Peter, Do You Love Me? Part 2

Tomorrow's Gospel portrays the reconciliation between Jesus and Peter occasioned by a dialogue in which Jesus questions Peter, and thereby reminds him of what is deepest and truest in himself. As noted in part 1, through Jesus' questions, Peter gets in touch with his heart of hearts and with the reality of agapeic love that objectively inspires him most profoundly. (What Peter feels subjectively is affirmed in his responses, which are expressed in terms of filial love.) From this experience, this reconciliation with what is deepest in himself comes Jesus' triple commission of Peter to "Feed my Lambs, feed my sheep." And of course, Jesus then reminds him that when Peter was younger he could dress himself and go wherever he wanted, but now that he was older (more mature), someone else would gird him in a new role and lead him where he did not want to go.

The point of course, besides referring immediately to the kind of death Peter would die, is that an Apostle's vocation and commission is a difficult one; it represents a kind of freedom which is far more mature and responsible than the liberty of youth. More, while Love speaks to us in our heart of hearts and is the basis of all Christian morality and ethics (something the Church affirms again and again, not least in her teaching on the primacy of conscience coupled with the idea that conscience is that sacred and inviolable place where God speaks to us), discerning how the imperative of that voice of Love works out in concrete terms is sometimes difficult and will always have significant consequences because the stakes are very high.

In recent days we have been reminded of this latter part of tomorrow's Gospel in a particularly striking way, not only of the difficulty of working out what is most loving and most inspired in concrete situations, but of the fact that sometimes our commitment to communion which is our deepest reality and the Love which grounds it and our vocation will take us places we would really rather not but certainly must go if we are to be true to ourselves and our God.

You may know the story: Sister Margaret McBride, a Sister of Mercy and member of a hospital ethics committee was presented with a really terrible situation. A mother of four children with an 11 week pregnancy had a condition which was exacerbated by the pregnancy. If she continued the pregnancy the prospect of both mother and baby dying was nearly 100%. If the pregnancy was terminated the mother had a chance of living. In either case, the baby would die. Church directives on the matter were clear and unambiguous: direct abortion is never allowed. One may not intend evil in order to do good. The demands of love, however, were not so clear in this particular situation. The abortion was done and Sister Margaret and all who participated in it in any way were automatically excommunicated, meaning the Church hierarchy did not act to excommunicate these people but rather, those involved incurred this ecclesiastical (not Divine!) penalty themselves as a consequence of their very action.

Now the classical position on the teaching of the absolute primacy of conscience foresees such a situation. Aquinas was very clear that one MUST act in good conscience (to do otherwise is to sin) and that if one's actions will take one outside the church, that is, if they will result in excommunication, one must act according to one's conscience judgment and bear the excommunication humbly. Again, to fail to act according to one's conscience judgment is to sin; to act in good conscience is not, no matter what the consequences or the correctness or incorrectness of that judgment. Sometimes we hear people suggest that if one acts in good conscience it can only be with a well-formed and informed conscience (this is true), and further that this must mean that one can only act in accord with Church teaching (this is not true). Of course, if this latter part of the statement were true, Aquinas' analysis with its prominent conflict between law and love would be meaningless; excommunication when acting in good conscience could never occur. Similarly at Vatican II it was proposed by some Bishops/Curia that the Council's teaching on conscience be modified to state explicitly that a well-formed conscience was one which was formed to be in accord with Church teaching in any given situation. The theological commission in charge of such a modification rejected it as too rigid and narrow to reflect the scope and wisdom of Church teaching on primacy of conscience.

What we see is that sometimes there is a disconnect or conflict between law (which deals with universals) and love (which not only is a universal imperative but which deals more adequately with concrete situations than law can ever do). Church teaching and the magisterium honors the fact of this disconnect by refusing to soften the crisis (krisis is the Greek term for a moment of decision) that can occur as a result and by commissioning us each to act as Love itself demands. Only we can bring love to a situation. Law cannot. Only we can act in an inspired and creative way given specific circumstances require. Law cannot. Only we can courageously negotiate the transition from universal legal norms in a way which truly chooses life in the best way possible. We are not prevented from erring, nor assured that every decision we make is correct, but the task and challenge of discipleship is this momentous and compelling nonetheless. The charge in tomorrow's gospel passage is a somewhat stronger version of Augustine's famous dictum: Love and do what you must! Love, and do what only you can do. Feed My Sheep!!

My own prayer as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost is a prayer for the Wisdom, Love, and Courage of the Spirit (and any other gifts) necessary to accept the commission which comes with our acceptance of a mature Christian identity; it is a prayer for the Spirit which grounds, reveals, and allows our affirmation of that communion ---that agapeic reality which is deepest, most true and real within us. I especially pray for Sister Margaret who acted in good conscience (quite a high value and demanding reality), and showed us how the face of God is made manifest in the concrete situation. She did this not by thumbing her nose at law, but by relativizing it in light of the Great Commandment and the Voice of God she heard in her heart of hearts. I also pray that her Bishop will lift the automatic sanction, not because abortion is acceptable, but because sometimes, as Sister Margaret has shown us, there are even worse threats to innocent life in the concrete situation. Difficult as this situation is, we cannot allow people of faith, courage, and exceptional integrity to be automatically excluded from the Body of Christ in a way which suggests that church law trumps rather than imperfectly serves God's own Commandment.

May we, each of us, from the lowliest hermit, religious or lay person, to the highest Bishop or Pope act in ways which effectively bring the face of Christ's love, mercy, and compassion into the concrete situation. Law can assist us in significant ways, but will always fall short here. A heart forgiven by Christ and reconciled with him, a heart which knows its own frailties and failures even while it is inspired by and obedient to his Holy Spirit will not.

Peter, Do you Love Me? Part 1

Spending time with Friday's Gospel (May 21th, John 21:15-19) marked one of those unexpected moments for me when the Holy Spirit empowers one to hear something completely new, and when the text takes on a new sound, a new perspective and lesson. Throughout the Easter season I had at least implicitly heard the question Jesus posed to Peter in this lection again. Partly this was because we read the Gospel of John and the command to love God and one another turns up again and again with this question tacitly embedded within it. Partly it was because of people who modelled such love for me again and again and were central to this year's Easter season -- not least Ann and Don and their family. Partly, I suppose it is the natural question of one who desires to love God and others but continually falls short.

Like most people I have always heard Jesus' questions to Peter merely as a kind of test. Clearly they follow Peter's triple denial of Jesus on the night he was arrested, and Peter's own affirmations serve to counter those. Perhaps Jesus really asked Peter these questions in precisely this way and this is a simple record of that; perhaps the questioning is a literary device constructed by the evangelist in order to mark Peter's renewed commitment to the Risen Christ as adequate to offset his denials and justify his leadership role in the nascent Church; perhaps there were three questions, or perhaps Peter heard this question in his heart dozens of times as he encountered Jesus after the resurrection (or maybe both of these are true!), but however the historical details shake out, I know that like most people I heard these questions as a test posed by Jesus to Peter, or to myself. Until last week that is.

In living with this text for those few days and sensing a climax to what I had been experiencing during Easter, I began to see instead what Jesus was doing with these questions, and testing Peter was not what he was about, at least not in the common sense. Instead he is attempting to move Peter past the denials on the night of his arrest, serious as those were, and put Peter in touch with the deeper truth, the truth which is more foundational for him than his fear, his self-centeredness, his drive for self-preservation and the like. It is a way of rehabilitating Peter and commissioning him for something more as well. It put him in touch with the truth which is life for him, the truth of his bond with Jesus which is deeper even than Peter's denials because God dwells within us, and because "Nothing can separate us from the love of God". At the same time the questions move Peter from his own certainty in himself (and about himself!) and an attitude of (perhaps defensive) self-assertion to a more secure place altogether: the point of humble submission to Jesus' knowledge of who Peter is, Jesus' certainty about Peter's capacities and constitution, Jesus' judgment of the nature, worth, and measure of his life and his plan FOR that life.

The element I was not paying enough (or appropriate) attention to was Jesus's commissioning of Peter and the way this commissioning functions in Peter's life. If I attended to these statements at all it was as a reward for answering correctly, "Yes, Lord, I love you!" In my mind I read the text this way: "Answer the question correctly, Peter, and Jesus will entrust you with great responsibility. Answer incorrectly, and he will not!" Now, there is a seed of truth in this --- Jesus entrusts those who love him with a great deal --- but Jesus's commissioning is not a reward for the right answers. It is instead a way of creating a future, for Peter, for the Church, for Jesus' life here among us. It is the way Jesus forgives, and it is an effective forgiveness which changes who Peter is in less essential ways and also builds on who Peter is most deeply and essentially, and so too then, the way Peter sees himself. It is a challenging forgiveness which empowers Peter to see himself as Jesus does, trust himself as Jesus does, embrace and live up to the vocation Jesus knows him to have and makes him, with God's grace, to be capable of.

