Looking Again at Merton's Comment on the Likeness of Despair and Hope

I have been asked by a couple of people to say more about what Thomas Merton meant by stating that hope and despair are very much alike, as I raised the question rhetorically without providing a direct answer. The original post can be found here Why does the Church Need Hermits? and includes the pertinent Merton quote.

The passage in that post that I want to write about here is the one reflecting on Jesus' cry of abandonment from the cross, because I think that it is here we see most clearly a hope that could be mistaken for despair.  What I wrote there said, "And in the very depths of Jesus' journey into the darkest absence of being and meaning, life and love, God was there. But Jesus' question in the Garden was also sharpened there on the cross: why can't you pluck me out of this situation? Why HAVEN'T you rescued me? How will you vindicate me and, more importantly, my proclamation of the truth of your Reign, your sovereignty, if sinful, godless death is allowed to win out? Don't you see, godless death is swallowing me up!! I have nothing whatsoever left to give!! My God (not the more intimate, Abba!), why haven't you rescued me?"

What I think it is important to recognize about Jesus' so-called cry of abandonment is the fact that, despite the use of a more formal, "O God, my God" rather than Jesus' more usual and intimate, "Abba" Jesus was speaking to God and remained open to God doing whatever he willed to do to vindicate Jesus and his proclamation of God's coming Kingdom. The questions I posed in the above passage were meant to reflect a sharpening of the question Jesus posed in Gethsemane, "Isn't there another way?" It was as I meditated on and struggled with Jesus' experience on the cross that it became clear to me that I might have a sense of what Thomas Merton was saying about the kinship of hope and despair. 

In my own experience, I described these two realities as being "an eyeblink apart". When I said that, I was thinking of the parallax phenomenon where we look at an object first with one eye, and then with the other, without moving our head. There is a decided difference between the two views, yet they are still views of the same reality. I think in some ways this might have been what Merton saw about the relation of hope and despair, whether the source was his own experience or his meditation on Jesus' cry of abandonment or both together (which is what I believe he was speaking of).

Imagine yourself closing your right eye and looking at the events on Golgotha with just your left eye, so to speak. Jesus had reached the end of his own resources. In many ways, his situation seemed hopeless. It was a situation that struck fear and revulsion in the hearts and minds of those who even considered such a death. Crucifixion was considered a literally godless reality, and this was true for Jews as well as for the Greco-Roman world. Jesus' cry of abandonment (or any inarticulate cry, such as Mark gives us) could well be seen as a cry of abject despair, particularly as Jesus shifts his usual Abba to O God! Everything about the situation seems worthy of despair. When someone comes to the end of their resources and their life project seems to have collapsed not only in failure, but in abjectly humiliating failure underscored by personal betrayal and rejection because that life project was built on the proclamation of a God who loved without condition or limit and willed to be with us in every moment and mood of existence, well,  this is the stuff human despair is made of.

But let's look at the events of Jesus' crucifixion from that slightly different perspective using the idea of parallax and what it might be able to show us. Imagine you now close or hold your hand over your left eye and look at the same events with only your right eye. The change in perspectives is very slight, but the shift in the image being perceived is very real. Jesus had reached the end of his resources. In almost every way, his situation seemed hopeless. It was a situation that indeed struck terror and revulsion into the hearts and minds of every person in Jerusalem that day. It was a literally shameful, godless death in Jewish theology and abject foolishness and ignominy from the Greco-Roman perspective. Jesus' cry of abandonment (or his inarticulate cry in Mark's Gospel), even if it is taken from the first half of Psalm 22, appears at first to be a mockery of the eventual vindication that comes in the second half of the psalm --- perhaps a repudiation of his faith. Yes, Jesus has been betrayed and rejected by those who most loved him, except for his Mother and a couple of hangers-on. The God Jesus proclaimed with his life is apparently powerless -- if he exists at all. This is definitely the stuff despair is made of. And yet, what you can just barely see from this slightly different perspective is that Jesus has not closed himself off to God. His cry is not just a plaint of horrific suffering. It is also truly a prayer, the giving up of the last vestige of self-defense, the whole-hearted and heart-breaking embrace of a God that is bigger than even the greatest of human resources or their loss.

