to the prayer God is making of us, we use the form of response which best suits the situation and who we are at that moment in time. Just as we learn to pray our lives, so too do we learn to sing our lives. Again, it seems appropriate then that some of our prayer, but especially psalms and canticles be sung when that fits the circumstances.

I do sing Office (especially Compline or Night Prayer) --- unless I have a cold or (sometimes) am otherwise not feeling well. You are entirely correct that silence can lead to song and that it is a prerequisite to speech/word/ song. I remember in High School being taught in a music class that the rests (silences) in the music were as important as the notes because the rests helped transform noise into meaningful sound or music. The teacher pointed out that without rests (appropriate, measured silences) we would have only (meaningless) noise. If we are to become God's own prayers in our world, if we are to hear God and respond appropriately, then silence is critically necessary. We need silence to become an articulate expression of and response to God's own song of love. And if we are moved to sing in response, then sing we must. That is the way of genuine obedience; after all, c 603 hermits make vows of obedience, not silence!

I will leave this here for now. You have been more than patient and for right now this is all I have to add to the points you made so well. If I should think of something I left out I will add another post -- a kind of "part II" perhaps. I am well aware I have not spoken at all about the ecclesial nature of the consecrated hermit's vocation here and though there are a number of articles here about that, I well may need to do that as an enlargement on your own point re: private and liturgical prayer. At the same time I haven't said much here about the distinction between physical or external silence and the "silence of solitude" and I definitely may need to say more about that. Significantly, Canon 603 does not read "silence and solitude" but rather "the silence of solitude". The most important thing about it for the purposes of this post is that it is always richer than the apparent sum of its parts because eremitical solitude itself is not just about being alone, but about existing fully and integrally in an ongoing, active, dialogue with God (and all that is of God). In the meantime, I hope this finds you well and in good voice!!

The Conversion of St Paul (reprised with tweaks)

Tomorrow's reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us of the conversion of Paul. There is no doubt this is one of the most important events in the history of the Church and certainly one of the most dramatic. Luke tells us of this event three times in this single work so it is hard to overestimate its importance. A couple of things in particular strike me about this reading this time around.

The first, and the one I will focus on in this blog post, is how radical the changes needed to be in Paul's life to really do justice to his experience of the risen Christ whom he had been persecuting, but also how conservative in the very best sense that experience also was. Tom Wright describes this dual dynamic or dialectic when he says, [[ But this seeing . . .confirmed everything Saul had been taught; it overturned everything he had been taught. The law and the prophets had come true; the law and the prophets had been torn to pieces and put back together in a totally new way. It was a new world; it was the old world made explicit. . . .it showed him that the God he had been right to serve, right to study, right to seek in prayer, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had done what he always said he would, but done it in a shocking, scandalous, horrifying way. The God who had promised to come and rescue his people had done so in person. In the person of Jesus.]]

So often I am emailed by people who would like to be hermits or who, similarly, would like to put up a sign calling their home "____ hermitage" so people "realize this is not a normal home any more," but who have not themselves made the necessary transition to an essentially eremitical life. As I have noted before, they may or may not live alone, but they add in a little prayer, a bit of silence, a little lectio, and then continue living essentially the same lives they have always lived --- just tweaked a bit. After a day's work outside the hermitage they refer to their time at home alone in the evenings as "their eremitical time" and wonder why I or others -- including their chancery personnel -- reject the idea that they are yet really hermits.

Many people live the same kind of "Christian" lives. Their spirituality is compartmentalized and in the main their lives are untouched by the reality of the risen Christ. They pray and worship on Sundays, they say grace before meals, and perhaps before bed or on arising, but on the whole, their lives are mainly unchanged and perhaps untouched by the completely world shaking reality of the risen Christ. Sometimes we have the sense that elements of the institutional church suffer in somewhat the same way. Parts of their lives, parts of their interpretation of the Tradition they rightly hold precious have not been touched by an experience of the risen Christ and the result is an unfortunate compartmentalization in their approach to reality and a narrowness of vision with all that entails. But given the example we have from St Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, this will not do --- not for anyone claiming the name "Christian".