These questions put to Peter by Jesus function similarly to Jesus' parables. They create a new future by allowing the one hearing and responding to them to opt for reality as Jesus defines it. Far from simply testing Peter, they are meant to encourage him -- though by challenging him to measure up to what is deepest in himself, what is truest and most real. In monastic life this is what it means to be addressed as one's true self and to heal and transcend his false self. Rather than questioning whether Peter loves him, Jesus uses these questions to remind Peter of the truth of his loving union with Jesus just as they remind him that this is the reality God sees in us beyond the sin, selfishness, fear, cowardice, etc which so often marks our lives.

It is significant then that when Jesus poses his question the first two times he uses the appropriate grammatical form of agape --- that quality of love which transcends all individual expressions of it, that form of love which is the principle of unity and wholeness in all forms or qualities of love (eros, bios, philia, etc), that form which points directly to God and the Spirit which inspires it within us. Only once Jesus has reminded Peter twice of this deep ground of all love and heard Peter's affirmations, does he ask him the third time if he loves him in the more particular form of philia. Peter is reconciled with Jesus. In dialogue with Jesus he comes to certainty about who he really is, and what moves him most deeply. He affirms himself and he affirms who Jesus is for him.

As a result or consequence (NOT as a reward!) Peter is commissioned to "feed my sheep". In accepting this commission he accepts his truest identity; in accepting his truest identity he experiences and accepts this commission. And this Peter will do because above all he has recommitted himself to loving, that is, to acting on what is truest and most real within himself in ways which will naturally affirm what is truest and most real in others.

On the Feast of the Ascension, Continuing the Scandal of the Incarnation in the Very Heart of God

A couple of years ago I wrote about a passage taken from one of the Offices (Vigils) on the Feast of the Ascension. In that passage we hear the remarkable statement that, [[It is he who gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in roles of service for the faithful to build up the body of Christ, till we become one in faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, AND FORM THE PERFECT MAN WHO IS CHRIST COME TO FULL STATURE.]] It is an image that has intrigued me since, and of course, one that I hear and reflect on again each Ascension Day. Imagine that it is we-as-church who quite literally make up the body of Christ and who one day will be taken up into the very life of God just as Christ was --- and that in this way, Christ will have "come to full stature." He will live in us and we in him, and all of us in God as God too becomes all in all. (Sounds very Johannine doesn't it?)

When I was an undergraduate in Theology (and through a lot of my graduate work as well), the Ascension never made much sense to me. It was often mainly treated as a Lukan construction which added little to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and if my professors and those they had us reading felt this way, I didn't press the issue --- nor, at least as an undergraduate, did I have the wherewithal TO press the issue theologically. It didn't help any that the notion of Jesus' bodily ascension into "heaven" was more incomprehensible (and unbelieveable) than resurrection, or that I understood it as a kind of dissolving away of Jesus bodiliness rather than a confirmation of it and continuation of the Incarnation. (The notion that a docetist Jesus had just been "slumming" for thirty-three years, as one writer objects to putting the matter, and that Ascension was the act by which he shook the dust of humanity from his sandals when his work was done, was probably not far from my mind here.)

Finally therefore, it was really difficult to deal with the notion that Christ, who had been so close to us as to appear in his glorified body with which he walked through walls, ate fish, allowed his marks as the crucified one to be examined, etc, was now going to some remote place far distant from us and would be replaced by some intangible and abstract spiritual reality. Of course, I had it all wrong. Completely. Totally. Absolutely wrong in almost every particular. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that most Christians have it wrong in all the same ways. And yet, it is the passage from Ephesians which is one key to getting it all right, and to rejoicing in the promise and challenge that Jesus' Ascension represents for us.

What actually happens in the Ascension? What about reality changes? What does it mean to say that Christ ascends to the right hand of God or "opens the gates of heaven"? The notion that Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension changes reality is novel for many people. They may think of redemption as a matter of changing God's mind about us, for instance, appeasing divine wrath, but not really changing objective reality. Yet, on the cross and through his descent into the very depths of Godlessness (sin and godless or sinful death), as I have written before, Jesus, through his own obedience (openness, and responsiveness) opens this realm to God; he implicates God into this realm in definitive ways. God's presence in all of our world's moments and moods is, in light of the Christ Event, personal and intimate, not impersonal and remote. And with God implicated in the very reality from which he has, by definition, been excluded, that reality is transformed. It is no longer literally godless, but instead becomes a kind of sacrament of his presence, the place where we may see him face to face in fact --- and the place where being now triumphs over non-being, life triumphs over death, love triumphs over all that opposes it, and meaning overcomes absurdity. This is one part or side of Jesus' mediatory function: the making God real and present in ways and where before he was not. It is the climax of God's own self-emptying, his own "descent" which began with creation and continues with redemption and new creation; it is the climax of God first creating that which is other so that he might share himself, and then entering into every moment and mood of creation.

But there is another aspect or side to Christ's mediatory activity, and this is made most clear in the Ascension. The language used is not descent, but ascent, not journeying to a far place, but returning home and preparing a place for those who will follow. (Yes, we SHOULD hear echoes of the parable of the prodigal Son/ merciful Father here with Christ as the prodigal Son journeying to a far place.) If in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, the world is opened to God, in Jesus' ascension, God's own life is opened definitively to the world. In Jesus' ascension, the new creation, of which Jesus is the first born and head, is taken up BODILY into God, dwells within him in communion with him. In Jesus we meet our future in the promise that this will happen to us and all of creation in him.

When Paul speaks of God becoming all in all he is looking at the culmination of this double process of mediation: first, God entering the world more profoundly, extensively and, above all, personally in Christ, and second, the world being taken up into God's own life. When he speaks of Christ coming to full stature, he is speaking of the same process, the same culmination. When theologians speak of the interpenetration of heaven and earth, or the creation of a new heaven and a new earth they are speaking again of this process with an eye towards its culmination at the end of time. The Ascension marks the beginning of this "End Time."



It is important to remember a couple of things in trying to understand this view of ascension. First, God is not A BEING, not even the biggest and best, holiest, most powerful, etc. God is being itself, the ground of being and meaning out of which everything that has being and meaning stands (ex-istere, i.e., "out of - to stand"). Secondly, therefore, heaven is not merely some place where God resides along with lots of other beings (including, one day, ourselves) --- even if he is the center of attention and adoration. Heaven is God's own being, the very life of God himself shared with others. (Remember that often the term heaven was used by Jews to avoid using God's name, thus, the Kingdom or Reign of Heaven is the Sovereignty of God) Finally, as wonderful as this creation we are part of is, it is meant for more. It is meant to exist in and of God in a final and definitive way. Some form of panentheism is the goal of reality, both human and divine. Jesus' ascension is the first instance of created existence being taken up into God's own life (heaven). It is the culmination of one part of the Christ event (mediation seen mainly in terms of descent and creation/redemption), and the beginning of another (mediation seen in terms of recreation/glorification and ascent).

When the process is completed and God is all in all, so too can we say that the God-Man Christ will have "come to full stature," or, as another translation of today's lection from Ephesians reads: [[. . .in accord with the exercise of his great might: which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.]]

For those who have difficulty in accepting God's assumption of human flesh and revelation of himself exhaustively in a human life -- most especially in the weakness and fragility of such a life, Jesus' ascension offers no relaxing of the tension or scandal of the incarnation. Instead it heightens it. With Jesus' ascension the Godhead NOW has taken created reality and bodily existence within itself as a very part of God's own life. This is what we are meant for, the reason we were created. It is what God willed "from the beginning". If, in the Christ event human life is defined as a covenantal reality, that is, if our lives are dialogical realities with God as an integral and constitutive part, so too does the Christ Event define God similarly, not simply as Trinitarian and in some sort of conversation with us, but as One who actively makes room within himself for us and all he cherishes --- and who, in this sense, is incomplete without us.

Human being --- created, redeemed, recreated and glorified --- assumes its rightful and full stature in Christ. In the acts of creation, redemption, and glorification, Divinity empties itself of certain prerogatives in Christ as well, but at the same time Divinity assumes its full stature in Christ, a stature we could never have imagined because it includes us in itself in an integral or fundamental way. Whether this is expressed in the language and reality of descent, kenosis (self-emptying), and asthenia (weakness), or of ascent, pleroma (fullness), and power, Christianity affirms the scandal of the incarnation as revelatory of God's very nature. We should stand open-mouthed and astounded in awe at the dignity accorded us and the future with which we, and all of creation is "endowed" on the "day" of Christ's Ascension.