From this perspective, one can glimpse more clearly than one was able from the first perspective, that Jesus knows this God whose sovereignty he proclaimed and, despite the loss of everything else that could be called a resource, Jesus has not given up all hope.  This is not failure. This is what it looks like for the one who was utterly open and transparent to God to show us precisely how far this God would journey to truly be with us in every moment and mood of our lives. And Jesus allowed this; his own journey of integrity made it possible for God to enter this darkest and most senseless of realities, and transform it with his presence.  I believe this may have been what Thomas Merton was talking about when he referred to how similar despair and hope are. It is very like what I experienced at the beginning of Lent when I realized my deepest hungers and yearnings showed me the face of God and my own deepest self as well. For me, hope and despair were only an "eyeblink apart". They were so closely related that there were times I could not (thanks be to God!) tease them apart. But it was only in entering into the shadow of death and the precincts of despair or near-despair that an even more vibrant hope was possible.

Nothing and no one but God could have redeemed my own experience, just as only Jesus' Abba could have redeemed his experience and raised him to new life. I believe Thomas Merton's own life, prayer, and human struggle for wholeness and holiness brought him to something of the same experience that led him to say, " I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts. An arid, rocky, dark land of the soul, sometimes illuminated by strange fires which men fear and peopled by spectres which men studiously avoid except in their nightmares. And in this area I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is." How alike indeed! Sometimes that huge difference really is only an eyeblink apart.                                         

Feast of Saint Romuald and the Camaldolese Congregation

 From the Camaldolese newsletter regarding today's feast:

June 19th is an official feast for the Camaldolese congregation. It marks the feast of the founder of the Camaldolese Congregation, Saint Romuald of Ravenna.

Born in 951 AD, Father Romuald lying on his bed, gave his life back to God on the 19th of June 1027- (Saint Peter Damian: The Life of Blessed Romuald). As a young man, Romuald did penance for 40 days at the monastery of Sant’Apollonare near his home region of Ravenna, which was then an administrative city for the destroyed western Roman Empire, simply for being a witness of a duel where there was a death. He then became a monk there, but shortly afterward came under the tutelage of a hermit monk in Venice named Marino with whom, among other things, he prayed the 150 psalms every day. Venice was at that time considered Byzantine territory. It was common practice for hermit monks to pray constantly, especially to pray the entire psalter daily. This was a tradition shared with the Levite priests of Judaism praying the Tehillim, the same tradition for monks of the desert in the north of Africa and the Middle East, as well as among both the eastern and western monks of the Roman Empire. In 978 Romuald left Venice to travel with an abbot of Cluniac tradition, Abbot Gari, to one of his monasteries under his jurisdiction located in Cuxa (the Pyrenees). There Romuald lived for almost 10 years as a hermit, but also participated in the cenobitic life with other monks. There he was also ordained a priest.

These two pivotal places, Venice and the Pyrenees, marked the formative moments in his monastic life, where he realized the importance of a balance of eremitism and cenobitism in the spiritual life. After Cuxa, Saint Romuald returned to Ravenna and immediately to Montecasino for a short period of time. Then, and for the rest of his life, he moved through different areas in central Italy, mainly within what was then the Papal states, and Istria, which was part of the republic of Venice and is now Croatia, founding hermitages, reforming monasteries, and mentoring other monks.

Saint Romuald lived in tumultuous times, where alliances, principalities, empires, duchies, provinces, and new marquisates were forming. Unfortunately, during this period in history, nepotism (the favoring of relatives or friends) existed in order to secure geographical territory. Monasteries and abbeys were appointed or granted in order to secure some favor in government, alliances or power. Simony (the buying and selling of religious posts or pardons) was also common.