Following his experience on the road to Damascus, Paul took the next few years, withdrew to a desert region, and began completely reframing the tradition he deeply loved in light of his extended experience of the risen Christ. He completed this reframing as he engaged each of the churches he founded or preached to in their own unique pastoral circumstances and with regard to their own unique problems. In other words, an experience of world-shattering revelation (what Lohfink refers to as a long "process of discovery") through prayer, reflection, and genuinely pastoral presence and ministry became an experience of radical conversion. It was, in some ways, what happens when a vat of dough is affected by yeast. No part of the dough is or can be left untouched. Similarly it is rather like what happens when one puts a picture together from all the puzzle pieces one has at hand --- but finds some have been left out. Each time a new piece is discovered and added, the picture must be reformed and the place of each and all the pieces must be adjusted and reconsidered. (This is especially true with puzzles whose pieces are all the same shape and can be combined in a myriad of ways --- each of these creating a different picture as a whole.)

In such a process none of the older pieces are rendered obsolete or superfluous, but neither can they be seen any longer in their old light or from an older perspective. When one meets the risen Christ, all of the old pieces of the Tradition must be regarded from this new perspective and for Paul that required a rethinking of issues like Law, the nature of resurrection specifically and salvation more generally, the relation of Israel and the Church, Creation and Covenant and what God is attempting to effect by these, the nature of election and who God has called to this and why, the relationship of evil and grace and how ministry is truly effected --- whether by separation and ritual purity or immersion and a holiness which is contagious, the nature of the Messiah, and so forth. 

In other words, the old doctrinal statements and understandings are not simply swept aside as unimportant, but neither are they left unaffected nor can they be treated adequately apart from the charismatic experience of the risen Christ. Nor are the changes called for merely cosmetic then; they are radical --- reaching right to the roots. We are not merely to be thrown from whatever hobby-horse we have been riding for so long --- no matter how worthwhile. Instead there must also be a soul-deep healing or reconciliation, a bone-deep re-envisioning of all the old certainties after an experience of dazzling illumination or revelation. We, our faith, and lives which reflect and incarnate that faith must be wholly remade from the roots. Nothing else will do.

Paul is the Apostle we must look to here, the one with the courage to change everything without losing anything essential, the one whose experience of the scandalously crucified and risen Christ shaped entirely the way he would honor and represent the Tradition handed onto him, the one who refused to compartmentalize his faith and experience but instead allowed everything to become a new creation in Christ. The simple fact is that should our church, this community of disciples of Jesus, fail in this it will cease to truly be the Church Christ called into being. Mark, whose theology was very like Paul's, knew that genuine discipleship recreates the person and in the process it transfigures them; he spelled it out in terms of our becoming a truly human person who is transparent to God as Jesus was entirely transparent to God. Paul would have approved of such a notion of conversion where we are our truest self to the extent we reveal the face and heart of God to the world and where we are actually transparent to God to the extent we are authentically human. This is the conversion they both associated with discipleship.

Like Paul's own conversion, the RADICAL integration of our own EXPERIENCE of the risen Christ at this point in time with the Tradition and with the concrete needs and yearnings of our time --- or our failure to do so --- will be one of the most significant events in the history of the church. We will either return to largely being the religion/institution of the Pharisees or become the gospel reality, the Kingdom Jesus meant and called us and our world to be. Every group, every individual must play a part; none is unimportant or can be allowed to remain voiceless (much less be silenced!!) or the Gospel of Jesus Christ will fail to be proclaimed with our lives, and the coming of the Kingdom which is the thoroughgoing interpenetration of heaven and earth leading to complete transformation will continue to be hampered.