Do Dioceses Support Diocesan Hermits?

[[Sister Laurel, does the diocese of the Canon 603 hermit support them in any way? What do you think about this? How about other diocesan hermits?]]

Really great questions, and ones which lots of people wonder about. I may have answered something similar before so please look for that as well; also some of what I say here will echo what I wrote about in regard to mediocrity as a danger to authentic eremitical life. The simple answer is no, diocesan hermits generally receive nothing from their dioceses in terms of stipends, transportation, living expenses or accommodations (place to set up a hermitage, etc), medical or other insurance, educational expenses, money for yearly or bi-yearly retreat, religious goods, books, etc. Remember that while diocesan clergy receive stipends for their service to the diocese, religious women and men usually do not unless they are contracted and work for the diocese itself. They support themselves and their congregations --- particularly their retired members and those in formation. (The idea that religious support their communities, and not vice versa is not well enough understood today.) Diocesan hermits differ from, but fall into this latter category. In fact, diocesan hermits ordinarily sign a waiver of liability (or claim) at their perpetual profession which says the diocese is not responsible for them in material or financial ways.

So, how do I feel about this? I think it is a wise policy for a number of reasons. Diocesan eremitical life does not have the kind of built in safeguards (for discernment or supervision of the motives behind and the quality of living) that life in community has. Discernment of an eremitical vocation takes time and the solitary (diocesan) eremitical vocation may require even more time. Because individuals embrace solitude for all kinds of reasons it often takes a number of years to clarify why they seek to make profession as a diocesan hermit. Unfortunately, it must be crystal clear that among these motivations the need to be cared for is not present. The tendency to run from responsibility and from the ordinary demands of life in society also must not be present. Eremitical life is a responsible life and one embraces it to give oneself in devotion and service to God, his Church, and world. Further, because the eremitical vocation is so independent, the individual and the diocese need to see signs that the hermit candidate is acting and living independently: providing for and securing education, caring for the normal needs of a deep spiritual life, independent work, taking initiative for education, etc -- all are a significant part of the eremitical life. It is simply right that a diocese expects hermits to care for these him/herself.

However, I have heard some hermits suggest that the church does not esteem the vocation highly enough and contributing in basic ways to the upkeep of the hermit would help do this. Additionally, because of the failure to provide in this way it happens that some persons who might have genuine calls to diocesan eremitical life, but who cannot find a way to support themselves which is consistent with a contemplative life, and who certainly cannot quit working their usual jobs, simply cannot be accepted for consecration under Canon 603. Also, because of this policy, hermits who have been consecrated for some time but who can no longer work, who have increasing health problems, and must provide for future burial expenses, etc, find themselves in difficulty and a dilemma. They have faithfully lived eremitical life and vowed poverty independently for years and maintained themselves in this way, but now the situation is changing. They must find a way to continue living eremitical silence, solitude, etc, because they are vowed to this (one does not simply retire from such a commitment or life), but they also may need more health care, assisted living, etc. These situations are more complex than I can discuss at this point, but they are important and give some import to the comment about the church's need to esteem this vocation in concrete and material ways.

Is there a satisfactory solution? Not at present. One possibility is that dioceses of aging hermits might provide some assistance after these hermits have lived perpetual profession for a number of years (say ten to fifteen or so (depending upon when the hermit is perpetually professed, or if extraordinary circumstances intervene otherwise). Such hermits might be included on diocesan insurance (we hear of this occasionally), be allowed to live on diocesan property without (or with nominal) rent, or be included on diocesan burial policies. However, whatever the solution for hermits in later life or which minimizes the risk that some few vocations are missed because of an inability to meet diocesan requirements, the policy dioceses have generally adopted is mainly a good one and I agree with it. Hermits themselves need to know that they are seeking profession without any ulterior motives, and they must be confident that they are able to live independently and responsibly without being cared for by the diocese before they are professed. Similarly dioceses need to know that those approaching them with petitions for admittance to profession are mature, responsible, self-sufficient, generous, and independent. They need to know these persons are not looking for a sinecure. It is simply part of discerning (and living!) an authentic eremitical vocation.

Hope this helps. As always, if it does not answer your questions, is unclear, or raises more questions, please get back to me.

Regarding Diocesan Hermits: Hoods Up or Down? And what about Apostolic Activity?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I was just reading your posts on the cowl because I have been viewing a number of videos in which monks are wearing or not wearing their hoods up. I am wondering what dictates when the hood is up or down. Also, would you comment on the apostolic activity in the life of a hermit. I think that most of us have a picture of hermits as people (usually venerable old men who live in the desert in an isolated hut) who, other than offering spiritual direction to those who come to them, have little other contact with the "outside" world. I am so drawn to your posts, and I thank you for them. They are so informative and inspirational to this closet contemplative.]]

HOODS UP or DOWN?

Good questions! Regarding the cowl and whether one wears the hood up or down there are no real hard and fast rules for diocesan hermits, despite the fact that the right to wear this garment publicly is granted to diocesan hermits at perpetual profession. (After all, not all of us are asked or choose to wear a cowl as our prayer garment, and when we are or do, we do so as individuals in our parish/diocesan community, not as monks or nuns in a monastery or congregation!) Generally if I am praying at Eucharist with the rest of the parish community I always have my hood down simply because I don't want to be or feel cut off from the rest of the assembly. This includes the penitential rite right on up to the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass (where, for instance, Bishops will remove their "skull caps" (zuchetti) and go bareheaded). However, that general rule aside, I wear my hood up on Good Friday during parts of that day's liturgy, particularly the reading of the passion and veneration of the cross, and during parts of communal penance celebrations at Advent and Lent --- in this latter situation, I do so not only to ensure my own privacy, but to ensure that of others moving up to the stations where priests will hear their confessions.

At Mass I celebrate while others receive Communion and I love to watch fellow parishioners go up to receive; I pray for and rejoice with them, but penance services with the move to the confession stations is a much different matter. I also wear my hood up during the periods of the Easter Vigil done outside, processing into the church, or where we sit in darkness hearing the Word of God while waiting for the announcement of the resurrection. At the point where the lights comes on, bells are rung, Alleluia's sound, etc, my hood comes down. At daily or Sunday Mass (before these actually) I may have my hood up if I have not yet finished quiet prayer because it tends to signal others not to approach me yet, or to help keep things quieter for a little longer. However, this is not something I prolong and it is a rare occurrence. (Remember that the hood is meant to serve as an extension of the cell.)

In the hermitage itself I tend to wear the hood up during periods of quiet prayer and some times of reading or study (especially if I am doing this outside in the evenings or night during the Summer), but not at other times (unless it is chilly and then the hood helps a bit!). Since I don't need to wear the cowl to or from chapel (or signal to others we are still in the period of great silence) there is no need to wear the hood up moving around the hermitage. Note that in communities where cowls are worn routinely there are customs which are followed, and so their practices are far more extensive and spelled out than mine; however it is a different thing when everyone wears a cowl, and not nearly so isolating or elitist-making as it might be in a parish setting where one is the only one wearing such garb. You would need to ask someone in such a religious community what their practices or customs are regarding hoods-up or hoods-down! In a parish setting it might be that some diocesan hermits signal some degree of separation from even the rest of the assembly at parish Mass by wearing their hood up most or all of the time, but, despite understanding why someone might wish to do this, I find that personally, liturgically, and theologically unacceptable.

Apostolic Activity, etc.

Regarding ministerial activity outside the hermitage (I prefer the term ministerial rather than apostolic), the fact is every hermit has to determine to what degree she will undertake this for herself in conjunction with her director, delegate, Bishop and pastor. I have written about this in other posts so I will not repeat much of it here, but generally such activity must flow from and be an expression of a solitary contemplative life, and lead one back to the silence of solitude and contemplation. This is not a matter merely of balancing the contemplative aspects of a life with the non-contemplative aspects, or balancing "hermiting" kinds of things (whatever those really are!) with "worldly" things and activities (again, whatever those really are!). It is a matter of approaching whatever one does as a hermit for whom the silence of solitude and contemplative prayer informs and dictates whatever one does.