Within this environment, Saint Romuald was appointed to various abbacies and also twice threatened with death. He rejected the threats and avoided compromising situations with his religious fervor and piety, always responding to the call to serve and surrender to God’s call. He preferred times of prayer and seclusion above all; in his interactions with other monks as is stated in both documents that narrate his life (Saint Peter Damian’s The Life of Blessed Romuald and Saint Bruno of Querfort’s The Life of the Five Brothers), he always gave counsel to monks to return to their cell and pray. He attracted multiple candidates to monasticism and his fame grew in the region of what is now Tuscany, Venice, Croatia, and Rome.

Follow-up Questions on the Bishop's Responsibilities in Regard to c 603 Professions

[[Dear Sister, what I hear in your response on the situation in Lexington is that your concern is mainly with the bishop of Lexington. Isn't a fraudulent use of c 603 the responsibility of the candidate seeking admission to profession? When you say that Cole Matson made first vows even though she didn’t believe she was called to this vocation, I am confused. She claims to be a diocesan hermit, doesn’t she? Can one make vows or profession without really believing one has this vocation? How is that possible? I have an acquaintance in my parish who is trying to become a diocesan hermit. She said our impression that he wanted to be sure my ‘friend’ is really a hermit before he agree bishop is the final authority in these matters, but that he cannot just do whatever he wants. I got that he wants to be sure she is a hermit before he admits her to profession.]]

Thanks for your questions.  Part of what you are confused by with the situation in Lexington, KY, I think, is built into the situation itself by both Bishop and Matson. At the same time, I agree with your friend’s observation on the Bishop’s role in the matter of professing people under c 603. While a candidate is responsible for discerning this vocation in good faith, something Cole failed to do in this case, the Bishop has the final say as well as the responsibility for discerning such vocations, and protecting and nurturing them as part of the Church's eremitical tradition. This means 1) he cannot and must not profess someone who doesn’t truly believe they have such a vocation, and 2) he must do all that is necessary to understand, appreciate, and help candidates discern and secure the necessary formation required by a genuine eremitic vocation. (He may, of course,  delegate other chancery personnel to help with this.)

In all of this, one thing should be clear. The bishop serves the Church and her own patrimony, including canonical vocations God has entrusted to the Church. With all this in mind, your question, “How is this possible?” is an important one. I have never before heard of a situation where a bishop has admitted someone to profession (an act that is larger than just the making of vows) when s/he claims to know she is called to something else. Had the Bishop truly determined Cole had some kind of new vocation to consecrated life requiring public profession, he could have tried to profess Cole under c 605 which is dedicated to new forms of consecrated life, but this would also have required the agreement of the Vatican, so I think it is understandable why he did not chose to do this. Instead, he used c 603, giving the really poorly-considered grounds for professing Cole under c 603 posted here recently and last year.

What this required was an abdication of the bishop’s responsibility to protect and nurture c 603 vocations themselves. It also led to the inability to have faith in the adequacy of the discernment process of any other professions under c 603 that might take place in this specific diocese. That especially includes any further attempts at making a canonical profession made by Matson in the future. As I noted last year, even if Cole were to say he has “discovered” a genuine eremitical vocation before making such a commitment, it would be very difficult to trust his "discernment" or believe his motivations were valid this time around. Still, the primary responsibility with regard to this vocation falls to Bp John Stowe and secondarily to any canonist giving the bishop advice on the use of the canon in Cole's regard. Bishop Stowe was entrusted with this specific vocation as belonging to the Church, as well as with being the last (though not the only) word in assessing candidates’ discernment processes. It is also the bishop's job to determine, more generally, what is best for the diocese in terms of such a vocation. Because c 603 is an ecclesial vocation, admission to profession should be a sign that the candidate understands her place in building and representing the heart of the Church, and expressing with her life the Church’s theology of consecrated life.