On Making Neighbors of the "Other": Jesus' Most Fundamental Commission

I try not to get political on this blog but the truth is that Jesus spoke truth to power on all levels, religious, political, personal etc., and given my own standing, it is important that I remind myself and us all that at the heart of the Gospel is the mandate to love our neighbors as ourselves. Of course, there is another step involved here which discipleship requires, namely, that we make neighbors of those whom the "world" calls aliens or "other." Jesus did not honor with a direct (and simplistic) answer the sly question of the young man who asked him "but who is my neighbor"? (In an honor/shame culture like the one known by this young man, where one's own prestige was enhanced by certain relationships and lost by others, making neighbors of everyone was radically countercultural. This young man was not asking who his neighbor was in order to include others but to exclude them.) Instead he told a parable, one of those stories which asks us to drop our own baggage as we enter (including our religious and political baggage!), and step obediently (openly, attentively) into a different world, the world of the story Jesus is telling and the world of the Kingdom of God he hopes we will embrace. Before we can love our neighbors (or as part of truly doing so), we first have to make neighbors of those we consider alien to us. In order to help us chose this stance toward others Jesus tells the parable of the "Good Samaritan."

We all know the story. A man was travelling to Jericho on his way from Jerusalem and was fallen upon by robbers who "stripped and beat him". They then took off leaving him for dead. A priest travelling to Jerusalem saw him and, perhaps not wanting to be defiled by the victim's condition, passed on by --- on the other side of the road. Following this a Levite did likewise --- again moving to the other side of the road in the process. Finally, a Samaritan spotted the man by the side of the road and, moved with compassion, cared for him, bound up his wounds, took him on his own beast to an inn and paid for his care there. Following this story Jesus turns to his audience and asks, "Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who had fallen among the robbers?" The answer was obvious, but also very challenging: the Samaritan --- one who would ordinarily have despised and been despised by the Jew who fell to the thieves.

Jesus chooses people who have very good reasons for disliking or avoiding one another in this parable. For the priest who is on his way to serve his turn on the Temple Rota, he cannot allow himself to be defiled and rendered incapable of serving; for the Levite the Law also requires he keep clear of defilement with a possible dead body. Meanwhile, as noted, the Samaritan was despised by Jews and might well have reciprocated or at least lived among those who would have. But for this man compassion allowed him to see a greater truth, the truth of shared humanity and perhaps too, the truth of a God who loves all of his creation with an unreserved love. It was these two truths which Jesus lived and died to witness to exhaustively, and it is these two truths we who call ourselves Jesus' disciples are called to live out with integrity.

Compassion is the basis of truth, the way in which we each truly encounter the real every person embodies and reflects, and it was compassion which moved the Samaritan to make a neighbor of someone he would ordinarily have met (and who would ordinarily have met him) with hatred. But over the last four years and culminating in the events at our Capitol on the Feast of Epiphany we have seen a progressively growing failure of compassion and too then, a growing tendency to define those we meet who differ from ourselves in politics, world view, and so forth, as "aliens", "others" or "them". Our mindset is revealed in a rhetoric which is constantly peppered with the dynamics of  "us vs them", "we vs they", red vs blue, and any number of other designations which are meant to mark people as enemies, and to denigrate them as idiots, brainless, uncaring, unpatriotic, and generally unworthy of our care or respect.

There is no Christian, except those of us who fail in our discipleship, who can allow such a dynamic to continue to mark and mar our relationships with others.  After all, Jesus called and commissioned us to make neighbors of these "others" and to love them as we love ourselves. I am not naïve in reiterating this commission. I understand the tremendous challenge it poses and I know personally the failure my inability to live it out during these past years -- and recent days especially -- indicates. But called to this I am. Every Christian is called to this! 

Once upon a time I saw myself as "different" than most folks I knew --- and, in some less foundational ways, there are still good reasons for that. However, one of the most important prayer experiences of my life revealed to me that I was truly "the same" as everyone else; on a level much more fundamental than those marking me as different, I came to know myself as the same--- as similarly human, similarly hungry for life and meaning and love, similarly loved by God and similarly insecure and sometimes even dangerous without that love. The occasion was a joyful one for me, and deeply compelling. At that point I became more truly capable of using the terms "brothers" and "sisters" (and certainly the title Sister) as God was calling me to do -- as, that is,  a creative and courageous Christianity actually does. When I read Jesus' parable now, I wonder if perhaps the Samaritan had had a similar experience which made compassion for his Jewish brother possible.