One of the truths of genuine contemplative life is that such life spills over into life for the church and world in concrete ways. When one experiences love in the way contemplative prayer allows for, one does not merely pray, but becomes God's own prayer and for this reason, one's contemplation necessarily spills over and outward. When this happens, the activity undertaken becomes part of authentic contemplative life --- it itself is contemplative in the best sense of the word. Should it become seductive on its own behalf and lead one away from the more strictly silent and solitary, or disrupt one's ability to center in and quiet oneself more deeply for solitary contemplative prayer, then something needs attention.

As for having little contact with the "outside world", it is true that hermits have a good deal less of it than most people, and maintain such contact as they do have with a care and attentiveness which many today do not exercise, but the Canon governing diocesan eremitical life speaks of "stricter separation from the world" where "world" has a very particular meaning, namely and primarily, that which is closed and resistant to Christ. (Holland, Handbook on Canons 573-746: definition provided by Ellen O'Hara in "Norms Common to All Institutes of Consecrated Life")) We need to remember that in this sense, the "world" may mean much of what lies outside the hermitage, but also, that it applies to much within our own hearts, and so, is something closing the door of the hermitage will not shut out but rather will shut in!

For the most part I remain within my hermitage so that I can spend time with God alone, and also so he may occasion the healing and sanctification of those parts of my heart which are truly "worldly" in this primary and limited sense. This necessarily means limiting or even avoiding aspects of God's good creation as well (another Johannine meaning of the term "world"), but, I am not a recluse, nor am I a stereotype --- venerable, bearded, or otherwise! --- and so, in limited and judicious ways I participate in activities and relationships which are both an expression of, and assist me in growing as a person and therefore, as a hermit (and vice versa)! Again, each hermit will discern what is right in these regards for herself and for the vocation to eremitical life generally. Should, she find that she is called outside the hermitage too much, or that she is engaged in apostolic activity for much more than a very limited amount of her time, or even that this activity --- how ever limited (and beneficial) it may be --- is an obstacle to settling back into the solitude of the cell or hermitage, then, as already noted, something has gone awry and she needs to discern seriously what that is and where she is truly called.

On the other hand, a "hermit" who refuses to become involved in some limited degree of ministerial activity outside the hermitage because a stereotypical idea of eremitical life does not allow for it, or because of selfishness, misanthropy, lack of generosity, or a failure to discern what eremitical life needs to be in today's church and world in order to be a prophetic and contemplative presence there, may have failed her vocation every bit as much as the hermit who cannot stay in her cell appropriately (that is, as one who cannot maintain an appropriate "custody of the cell."). Clearly discernment does not cease once one has been professed and consecrated!

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if it raises more questions or is unclear in any way.

The Greatest Risk to the Eremitical Vocation?

[[Sister, what is the hardest thing for a new person becoming a hermit? You write about it as a risky vocation. What is the greatest risk do you think?]]

It seems to me that the hardest thing about becoming a hermit is making the transition from being a person who does things associated with being a hermit to actually being one in some essential sense. One approach to becoming a diocesan (or a lay) hermit seems to be that of adding in pious and devotional practices without changing one's general environment. In this approach silence and solitude, for instance, are treated as things one adds in to one's life rather than being embraced as the very environment in which one lives. But becoming a hermit is not simply about living more or less of this or that: more prayers, more silence, more time alone, less contact with family or friends, less (or no) TV, etc. It is about a life with God alone which humanizes one and makes of one's life a prophetic presence in a noisy world devoted to self, dissipation, and distraction. Nikos Kazantzakis once said that, "Solitude can be fatal for the soul that does not burn with a great passion." I think that the movement from doing the things a hermit does to being a true hermit --- and the danger of never making this transition --- is a piece of what is behind this quote.

The process of becoming a diocesan (or, for that matter, a lay) hermit involves a transition to being at home in an environment of the silence of solitude. It involves a transition from being a person who prays occasionally (or even often) to being a person who is prayer in some fundamental and conscious way. Because this transition is so all-encompassing, and because it cannot be engineered, the time frame for becoming a diocesan hermit is ordinarily lengthy and individualized. Negotiating this transition is one of the more difficult aspects of becoming a hermit, it seems to me --- particularly if one is not willing to let go of one's previous life, or, similarly, if one is trying to accommodate "hermiting" to a more normal parish or religious life. The call to eremitical life is different not simply in degree, but in kind; a candidate to diocesan eremitical life must understand and embrace this difference.

The greatest risk to eremitical life, in my estimation, is mediocrity because mediocrity is a form of inauthenticity. Because the life is so independent, because there is little direct oversight, it is easy to lose oneself in this or that distraction. No one but the hermit and God knows if the hermit lives her Rule or horarium. No one knows if she shows up for prayer or spends appropriate time in lectio or study. No one knows when legitimate recreation slides into more dangerous distraction and dissipation. And of course, even if she is dilligent in doing all the things she is obligated to in her Rule, she still may not be growing sufficiently in holiness, human maturity, and the capacity to love and serve others. This too can be a kind of mediocrity. Yes, she lives this life under the supervision of her Bishop and those he delegates to serve in this way. But in most ways these individuals cannot do other than take the hermit's word about the quality of the life she is living. (Directors and delegates can and do ask probing questions and challenge to ever-greater fidelity to God's call, but ultimately, they do not live with the hermit and cannot measure mediocrity. Only the hermit can do that.) Here Kazantzakis' quote also is helpful, for the hermit will be one with a great passion and that passion will not allow mediocrity.

This tremendous independence and inner directedness (development of a truly great passion) is also one of the reasons the period of discernment and formation for a diocesan hermit is often quite lengthy. Again,the person seeking to make and live this commitment needs to make the transition from "doing hermit things" to being a hermit in an essential way. They are persons who have come to terms with their own poverty and realized that communion with God is, for them, found only in silence and solitude. Human wholeness and the community necessary for that is for them a paradoxical reality realized in the silence OF solitude. For them the ability to love and serve others requires an unusual degree of silence and solitude, prayer, penance, personal work, etc, and they MUST be committed to that. That is, they must be embracing this vocation because they love, and are committed to loving more and more. Diocesan representatives, the person's spiritual director, et al, must come to assurance not only that all this is true for this person, but that the person is capable of living out this truth with self-discipline and integrity and that she has a track record of faithfulness to the Rule of Life which reflects the truth of her life with God.

By the way, there is no formula for what this faithfulness means in any given individual's life. Canon 603 defines the essential elements of the life but does not quantify these. It says this is a life of the silence of solitude, and that it is marked by assiduous prayer and penance, a living out of the evangelical counsels, and stricter separation from the world, all lived for the salvation of the world and according to the person's own Rule of Life. However, it does not indicate any single picture of what these things mean. Because of this one must find out what each of these terms will look like in her own call to eremitical life. Again, discovering this, building it into a life which genuinely loves and serves others, which leads one to genuine holiness, and which is also consistent with eremitical tradition takes time, discernment, and consistent and focused work.

The risk, of course, (and an ongoing, every day risk in fact) is that one will fail in some part of this challenge, whether that is by buying into a stereotype of eremitical (or contemplative) life which allows one to cease discerning how the life is to be lived lovingly and prophetically in this time and place, or whether it means convincing oneself that certain evasions and compromises are legitimate when they are not. Mediocrity can take many forms and wear many guises (some of them quite dramatic or extreme in normal terms) even once one has made the transition from doing hermit things to being a hermit in an essential sense. It has a number of roots as well: failure to love, disobedience, selfishness, various forms of fear or resistance, arrogance, complacency, etc. In any case, while it is important to deal with each of these roots, I think mediocrity itself is really the greatest overall risk that faces someone trying to live an eremitical life.

Don Porcella, In Memoriam

Don Porcella (2nd from right) with Thomas Malanca (d. 24 Dec 2008) far right, Aggie Malanca (center), Mary Jo Brady (front left), and Bill Johns (behind Mary Jo) outside the chapel at St Perpetua's where he worshipped several times a week.
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Wednesday night, April 21st, 2010, Don Porcella died from a long and courageous struggle with cancer. Don had been home from the hospital just a few days, knowing that there would be no further treatment; he died quietly shortly after 10:00 pm. His family had spent the evening with him, and friends/parishioners had been able to be present in the 24 - 36 hours preceding the death to say goodbye.

I had only known Don for a little more than four years (far too short a time!), but he will remain one of the most unforgettable, genuinely inspiring persons I carry in my heart. Don was a Catholic Christian, a husband and father, a scientist (an environmental engineer whose PhD was in environmental health), Fullbright Scholar, professor, and an amazing (and prolific!) potter as well. All of these dimensions of his life came together for me in the imagery of the verse from John 7:37-38: [[If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive. . .]]