I am glad to hear what your friend said about her own bishop. It is reassuring to hear that that is the minimum criterion he must see in order to admit one to profession and eventually, to perpetual profession and consecration. Last year, a friend of mine said something very perceptive, viz, “Sure one can be a male or a female [under c 603], but one still needs to be a hermit!!” I would add that that implies as well, 1) that one is already a contemplative, 2) that one has lived the vows (or the values associated with these) for some period of time before seeking to be canonically professed, 3) that one has discerned a need for even greater solitude than one required as a non-eremitical contemplative, and 4) that one has a way of supporting oneself that does not require time away from the hermitage and/or can be done in solitude.

What we are left with in the Diocese of Lexington is the injudicious and even fraudulent use of c 603. I am sure it is confusing and problematic for members of the diocese. Until the USCCB and DICLSAL weigh in to clarify matters, I cannot personally accept that the profession was valid, and I suspect I am not alone in this, particularly once Cole made his Pentecost revelation last year. I am sure some people will accept him as Brother Christian because it seems the charitable thing to do; I, however, believe it is uncharitable and cannot do it. While I expect Cole to be the hermit he claims to be called to be, at the same time, since he has been clear this is not his vocation, I don't see how he can live the vocation he has claimed as his own for the time being. It is not an easy vocation, and I believe it would be impossible to live without a strong divinely-rooted sense that God is calling one to this life. 

Beyond the questions of Matson's "hermithood" and the validity of his vows, I find that I still cannot accept that Cole is "Brother Christian". Of course, Cole is my brother/sister in Christ, but at the same time, it remains Church teaching (and medical opinion) that despite any radical medical interventions]', Cole remains a female.**  If, after having truly discerned a c 603 vocation, Cole really chose to be professed and make the vow of celibacy appropriate to that profession, it should have been as Sister (C___), and even then, only after renouncing the transgender changes made medically to whatever extent that was really possible. I cannot see any other way forward. This means that if Bishop Stowe attempts to perpetually profess and consecrate Cole as Brother Christian in this vocation in the near future, for example, it will exacerbate the questions of validity and even sacrilege, as well as concerns that the Bishop's own agenda was allowed to overwhelm his ability to discern c 603 vocations and fulfill his office in regard to such vocations. It is also likely to create difficulties for other dioceses as similar candidates without an eremitical vocation seek to be professed in this way based on the precedent now set by the Diocese of Lexington. Unfortunately, no one (USCCB, DICLSAL) has acted on this, or, at the very least, clarified the Church's teaching on all of this.

As I noted last year, the situation with Bp John Stowe and Cole Matson impacts the c 603 vocation as such. It is, in some ways, both an ancient and a quite new vocation, and for these reasons it is also both vital and fragile. The really serious content, charism, and mission of the eremitical vocation is difficult for most people to perceive or understand, even without examples of "hermits" who are not called to the same journey, or who have been deceptive about the nature and content of their vocation and vows. Many c 603 hermits with chronic illnesses or disabilities faced accusations, or at least strong suspicion, that this was really just a stopgap "vocation" with little true content or reason for being. The usual "suggestion" was that these persons could not live in community, so they used c 603 as a way to get professed. While this was not generally true, the possibility haunted candidates with disabilities, even when they were relatively sure of the authenticity of their vocation and their faithfulness to it. 

Some others were refused admission to profession and consecration simply because the diocese involved did not want to take a chance on harming the vocation by professing someone who was chronically ill, never mind the fact that illness is a desert situation which can open one to a profound seeking of God --- the very essence of the vocation! After 41+ years, most diocesan hermits had shown the Church that this suspicion was unfounded. And then, in one act of mind-boggling ignorance, arrogance, and blindness, the Diocese of Lexington did exactly the thing we were all trying (quietly, patiently, in whatever ways were appropriate) to demonstrate was not true of c 603 vocations! Bp Stowe admitted to using c 603 to profess someone who had admitted he did not have this vocation, but who was claiming it as a stopgap way to get himself publicly vowed and in a habit "for the sake of justice" for the transgender community. After all, despite being informed about this concern of "stopgap" vocations, Bp Stowe reasoned, it was a "little-used" canon that could be utilized by both men and women, so who could it hurt? The canonist he consulted apparently provided little more than this on the vocation itself. Several people, then, contributed to what was a stunningly insensitive and irresponsible act, and it apparently continues today, without any real ecclesiastical resolution. 