There is only one power which can confront the horrific dynamic of "partisanship" and division which has been  exacerbated, focused, weaponized, and turned lose in our country during these past years and that is the power of love. No, not a sentimental rose-colored-glasses type of "luv", but a serious, determined, clear-seeing, truth-speaking-in-compassion Love that is rooted in God's own Life and love for us, and expressed in the commission to make neighbors of the "other" and treat them as we ourselves yearn to be treated. This is the Christian vocation and, God knows, it is very different from what passes for "Christianity" in much of our country and world today. I sincerely pray that those who call themselves Christian can, in the power and humility of Christ, find the courage to accept this radically countercultural commission and carry it out with integrity. It has, perhaps, never been more critical that we do so.

Feast of the Baptism of Jesus' Baptism (reprised)

 Of all the feasts we celebrate, [today's] feast of the baptism of Jesus is one of the most difficult for us to understand. (I think Ascension is the most difficult.) We are used to thinking of baptism as a solution to original sin instead of the means of our initiation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or our adoption as daughters and sons of God and heirs to his Kingdom, or again, as a consecration in/to and for God's very life and service. When viewed this way, and especially when we recall that John's baptism was one of repentance for sin, how do we make sense of a sinless Jesus submitting to it?

I think two points need to be made here. First, Jesus grew into his vocation. His Sonship was real and completely unique but not completely developed or historically embodied from the moment of his conception; rather it was something he embraced more and more fully over his lifetime. Secondly, his Sonship was the expression of solidarity with us and his fulfillment of the will of his Father to be God-with-us. Jesus will incarnate the Logos of God definitively in space and time, but this event we call the incarnation encompasses and is only realized fully in his life, death, and resurrection -- not in his nativity. Only in allowing himself to be completely transparent to this Word, only in "dying to self," and definitively setting aside all other possible destinies does Jesus come to fully embody and express the Logos of God in a way which expresses his solidarity with us as well.

It is probably the image of Baptism-as-consecration and commissioning then which is most helpful to us in understanding Jesus' submission to John's baptism. Here the man Jesus is set apart as the one in whom God will truly "hallow his name." (That is, in Jesus' weakness and self-emptying God's powerful presence (Name) will make all things Holy and a sacrament of God's presence.) Here, in an act of manifest commitment, Jesus' humanity is placed completely at the service of the living God and of those to whom God is committed. Here his experience as one set apart or consecrated by and for God establishes God as completely united with us and our human condition. This solidarity is reflected in his statement to John that together they must fulfill the will of God. And here too Jesus anticipates the death and resurrection he will suffer for the sake of both human and Divine destinies which, in him, will be reconciled and inextricably wed to one another. His baptism establishes the pattern not only of HIS humanity, but that of all authentic humanity. So too does it reveal the nature of true Divinity, for our's is a God who becomes completely subject to our sinful reality in order to free us for his own entirely holy one.

I suspect that even at the end of the Christmas season we are still scandalized by the incarnation. (Recent conversations on CV's and secularity as well as private conversation re learning as something that cushions experiences of scandal of the Incarnation make me even surer of this!) We still stumble over the intelligibility of this baptism, and the propriety of it especially. Our inability to fathom Jesus' own baptism, and our tendency to be shocked by it  because of Jesus' identity and intimacy with God,  just as JohnBp was probably shocked, says we are not comfortable, even now, with a God who enters exhaustively into our reality. We remain uncomfortable with a Jesus who is tempted like us in ALL THINGS, and matures into his identity as God's only begotten Son, but without sinning.

We are puzzled by one who is holy as God is holy and, as the creed affirms, "true God from true God" and who, even so, is consecrated to and by the one he calls Abba --- and commissioned to the service of this Abba's Kingdom and people. A God who wholly identifies with us, takes on our sinfulness, and comes to us in smallness, weakness, submission and self-emptying is really not a God we are comfortable with --- despite three weeks of Christmas celebrations and reflections, and a prior four weeks of preparation -- is it? In fact, none of this was comfortable for Jews or early Christians either. The Jewish leadership was upset by JnBp's baptisms generally because they took place outside the Temple precincts and structures (that is, in the realm we literally call profane). Early Christians (Jewish and otherwise) were embarrassed by Jesus' baptism by John --- as Matt's added explanation of the reasons for it in vv 14-15 indicate. They were concerned that perhaps it indicated Jesus' inferiority to John the Baptist and they wondered if maybe it meant that Jesus had sinned prior to his baptism. And perhaps this embarrassment is as it should be. Perhaps learning should NOT cushion our tendency to scandal. Perhaps the scandal attached to this baptism signals to us we are beginning to get things right theologically.