In his professional life Don studied rivers and lakes and developed methods for assuring their health and vitality, as Father and husband, friend and fellow Christian he was indeed a source of living water which flowed abundantly and generously from his heart. He listened, encouraged, nurtured and loved others into greater wholeness and fruitfulness. As a potter Don molded the very clay of the rivers, lakes and world he studied into amazing pieces, creating beauty out of more primal beauty. Don was always a scientist and perhaps the best that science has to offer our world. It is so common today for scientists to compartmentalize their lives so that science rules out faith or at best allows some superficial nod to religion. But not so with Don. His faith was deep and critical (and so, unceasingly curious and questioning), and his scientific work and critical approach to reality was faithful (and so, reverent, and lovingly intelligent). He had worked at and managed to integrate what for others would have been merely disparate aspects of a less genuinely intelligent life. In Christ all this came together in a humanity symbolized in the very pottery he made --- a vessel for God's own spirit and life, an earthen vessel from which flowed living water in abundance.

I will miss Don very much, his mind, his humor and impish (or perhaps roguish) grin, his slow and thoughtful speech, his gentle, generous, and loving heart, but I am very grateful to have shared in his life, and to be able to celebrate his eternal life and continuing presence in Christ.
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Services will be at St Perpetua's: Vigil 7:00 pm Monday 26.April
Mass of Christian burial, 10:30 am Tuesday, 27. April

Death as an Illusion?

The day before yesterday along with the pastor and pastoral associate from my parish I attended a workshop based on a relatively new book, The Hidden Power of the Gospels, by Alexander Shaia, PhD (clinical psychology). It was a good experience and the book is at once interesting and problematical. Some of the work was genuinely brilliant: historical accounts and details which contextualize the Gospels in ways which make them come alive with a fresh and compelling power, psycho-spiritual insights which illuminate the texts in new ways and lead to wonderful homiletic possibilities, the ability to address a wide audience despite a lack of theological training on their part, etc --- all of these are remarkable. However when the book had weaknesses (often rooted in these very same strengths!), they tended to be significant whether matters of flawed Scripture approaches, theological positions which were unnuanced or simply apparently unconsidered, or pastoral weaknesses stemming from these.

Several stood out, but one in particular raised questions, concerns and outright objections which were more profoundly affecting and emotional than the others. (For me this was underscored by finding out yesterday that a good friend of mine is dying!) Relatively fresh from a reportedly wonderful celebration of Easter, a celebration which included the chant: "Death is no more, Death is no more!" Dr Shaia looked at the Gospel of John (the only Gospel read during the early Church's Triduum) and reiterated several times, "Death is an illusion!" "Death is an illusion." And he continued, "How differently we would live if only we saw the real truth, that Death is no more, Death is an illusion." Shaia's unfortunately unqualified assertion did not go unchallenged, not only on the basis of the Gospel of John, but on the basis of Mark's and Paul's theologies as well as the pastoral experience of clergy and religious present. However, despite the proposal that this workshop was to allow for and be part of an ongoing discussion, it was not really the appropriate venue for someone from the audience outlining either the theological or the pastoral reasons such exaggerated claims were inappropriate --- even, or maybe especially for an Easter faith.

Of course neither is this the venue for doing that in any detailed way. A couple of weeks ago I reprised an article on Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved which was originally published in Review For Religious. That remains a good outline of the responsibility we have to be honest about both Jesus' victory over death, and the remaining victory which must still be achieved (by God) if God is to be all in all. As I wrote in that article, Godless death has been transformed through Jesus' obedient death and is now a more natural transitional event where we will meet God face to face. God has been victorious over sinful Godless death. He has actually taken that death into himself and not been destroyed in the process. However, death in this schema is not an illusion; it is both defeated and still with us. It is for this reason that Paul, who has noted the real "sting" of death is sin (that is, alienation from God), says exultantly, ". . .death where is thy sting?" --- an affirmation that in Christ Godless or sinful death is no more, but death as transition remains until God is "all in all".

Another point I made in that article was that death is not only something that overcomes us from without, but that it is also something that exists within us and has an affect on every dimension of our lives. As we ally and align ourselves with the powers of sin and death in this world we are changed, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically and even physically. In fact, sin and death gain more power, greater influence and malignancy in our world through these choices of ours. Despite Godless death being destroyed and a more natural or transitional death replacing it and still not having the last word, it remains a serious "dialogue partner" in our everyday lives. To treat death as an illusion neglects the very real dialogue which is still going on (and in fact SHOULD still be going on) in every human life.

This last is true because there is a positive dimension to this dialogue, a positive way of thinking about and treating with death which is especially important in rejecting the notion that death is an illusion. It involves the sense that death is an event in which we make a final decision for or against God, for or against our truest selves, for or against the Kingdom of God. Death involves a passive dimension and does indeed come upon us, often without warning, but even then we believe that death involves a final decision, that is, death is an event in which we are active participants in this positive sense as well. Death faces us with our finitude, as well as with our attachments to things which hold us here. It represents a liminal event, a boundary event which signals and illlumines the forms and various degrees of detachment we still must achieve.

The other side of detachment is attachment, and death serves to signal and illumine failures in attachment to the God who grounds and unifies all reality. It confronts us with our own lack of openness to complete dependence upon God and is the event in which obedience can be genuinely enlarged or deepened. In this sense death has a salutary role to play in our lives, and this is true whether we are speaking of the smaller deaths which mark each day or our final death this side of eternity. Beyond all this, death remains the event in which, meeting God face to face, we make a final decision and entrust ourselves to God --- or refuse to do so. Granted this dimension is ordinarily beyond anything people attending us actually can witness, but it remains a piece of the very definition of death as a human event.

We resist death. We think in terms of other people's death --- death is inevitable but not for me! One of the real lessons of Christianity and a life of prayer is the lesson of death's reality. We are Christians, not Christian Scientists or Platonists! In prayer we affirm life, but while we do that we also experience the process of dying to self and prepare for the final decisions of Death itself. We do not fear death in the way we might apart from what was achieved in the Christ Event, and we do not approach death as those for whom it has no meaning, but we do NOT treat it as an illusion --- precisely because we do believe in the resurrection! After all, it is bodily resurrection of the dead as well as a victory over Godless, sinful death.

Surrexit Christus, Cantate Domino!

Well, this is a little late, but all good wishes to everyone for this Easter Season! I am in the midst of recovering from what is fast becoming an annual post-Holy-Week event --- a bout of bronchitis, so I have not been writing much -- or doing much (literal) singing, despite the antiphon heading this post! However, I am truly fine, and am merely sorry not to have been able to share regarding the Triduum, or to have wished you all a Good Easter sooner than this!

A Theology of the Cross (Reprised)

Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved: Proclaiming a God Whose Power is Made Perfect in Weakness. Initially published in Review For Religious, January 2001



Death, and God’s relation to death is an overarching theme in human life, and certainly in the life of the Church. During Lent, for instance, we spend an entire forty days preparing to celebrate Christ’s victory over “sin and death.” During this season and others, images of these hostile forces, references to chaos, meaninglessness, and our bondage to all of them surround us. And in light of this, if there is anything we understand, (or should understand!), it is that these things are “the enemy.” During this time, for instance, we read in the Old Testament again and again that our basic choice, the really fundamental option that faces us in all of life’s moments and moods, is “choose life, not death;” and we know that these alternatives are not equivalent. After all, one is “of God” and the other is not. One is a choice for being, integration, re-creation, and meaning, while the other is a choice for diminishment, disintegration, destruction, and senselessness. One is the choice to respond to and fulfill the profound vocation to authentic existence spoken by God deep within us, while the other represents the repudiation of this summons and the rejection of our truest selves. One is, ultimately, a choice for an eternity in communion with the God who authenticates and completes us, the God who is the ground and source of life and meaning, while the other is the act by which we embrace the powers and utter emptinesses of hell.

At this time of the year in particular, we examine our lives for signs that they are marked and marred by our own alliances with sin and death, and we participate in a more focused way than usual in activities which reject such alliances, and are geared towards breaking the bonds established between us and them. We make the concerted effort to acknowledge, “we are dust, and shall return to dust,” that death is something that threatens us not only from without, but that it is also something that we carry around within us. And of course, we affirm and celebrate that for our sakes, and in opposition to our misguided, misbegotten alliances, God’s own Son has dwelt amongst us, implicating the One he called “Abba” into the whole panorama of our fragile, flawed, finite, and mortal existences, ---- up to and including his altogether humanly contrived, and godforsaken death on a Roman cross.