** As you may know (from your use of feminine pronouns for Cole Matson), one's sex does not change, even with radical medical interventions to shape and conform normal characteristics of gender. This is what both medicine and the Church's theology of the human person and their sexuality currently teach. I don't see this changing.

Follow-up Questions on "Does God Will or Need our Suffering?"

[[Dear Sister Laurel, at the beginning of the year (January 26, 2025 Does God Will or Need our Suffering?) you wrote, "What you are looking at in your Dx is both a terrible uncertainty and an equally terrible certainty. I will certainly pray for you, and I ask that you pray for me as well. At the same time, I encourage you to do all you can to refuse to allow your diagnosis to take over your identity. This would be the worst kind of betrayal of either yourself or of God. God has made you much more than your illness and he has called you to witness to the power of his creative love. I think that is the only way to really manage serious chronic illnesses. We must find and witness to the larger hope to which we are called --- the larger life, meaning, and purpose that allows even suffering to be transfigured in Christ. " 

I wanted to thank you for this comment because I have struggled with chronic pain so much that sometimes it feels like it is just swallowing up my whole being. My doctors have urged me to not let this happen, and I have shared what you wrote about this. They agree, though they wouldn't use the language of a betrayal of God like you do. But pain has changed me, and it often seems to be the only thing I know or can see or feel. It affects everything, so how do I hold onto my identity? I am not who I once was before my Dx; I am not who I want to be or was trained to be. I think I am not even who God created me to be. How do I keep from losing my identity altogether and letting myself be swallowed up in my pain?. . .]]

Wow! Thanks for saying this yourself, and for your really excellent questions!! I understand firsthand what you are asking about and have struggled in some of the same ways. I will say that one of the ways having a spiritual director is helpful is the way they can help us maintain perspective when we are unable to see clearly because of whatever it is we are suffering or that is otherwise going on. When I work with clients, I sometimes use the image of the director seeing more of the forest when the client is only able to see the trees (or a single tree or two!). Sometimes we joke together about having one's nose stuck in a particular knothole that one can only see that much of the world around them, or themselves, for that matter! Thus, the SD can usually see the forest more clearly in some ways, and that can be immensely helpful. So let me reflect back to you some of what I see from what you have written.

The first thing I see from all you have written and in almost every sentence is the distinction between you (I, me) and your illness and pain. You have changed. Pain is almost the only thing YOU know or see. "I am not who I once was." "I think I am not even who God created me to be," etc. In each of these sentences, you stand as a person struggling with something that is an intimate and significant part of your life, but which is also NOT you. It causes you pain, yes, and it also causes you to be uncomfortable with what it is tending towards, namely, swallowing up your identity. But you see, you are uncomfortable with this and are concerned by its possibility; you are speaking about the difficulties it brings in its wake. It is NOT YOU, nor do you want to allow it to become you!! All of that underscores that your suffering is something you experience AND, at the same time, is not YOU. I think it is critical that you hold onto this piece of truth. It is fundamental and is the basis for any choice you may make in the future about yourself and who you will be despite your suffering.

The second thing I see from what you have written is some of your grief and loss. These are real and substantial, and I am really sorry that suffering has made these a reality for you. You have lost a self-image that helped you negotiate the present and determine who you would be in the future. It helped you to decide on and secure training and education. It helped you dream about possibilities for yourself and the world you touched. It was part of who you were, yes, I get that. But it was only a PART of who you were and also, as a memory, who you are now.  You still have your training and education, your memories; all of these things (and more) make you who you are in the present. You still have the values that made you seek training and/or education in the first place, for instance. You are a person who grieves the loss of important aspects of yourself in the past, yet you are more than these at the same time. The fact that you were more than these and sought them out to help you be who you were in concrete ways hasn't changed. You are still more than these things, and though you have new limits, your deepest potentialities have not been lost. Yes, you are called to live these potentialities in a different way than you once envisioned, but the potentialities of your personhood themselves have not been lost. By all means, recognize and grieve what has been lost, but don't mistake it for the deeper reality you still are and are called to live in new ways.