After all, today's feast tells us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a ritual washing, consecration, and commissioning by God which is similar to our own baptismal consecration. The difference is that Jesus' freely accepts life under the sway of sin in his baptism just as he wholeheartedly embraces a public (and one could cogently argue, a thoroughly secular) consecrated vocation to proclaim God's sovereignty. The story of the desert temptation or testing that follows this underscores this acceptance. His public life begins with an event that prefigures his end as well. There is a real dying to self involved here, not because Jesus has a false self which must die -- as each of us has --- but because in these events his life is placed completely at the disposal of his God, his Abba, in solidarity with us. At the same time then, there is a new life being embraced, a truly or authentically human life which is marked as a dialogue with God for the sake of all that is precious to God. Loving another, affirming the being of another in a way which subordinates one's own being to theirs --- putting one's own life at their disposal and surrendering all other life-possibilities always entails a death of sorts -- and a kind of rising to new life as well. The dynamics present on the cross are present here too.  Here we see only somewhat less clearly a complete and obedient (that is open and responsive) submission to the will of God, and an unfathomable subjection to that which human sinfulness makes necessary precisely in order that God's love may be exhaustively present and conquer here as well.

Feast of the Epiphany (Reprised)

There is something stunning about the story of the Epiphany and we often don't see or hear it, I think, because the story is so familiar to us. It is the challenge which faces us precisely because our God is one who comes to us in littleness, weakness, and obscurity, and meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. It is truly stunning, I think, to find three magi (whoever these were and whatever they represented in terms of human power, wealth, and wisdom) recognizing in a newborn baby, not only the presence of a life with cosmic significance but, in fact, the (incipient) incarnation of God and savior of the world. I have rarely been particularly struck by this image of the Magi meeting the child Jesus and presenting him with gifts, but this year I see it clearly as a snapshot of the entire Gospel story with all its hope, wonder, poignancy, challenge, and demand.

If the identities of the Magi are unclear, the dynamics of the picture are not. Here we have learned men who represent all of the known world and the power, wealth, and knowledge therein, men who spend their lives in search of (or at least watching for the coming of) something which transcends their own realms and its wisdom and knowledge, coming to kneel and lay symbols of their wealth and wisdom before a helpless, Jewish baby of common and even questionable birth. They ostensibly identify this child, lying in a feeding trough, as the King of the Jews. Yes, they followed a star to find him, but even so, their recognition of the nature and identity of this baby is surprising. Especially so is the fact that they come to worship him. The stunning nature of this epiphany is underscored by the story of the massacre of the male babies in Bethlehem by the Jewish ruler, Herod. Despite his being heralded as the messiah, and so too, the Jewish King, apparently there is nothing remarkable about the baby from  Herod's perspective, nothing, that is, which allows him to be distinguished from any other male baby of similar age --- unless of course, one can see him with eyes of humility and faith --- and so, the story goes, Herod has all such babies indiscriminately killed.

One child, two antithetical attitudes and responses: the first, an openness which leads to recognition and the humbling subordination of worship; the second, an attitude of a closed mind, of defensiveness, ambition, and self-protection, an attitude of fear which leads not only to a failure of recognition but to arrogant and murderous oppression. And in between these two attitudes and responses, we must also see the far more common ones marking lives which miss this event altogether. In every case, the Christ Event marks the coming of the sovereign, creator, God among us, but in the littleness, weakness, and obscurity of ordinary human being. In this way God meets us each in the unexpected and even unacceptable place (the manger, the cross, human being, self-emptying, weakness, companionship with serious sinners, sinful death, etc) --- if we only have the eyes of faith which allow us to recognize and worship him!