We observe Holy Saturday as the day when sin and death have triumphed. On this day there is no Savior, no Church, no Sacrament, and no Gospel. There is nothing to celebrate or proclaim. There is neither hope, nor freedom, nor real future. Sin and death are the apparent victors, and the present is as empty and forlorn as the desolate plaint of the enfeebled and failed messiah, whom we heard cry out from the cross just the day before. On this day we recall the original disciples --- broken by disappointment, grief, guilt, and shame, and stunned to terrified silence when the powers of the world overcame the One they called “Christ.” Their shattered hope for the definitive coming of God’s reign, and the ignominious, apparently unvindicated death of the man Jesus, stands at the center of our vision as well on this day. And in the shadow of this recollection, the bleakness of a world dominated by a power that regularly opposes and subverts the work of the Author of Life is clear. On this day, our entire horizon is death and the victory it has achieved over God’s Son, over us, and over our world.

In light of all this then, how is it we still hear from those engaged in pastoral ministry to the dying and bereaved for instance, that God is either the “author of death,” or it’s agent, or that anyone’s death (with the single exception of Christ’s own) is “God’s will”? How is it, with all the scriptural and empirical evidence otherwise, our ministers and faithful continue to present death as something other than the implacable enemy of life and the God who authors life? How is it that death is conceived of as other than an entirely alien and antithetical element in our existence, which God works continually and indeed, suffered greatly, to defeat --- an element that remains only on sufferance until “(God) is all in all”? How is it possible to hear from faithful who have been told that “God is the Lord of life and death,” that this must mean that when death intervenes, it is “God who KILLS us”? Yet, blunt and apparently absurd as this last formulation may sound to us, it is merely the clear spelling out of the implications of a flawed theology which considers death the event WITH which God punishes sin and calls us to judgement, rather than the hostile power he conquers, and the event IN which he intervenes in Christ, to raise us to eternal life.

Whether we are ministers trying to assist others with their own deaths, pastors comforting the bereaved, or simply persons who are trying to make sense of the reality of our own mortality, all too often we are burdened with vague, ill-defined, and even erroneous notions of death and the relationship between God and death. The situation is complicated by misreadings and distortions of Paul’s theology of the cross, and by fundamentalist interpretations of the creation narratives of Genesis. It is likewise made more difficult by anachronistic conceptions of the human being which see him/ her in terms of a body-soul dualism, as well as by simplistic notions of the sovereignty of God. The result is quite simply an inadequate theology that makes genuinely Christian ministry to the dying and bereaved difficult or even impossible, and caricatures God as the author of tragedy and absurdity in the process.

It seems to me therefore, that we must make a serious effort to correct our misconceptions of death, its relation to sin, and especially the relation of God to death. After all, how in the world are we to adequately celebrate God’s own triumph OVER sin and death, if we misunderstand these realities and posit God as their author? How can we make sense of the fact that God willed the suffering and death of his only begotten Son if we understand these realities as something God had complete control over in the first place? Are we really stuck with Anselm’s satisfaction theory, for instance, and the parody of God and God’s justice it is based on? And are we left only with the option of telling the dying and bereaved to whom we minister that “this is the will of God” or do we really have better answers at our disposal? Obviously, I am convinced there are far better answers available to Christians, and it is my intention to explore some of them, and their theological foundation, in this essay.

Common Misunderstandings of the Nature of Death

There are two basic misunderstandings regarding death and God’s relation to death, which seem to me to burden most Christians. The first is the notion that God is in COMPLETE control of human existence, and that because death is a part of that reality, this must mean that he is in complete control of it as well. There are various versions of this notion: “(Death) is God’s will;” “ Death is the way God punishes us for our sin” (especially original sin); “Everything that happens has a purpose;” “God gives and God takes away;” etc. Most often we hear versions of this theology from homilists and ministers trying to encourage us that God is omnipotent, and that everything that occurs, no matter how apparently senseless, is meaningful. We also hear these interpretations from ministers who believe that by affirming death is in God’s hands, by affirming it as the event WITH which he calls us home, for instance, some of the fear and sting of either dying, or bereavement is removed. Clearly, we sense that death is easier to bear if it is not simply perceived as an alien and hostile element in human existence, particularly if we can hear that it really isn’t the entirely senseless event it so often seems to be. In the meantime, however, we repress the serious theological questions such affirmations raise: Is all death and dying sent by God? Is God really their author? Are we expected to attribute instances of chance and absurdity to him as well, or are we expected to simply deny the existence of these things? Are so-called ‘acts of God’ really the work of God? Does “sovereignty” imply total control, or is the situation more complex than this? And of course, if God IS the author and agent of death as well as of life, what kind of God would such a deity truly be?

The second misunderstanding is related to the first. It is the notion that death, and here we are speaking of human death, is something that threatens us entirely from without, and so, is something which God can overcome by mere fiat. It is sometimes combined with the secular view that death is a wholly natural and neutral reality. This notion of human death fails to understand it as a partly, and indeed profoundly personal reality which is not simply part and parcel of our temporality, but is a special aspect of sinful existence. Because of this, it often goes unrecognized, much less acknowledged that God cannot force his way into this realm, nor overcome it from without. As in all else that is personal in our lives, God must be allowed or implicated into this realm if he is to bring it under subjection to himself and transform it. The logical consequences of this misunderstanding are also generally repressed, for such a misunderstanding of the relation of God to death generally raises the question: why did the Word have to become incarnate and God’s own Son suffer a torturous death by crucifixion, if God could have simply overcome sin and death by fiat?

Another Look at the Relation of Death to Sin and God

God created the world of time and space. He created it out of nothing (nihil), and it retains the ability to cease existing, to sink once again into nothingness. The created world continues to be conditioned by non-being. It is ambiguous and threatened. Non-being is an aspect of temporal-spatial existence. While created reality depends upon God for its existence, it is not simply from and of God. It is not, for instance, an emanation of God, and it does not possess its own being. It is finite and must be continually summoned and held in existence against the power of non-being also at work within and around it. Beyond this, and in part because of the presence of non-being as a conditioning element, this world also possesses potential. It has the capacity to grow and change. Non-being conditions this world as threat and as promise. It is both a condition of possibility and the condition of non-possibility.

When we consider human existence the situation becomes even more complex, because human beings are created with the capacity to reject God, and to ally themselves with that which is other than the One from whom life and meaning come, even looking to this as a source of life and meaning. Not only is human existence ambiguous in all the ways historical existence is ambiguous, but human beings can refuse to simply receive meaningful life as a gift from God. They can, as the OT puts the matter, “choose to know good and evil,” (in the very intimate way the OT uses the term knowledge), or “choose to be as Gods,” or again, they can “choose death.” Human beings can ally themselves with life and the author of life in total dependence, or (and there is no other option), they can ally themselves with the powers of non-being, the meaningless, anti-life, anti-truth, literally godless powers that are also part of spatial-temporal existence. And of course, they do. In fact they do so inevitably in one way and another. Without exception human beings embrace the powers and principalities of this world in a mistaken bid for autonomy and completion. They “live (and die) from” these powers, and in doing so give them greater standing, status, power, menace, and malignancy in the world than they would have without human complicity.



But where does non-being and the power of non-being come from in the first place? Is God its author? Is non-being a “something,” a form of matter as Manichaeism once suggested, and where else could it come from than the God who is the source of all that “is”? One of the better explanations comes from JÜrgen Moltmann in his, God in Creation. Building on a Jewish kabalistic notion , Moltmann explains:

<< God makes room for his creation by withdrawing his presence. What comes into being is a nihil which does not contain the negation of creaturely being (since creation is not yet existent), but which represents the partial negation of the divine being, inasmuch as God is not yet creator. The space which comes into being and is set free by God’s self-limitation is literally God-forsaken space. The nihil in which God creates his creation is god-forsakenness, hell, absolute death; and it is against the threat of this that he maintains his creation in life. Admittedly, the nihil only acquires this menacing character through the self-isolation of created beings to which we give the name of sin and godlessness. . . . This points to a necessary correction in the interpretation of creation: God does not create merely by calling something into being, or by setting something afoot. In a more profound sense he “creates” by letting-be, by making room and by withdrawing himself. >> (Emphasis added)

And what then of sin or estrangement from God? If non-being is a “natural” part of finite existence, then isn’t sin, which is primarily estrangement from God, also simply something natural, a part of historical existence? The answer is no. Sin, which begins as a natural separation or distinction from the God who dwells in eternity, occurs when human beings (who dwell instead in time and space) choose not to be entirely dependent upon God to save them from the threat of non-being. It occurs when human beings mistake actual independence from God for freedom, and when independence from God is pushed the further disastrous misstep, and mistaken for equality with God. It occurs whenever human beings decide that a humble response to God’s summons alone is not to be the only determinant of their lives, and align themselves with that which is not from or of God. It occurs when we make common cause with death and non-being rather than with the One who is the source of life and meaning. It occurs whenever human beings turn away from their creator toward that which is antithetical to him in acts of rebellion and apostasy, and transform a more natural separation-yet-communion into actual estrangement, alienation, and sometimes-outright antipathy. It happens whenever the “we” of our “original” state is rejected and/or betrayed, and thus transformed into the self-conscious, self-concerned, relatively isolated “I” attested to in the Genesis narratives.