The third thing I see or hear from what you have written is that you are a seeker. You have faith. This means you are open to life, to newness, and to the God of life and meaning who comes new to us at every moment. In my own experience, chronic illness and pain, especially, challenge us to develop our theologies of and relationship with God. Both are critical if we are to develop the new self-image and most foundational confidence in ourselves that is rooted in God and the grace of God. If our theology is flawed, so will our relationship with God be flawed (and vice versa); if our relationship with God is flawed or inadequate, so will be our self-image or self-concept. Each of these interrelated pieces affects the other. The situation you find yourself in today requires you to develop (or adopt and personally integrate) a theology that has room for weakness, limits, and even flaws and failure, without betraying the Creator God of love or your own commitment to life in the process. 

What I am especially thinking of here is avoiding a theology where God (and/or personal sin) is/are made responsible for your illness or pain. God does not will your suffering and is not the source of it. (Unless you have done something to harm yourself as part of what you are now suffering, neither is your own personal sinfulness.) What God does will is to be present with you in your suffering in a way that can transfigure it and the whole of your life into a source of blessing and even joy. Your own faith can be a source of real comfort, consolation, and encouragement in the strongest sense of that word, but it cannot be that if God is distorted into the source or reason for your suffering. When that happens, we tend to feel an at-least-unconscious resentment toward God, and the legs are cut out from under genuine faith which is a profound form of trust. 

When you ask how you keep from having your identity swallowed up by the reality of your pain, my immediate response is to remember and keep reminding yourself who you are and are called to be, both despite and also in the pain. Your pain may be a redwood-sized tree in the middle of a forest of bonsais, but the forest is real and (forgive my mixed metaphors) while the redwood dominates everything, attention to the other parts of the forest will reveal real beauty and life you can cultivate that is every bit as valuable as any you may have lost. Also, I would really encourage you to find someone you can trust to talk with regularly, someone who can maintain a healthy perspective and help you to do the same. As noted above, if there is someone nearby who does spiritual direction, talking with them about this exact thing can be really helpful. Accompaniment, another way of speaking about spiritual direction, refers to traveling with someone on their life journey and providing ways to assist them to keep on their God-given path in spite of all of life's obstacles, limitations, and barriers.

There are many images in Scripture that are helpful to those who suffer from chronic illness, as you are. Two of my favorites include the reminder that we are earthen vessels holding a treasure. God continues to delight in you and to know the treasure you are, despite the earthen vessel's fragility and tendency to brokenness. The second is also from Paul and is something I use as the motto of my religious life, namely "My (God's) grace is sufficient for you, my (God's) power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:8-9) These are the essential truths of a transcendent God who chose incarnation as the way to reveal Godself most fully and exhaustively. They express both the value of our lives to God and the limitations to which we are subject. They reflect the lessons you are learning now and the lessons your own life will teach others as you are faithful to your call. Pain will not prevent that, or at least, it need not!

The key to remaining and growing as the person God has made you to be is remembering both parts of the various distinctions I drew above, namely that YOU are not your pain, YOU are not your diagnosis, YOU are not even your self-image, etc. You are far more than these, even when they fill your vision and your body with pain, disappointment, grief, and so forth. If the quotations I provided above are helpful in staying in touch with the whole truth, use those. Remind yourself of the various things the Scriptures also say about us, namely, that we are precious to God, that we are imago dei and Temples of the Holy Spirit. Sit in quiet prayer whenever you can do that and allow yourself to get in touch with what is deeper than the pain and loss, deeper than whatever dehumanizing seems to have occurred, deeper than any mere self-image. Traveling with and in God to these really deep places can put you in touch not only with the God who created and loves you, but with the Self you are most truly. Anything in your daily life that puts you in touch with who you really are most profoundly can also be used to empower and strengthen you if you approach it mindfully, so please let yourself do that.

One final suggestion I have has to do with the idea that chronic illness and disability can be a vocation, a call by God that serves the Church. It does this not by focusing on, or letting oneself be known mainly for the illness, disability, or associated sufferings, but by witnessing to the God who redeems these things and gives them meaning despite not having willed them in the first place. Consider that perhaps this is something God is calling you to, that is, to a life with and in God that puts the suffering in the background (or, better, in the shade!) and focuses everyone's attention on the life and meaning God has created you to express and reveal to the world in this way. This would be your unique way of proclaiming the Gospel. Your suffering is real and important, and at the same time, it needs to be redeemed, that is, given a new meaning and value by the God of life. Consider that you might be being called to do and be this for the sake of the Church. While other Scriptural texts will also speak to you, let the Beatitudes be what you try in your life to give full witness to!! Each of these really is a matter of holding both sides of the truth you have expressed together. In and despite your suffering, let yourself both be blessed by God and appreciate the blessing you are to the Church and world!

Know that I hold you in prayer. May Christ's peace be with you!!

Any Further Take Aways on the Hermit Situation in the Diocese of Lexington KY?

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you see any lasting lessons in the situation with Cole Matson and the Diocese of Lexington? It's been almost a year since you wrote about this, and I wonder if there is any important takeaway for you? Thanks.]] 

Thanks for your question. Unfortunately, I don't have much more to say about this situation than I did a year ago around Pentecost. My takeaway a year ago was that c 603 can be implemented wisely if the local ordinary recognizes it as a legitimate vocation that is a gift of God to the Church and the larger world. This presupposes that the people discerning the vocation with the candidate and the local ordinary 1) follow the candidate for sufficient time to be sure of their motives, their experience of assiduous prayer in the silence of solitude, and the way God is working in their lives, and 2) that they are not trying to use the canon for some other irrelevant agenda, no matter how important that is to either the bishop or the candidate. 

At the same time, I came away last year with a sense of the way some bishops fail to understand this vocation, or apparently, care much about it in any case. By extension, I came away with the sense that Bishop Stowe did not believe Cole Matson had any real vocation if he could allow him to make profession in a vocation he admitted he knew he didn't have. In his statement to the media Bp Stowe said that Cole was a sincere person who wanted to serve the Church, and it was for that reason that he was admitting Cole to profession under c 603. Bp Stowe also noted that the eremitical vocation is essentially a quiet and secluded vocation, not priesthood or a call involved with Sacramental ministry, so he didn't see where this would do much harm: [[. . . hermits are a rarely used form of religious life. . .but can be either male or female. Because there's no pursuit of priesthood or engagement in sacramental ministry, and because the hermit is a relatively quiet and secluded type of vocation, I didn't see any harm in letting him live this vocation.]]

At this point, I have to say what strikes me about Bp Stowe's points here remains what struck me last year. What is missing from this response is any sense of serious discernment or even struggle with the decision Bp Stowe made. Similarly lacking is any sense that Stowe actually values this vocation or sees himself as responsible for it in the way c 605 calls for him to be. One does not admit to public profession someone who feels called to something else merely because they want to serve the Church, no matter how sincere they are. Moreover, one does not imply one is doing so in order to keep the person out of public view, or in order to limit the degree of ecclesial influence or significance they have. I wonder what Bp Stowe's response would have been had Cole Matson actually asked him to ordain him as a matter "of justice"! It seems clear that Bp Stowe's response would have been "No, we can't do that," which begs the logical follow-up question, "Why not? Is something more than sincerity needed for admission to ordination, but not for being a canonical hermit? 