Similarly then, death has also been transformed from something natural into something entirely unnatural. The death that we recognize as an integral part of human existence is something wholly unnatural. Just as human distinction and separateness was transformed into actual estrangement and alienation from God, from self, and from others, so too has normal finitude, ordinary mortality, taken on monstrous proportions in light of human sin. Human death is not simply a natural or neutral event. It is not simply the moment when non-being overcomes being, although it is certainly that as well. Human death is menacing; it is associated with human complicity and collusion with the anti-divine powers of nothingness, meaninglessness, and chaos. And of course, for this reason human death is “the wages of sin,” and implies the triumph of godlessness ---- a triumph which human beings have assisted, colluded, and become complicit in, in every possible way. Human death, apart from Christ, is a death of godforsakenness.

It is also, therefore, a death marked by the wrath of God, but wrath in the genuinely Pauline sense of the word. After all, God has created us with the capacity to choose something other than himself, or to be something other than we are created to be. And choose we do. And when we do, God leaves us to our choices. This is precisely what living under the wrath of God means. It does not mean that God is angry. It certainly does not mean that he punishes us in any way. It means simply that we are left to the choices we have made and the alliances we have forged throughout our lives. It means that, in fact, God respects (that is, he will not and cannot interfere with) these choices or alliances. It also means that those who are born into the world after us are touched by the same powers and principalities which we ourselves have elevated and magnified with our choices. Paul describes this in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. The wrath of God implies being “given up” to the alien powers with which we have aligned and allied ourselves, and therefore, to the gradually worsening decadence and disintegration that afflict us, our society, and our world because we have made common cause with chaos and nothingness. It implies an inhuman death marked by the embrace of godforsakenness, one in which absolute godlessness triumphs. Whatever death is or would be apart from Sin, it is not this. Instead it is the enemy of sinful humankind and of God, and it is this situation which the Cross of Christ is meant to address.



The Cross of Christ and the Death of Death

There are times and situations in human life and history which demand we look again at everything we believe, every definition and presupposition we hold, every scrap of knowledge we think we possess, and every perspective which seems intelligent, or natural, or logical. The picture of reality gained from the perspective of Holy Saturday surely suggests that the cross of Christ is, at the very least, one of these events. From this perspective alone we have a picture of a failed and possibly delusional “Messiah.” After all, God’s Son had not climbed down from his cross. He had not saved himself as he had saved others, and in the process he died a completely degrading and entirely ignoble death. The one he called Abba with an unprecedented intimacy had not established his reign with a mighty and outstretched arm. The angel of death had not passed over, nor had the powers of Rome been routed in any way reminiscent of the Egyptians at the Exodus. Instead, sin and death were the apparent victors on this day, and a God whose power is, even today, mainly understood by believers and unbelievers alike in abstract, impersonal terms of omnipotence, had proved unable to deal with the consequences of human freedom and its abuses, much less with the destructive powers of the world. And yet, the Christian Gospel affirms that this evident failure was the ground of a far more awesome victory, the victory of a hitherto unknown God whose “foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.”

So then, how is it the Cross of Christ “works”? This question is often posed “Why did Jesus have to die this kind of death?” And implicit in this query are a number of others: “why couldn’t Jesus simply have died of old age?” or, “why would his Father allow such a thing, much less will it?” or, “what kind of God would demand that his Son suffer betrayal, torture, abandonment, and even godforsakenness or hell?” and, “if God asks that of his Son, how can I believe he will have mercy on me?” These are important questions, and they are variations on the questions raised whenever God is made the author or agent of death. They are also the questions which are at least implicitly raised by notions of the cross which make it the place where an infinitely offended God is appeased or placated. And the answer to them is as simple as it is almost incomprehensible in its wondrousness. For God’s sake and the sake of a divine justice which is defined solely in terms of mercy and which seeks the reconciliation and completion of all of reality WITH God, God must overcome everything which separates him from us. For this reason, in order to implicate God into the realm from which he is by definition absent and from which he has actually been further excluded by human sin, someone sinless and therefore still entirely open and responsive to God, must die such a death.

On the one hand, this death must represent the worst death a human being may die. It must be a death marked by failure, weakness, abandonment and isolation. It must be a genuinely “inhuman” (that is, sinful) fate, the death of one whose dignity has been stripped from him, and who is left completely powerless and alone, with nothing left to recommend him to God. It, above all, must be a death where this one is given over entirely to nothingness, to the emptinesses of hell. It must be the death we each deserve --- the death that, without Christ, we each will die because of the alliances we have forged, and the choices we have inevitably made and ratified. It must be the death we each merit for ourselves, and often visit on others. And it must be that death in which the wrath of God is experienced without mitigation or diminution, precisely so that God can instead become inexhaustibly present here under the aspect of grace. At the same time, it must have been the most genuinely human death ever died. There could be nothing present in Christ which mitigated or compromised his openness to and dependence upon God, nothing which prevented the entire will of God being done in him, nothing which spoke of misguided autonomy, collusion with the powers of death and sin, disobedience, or pride. At the precise instant Jesus’ death is the most inhuman (godless) imaginable, it must also be the most human (open to God) precisely so that genuinely human existence which is defined in terms of obedience to and communion with God once again becomes a real possibility in our world. And the result is not only the possibility of genuinely human existence, but also necessarily, the simultaneous “death of (godforsaken) death.”

As we noted above, human death, the “wages of sin,” the result of our alliances with the “powers and principalities” of this world, cannot be destroyed from without, by fiat, without God also destroying his entire creation and abrogating the freedom of those who would and do ally themselves with these powers. So God chooses to become present even here in the realm of nothingness. God empties himself completely of his divine prerogatives in order to definitively reveal and assert a novel kind of divine sovereignty, an incredibly paradoxical power defined in terms of weakness. Sinful death is the ultimate enemy, and so, God chooses to be subject to it so that he might transform it entirely. Thus, Good Friday and Holy Saturday are followed and rendered permanently valid by Easter, the definitive and wholly new “Passover.” After Christ, death is no longer the godless place, and it no longer has the final word. Because of Christ, and because he chose to become subject to sin and the wages of sin out of love for his Father and us, God has become present “in the unexpected place,” and the power of death, which was the power to separate us from God forever, is definitively broken. The God Jesus reveals--- the One whose Name he makes known and real among us, is the formerly unseen, infinitely paradoxical God who, from creating to redeeming his creation, “calls into being the things that are not, and raises the dead to life.” Most significantly, he does so with a sovereignty which is worked out in self-emptying and self-limitation, a justice which is defined in terms of mercy, and a “power (which is) made perfect in weakness.”

Paul summarizes this whole theology in one statement: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” Note well that Paul does not say, “God was in Christ being reconciled to a world that offended him infinitely.” Note as well that neither is Paul concerned with a kind of justice which is either familiar or comfortable to us. This justice is neither distributive nor retributive. In no sense is this a God “who gives us what we deserve.” Instead Paul’s entire focus is on the fact that in the Christ Event, and most especially on the cross, God asserts his rights over creation, and defines justice with an exhaustively kenotic and sacrificial mercy which secures our freedom on the one hand, and which transforms the very things we choose when we abuse and misuse that freedom on the other. In this theology, God’s justice is actually expressed as his refusal to allow anything to separate us from him. Here grace and justice, are largely synonymous. If wrath means allowing us our choices out of love for us even in full recognition of our sin, grace means allowing us our choices, but, out of an unconditional love, transforming the very nature of that which we choose so that we are no longer separated from God, or broken and estranged as human beings. If wrath means allowing us to choose the godless and godforsaken, grace means the transformation of these things, and especially the transformation of sinful death into an actual sacrament of God’s presence. If sin means our separation from God and the self-assertion and ingratitude that prompts it, divine justice is God’s assertion that we belong to him no matter what, and what is ordinarily called “justification” is the reconciliation that results when God acts out this judgement in the Christ Event.

All of this, of course, is the climax of the Divine self-emptying that began at creation. It contrasts precisely with the pretensions to divinity assumed by human beings in sin --- the same pretensions that crucified Christ in a riot of religious righteousness and political expediency. This is indeed the victory of a God whose “foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.” It reminds us that ours is a God who is folly to “Greeks” and a scandal to “Jews,” and as it does so, it calls into question everything we once held as conventional wisdom about God, his sovereignty, wrath, justice, power, and dignity, and it offers us alternative and paradoxical definitions of all of these, as well as our own notions of what constitutes genuinely human existence. What was true at the time Paul wrote about the scandal and foolishness of the cross is no less true now. For this reason we can be very sure that if the Cross has not challenged our notions of all we experience and know, we have not really understood it. Even more seriously, so long as we refuse to accept the redefinitions achieved on the cross, we make it, and what was achieved there, void. There is, I think, no place our success or failure in this has more serious consequences than in our theology of death, and our ministry to the dying and bereaved.





Implications for Our Ministry to the Dying and Bereaved

This brings to our ministry then, an alternative way of looking at death, tragedy, senselessness, and their relation to God. I believe this alternative perspective results in an altogether more extensively and intensively comforting pastoral approach, but there is no doubt that it is tremendously challenging as well. After all, it requires that both we and those we minister to, give up the facile answers and simplistic platitudes that have so long mistakenly passed for Christian faith and truth. This perspective demands then that we adopt a grammar of salvation built on the paradoxes embodied in a theology God worked out in creation and on the cross in terms of kenosis and asthenia. In this theology, the God who renounces his own prerogatives out of love for us is not in total control, but ultimately, he is the God who asserts his rights over all of creation and mercifully brings all things to fulfillment in himself. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once rightly reminded us, “Not everything that happens is the will of God, but inevitably nothing that happens occurs outside his will.” In this theology God has willed the sinful death of only one person, his own Son, but he has done so only in order that he might defeat godless death entirely. In this theology, God gives, sin distorts, desecrates and destroys, and death takes away, but God intervenes in death and robs it of any ultimate victory. And in this grammar of salvation, not everything that happens in our world makes sense or has meaning, but at the same time it can all be the basis for celebrating a God who will bring order out of chaos, life out of death, and meaning out of absurdity if we only give him the chance, and perhaps even when we do not.

In concrete terms this means that when dying or grieving persons ask us if this human death is the will of God, we must answer no, but what God will make of it in Christ is another matter. Death is the enemy, and it is both God’s and ours, but in Christ it is also the vanquished enemy whose power, for all its awfulness, is a merely a hollow shell of what it once was. If we are asked why God does not intervene to save a dying child, for instance, we must be clear that God has intervened, but he has intervened in death to transform its very nature, and make sure it does not have the final word. And when those we minister to rightly affirm that they have sinned, and are frightened of God’s justice, or that they feel guilty as death approaches, we have to be able to remind them that God’s justice has determined they will not be separated from him. No. God has asserted his rights over all of creation, and has promised to love us with an everlasting love. Perhaps it is the case that God’s mercy assumes an awful aspect for those unprepared to be nothing but forgiven, but for those who are prepared to accept this gift, God’s justice is a source of unending joy, and its promise is still ultimately comforting. So, while we cannot minimize or trivialize the sin and guilt anyone experiences, neither can we allow it to be perceived as greater or more powerful than God’s own solution for it. The wages of sin is godforsaken death. But an innocent Christ has died our own deserved godless death, and the wages of this death is eternal life in communion with a God who refuses to allow sin and death to remain godless.

Many Christians are scandalized or frightened by the suggestion that God is not in complete control of his creation. They believe it offends against a God who is traditionally described in terms of omnipotence. But they have not been introduced to the paradoxical sovereignty of the God of Jesus Christ who defeats sin and death by participating in them. Here God’s sovereignty is exercised precisely where he dies for us. A God who is said to limit himself in creating and redeeming a free creation, is a real stumbling block to many Christians, and more than this, many are made nervous by the notion that there are things at work in the world which God neither foresees in detail, nor immediately controls. This too seems to offend against the theology of an omniscient, omnipotent God. Many will be downright angry at a notion of divine justice where people “don’t get what they deserve.” After all, a God whose judgement IS his mercy certainly is a stumbling block. But, again, God asserts his rights over us as he will and for all these people, the paradox of a crucified God whose foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men, needs to be more convincingly proclaimed and taught. While some of us find the notion of God as the author and agent of death repugnant, many others are threatened by a notion of death where God is neither the agent nor the author. At the same time however, these folks may not have been taught that through Christ’s death and resurrection sinful death is miraculously transformed into a sacrament of God’s presence. And yet, it is certainly part of an adequate ministry to the dying and bereaved to make these central aspects of the Gospel of Jesus Christ effectively known. We will have failed badly if we are unable to recognize and adequately affirm either side of the God-death equation that is at the heart of Christian kerygma.

Every human life has its Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays. There is failure, absurdity, betrayal, collusion, isolation, injustice, cruelty, torment, and death. There are times when we are simply left helpless and mute in the face of our own and others’ inhumanity, and when we are bewildered by the tragic and inexplicable circumstances of our personal and collective histories, as well as by the silence and apparent inadequacy of God at these times. In the short term Sin often does triumph and the powers of this world are sometimes immediately victorious. After all, God is not yet “all in all,” and not all that happens is either from or of him. Ministers to the dying and bereaved have to be courageous enough to admit these things without mitigation or equivocation. And yet, there is another side to all of this that must be communicated clearly and persuasively.

Death and the apparent triumph of non-being are followed by resurrection, and as a result, we really can’t look at any of reality in quite the same way again. The negativities of life are real, but so is the God who chooses to enter into them and transform them with his own life and presence. After all, ours is the God of Jesus and Paul, the God who raises the dead to life, the God whose justice is defined in terms of mercy rather than wrath, and who refuses to allow anything to separate us from his love. Ours is the God who assumes a position of impotence in order that his sovereignty might be perfected and we might be saved when we are most helpless. And he is the God who does this so that even while we face squarely the greatest tragedies and senselessnesses life has to offer, we can exultantly cry with Paul, and help those to whom we minister to do the same, “Sin where is thy victory, death where is thy sting?”

The Prodigal Daughter

The majority of active contemporary religious women come in for a lot of criticism these days. Traditionalists are upset they are not teaching or nursing, directing Faith Formation programs and the like. They are said to have lost a sense for the heart of consecrated life, to have strayed too far into the realm of the secular, to have failed to remain in their proper religious preserve, dress in their proper separating attire, and so forth. Tonight I had a soup supper with my diocesan delegate, a Sister of the Holy Family, and this picture (which I had sent to her previously) was something she referred to in terms of one of the newer (and very demanding) ministries of her congregation. One contemporary problem the SHF have taken on is that of human trafficking.



For those unfamiliar with the charism and mission of the Sisters of the Holy Family, this congregation has always had the welfare of children and families at the heart of their concerns and ministries. They are, like Ruth in the Old Testament, gleaners, those who are attentive to and solicitous of the anawim who are overlooked or discarded by our dominant and affluent society. Today, little as we might like to admit the fact, the reality of human trafficking is all-too-prevalent. It is one form of societal blindness, deafness, forgetfulness and exploitation of the least and poorest of our world, and it is a place courageous and visionary women like the Sisters of the Holy Family go to minister in Christ.

While looking at this picture of the Prodigal Daughter, Sister Marietta referred to imagining what happens to young women and children caught up in this scourge: "what do they see, what have they experienced, why did they leave, what do they need to be brought home --- really and truly brought home?" (paraphrase) The Sisters of the Holy Family are committed to accomplishing this last task in whatever ways they can. Thus, for Marietta, Mackesy's picture is a poignant reminder of what it really means to be ministers in the contemporary world, to really be GLEANERS, --- and, along with Luke's story of the Prodigal Father, how offensive this might be to those who would restrict religious women from the secular world! (The scandal of the Incarnation is an ever-present reality whenever genuine Christianity is encountered by the religious establishment!)

Charisms and missions are the deep and stable underlying realities congregations (and hermits!) live their lives trying to embody. Ministries, which are more variable than these, change as the needs of our society and church shift and change in light of these deep realities. As Marietta reminded me tonight, "Vocation is that place where our own deep gladness and the needs of society meet." (Frederick Buechner.) In this time where contemporary religious women are under fire we should thank God that they have so profoundly internalized their respective charisms and missions as to be able to adopt traditionally consistent and demanding new ministries, no matter how apparently "irreligious" or unorthodox they seem to those with different commitments (and sometimes --- maybe often) with significantly less vision!