There are correlative questions as well and Bishop Stowe is not the only one responsible for answering these, both doctrinally and pastorally: if one must be male, then is Matson still disallowed? He asked to be professed as "Brother Christian", after all. Mustn't one be male to be identified in that way? If Matson can be Brother Christian, why could he not be ordained as Father Christian? As Matson moves toward perpetual profession and consecration, are sex or gender still issues in this situation? Why or why not? (A vow of chastity in any consecrated vocation necessarily involves an affirmation of one's sex because it calls for a commitment to an exhaustive manliness or womanliness in all one is and does within this state of life. This is one of the reasons we use titles like Brother or Sister for consecrated religious.) Since Bishop Stowe is a Franciscan, I would have expected him to be sensitive to this issue, and not just in regard to ordination.

The questions continue: Must Cole Matson honestly claim to be called by God to this specific vocation? That seems not to be required for c 603 profession in the Diocese of Lexington, and neither does meaningful mutual discernment, though these apply in every other diocese and the whole of the Universal Church in considering professing a c 603 candidate or admitting them to consecration. And finally, if Cole Matson truly wants to serve the Church, then why should he be allowed to seek or be professed (publicly vowed and commissioned by the Church) in an ecclesial vocation whose fullness and integrity God entrusted to the Church and codified in universal law, when Matson claims not to be called to this vocation yet made first vows anyway? How does that serve anyone, much less God, other candidates for c 603 consecration, or the Church to whom this vocation has been entrusted as a gift by God?

None of those questions have been answered by Bishop Stowe over the last year that I have heard, nor, apparently, has the USCCB or DICLSAL come to a public conclusion about all of this. And yet, we may be approaching the time when Cole Matson would ordinarily be admitted to definitive (perpetual or solemn) profession and consecration under c 603.  (Usually, this is three to five years from the date of first vows, so perhaps this is still a year or more off.) I would say it is important for people to understand that Cole's current vows are temporary and were renewed at least once. Cole has not, however, been consecrated. That is reserved for the rite of perpetual profession. My own sense is that consecrating someone as Brother x, if you were not open to ordaining them as Father x because of 1) their sex or 2) an insufficient sense of them having such a vocation, would raise a lot of questions in that person's regard!

Personally, as a c 603 hermit, I was and still am offended by Bishop Stowe's characterizations of the c 603 vocation. He makes it sound like a superficial form of religious life that can serve as a catch-all for those without any religious vocation at all. He also explicitly states that it (assuming he means c 603 itself) is "rarely used" -- an unfortunately utilitarian term (N.B., he does NOT say this is a rare vocation per se)! These are exactly the senses c 603 hermits have been contending with for more than 40 years! And yet, here comes a bishop who is apparently either ignorant of the nature of the vocation, or perhaps more wed to an agenda shared with Cole Matson, using c 603 as a stopgap when the Church has not provided some other way to be professed outside a community. ( Please note, the Episcopal Church allows this kind of arrangement, but not the Roman Catholic Church, which requires that one not simply be a solitary religious (a religious without a congregation or institute), but instead, insists that one truly be a hermit.) 

My own recent experiences of existential solitude and the deep and treacherous journey this can entail make me even clearer that our Church's bishops must listen to the experience of hermits today (as well as through the centuries!) and take real care before professing or consecrating anyone at all as a solitary hermit under c 603. Genuine eremitical life is not for the faint of heart, and I think that is even more true for solitary hermits! If one enters hermitage truly seeking God and (at least putatively) seeking to give one's entire self to God in this vocation, one should be aware of the fact that God will take one up on all of that! Woe to the person committing to such a vocation without truly feeling called to it in the depths of their being! If they are lucky, the least they will suffer from for the rest of their lives is an ongoing sense that they are a hypocrite and a coward, or, perhaps, just a fool! Both the candidate and her bishop should be aware of these things. 

And I think that here is the final thing I came away with last year and have to double down on today, namely, the service the hermit gives the Church, the reason this is an ecclesial vocation, is not found in any external or part-time ministry the hermit may also do. The service the hermit does the Church is to confirm that what she teaches about the gospel is true, namely, that even in the depths of human darkness and sin, God is present, knowable, and at work to bring life, light (meaning), and hope out of it. The hermit will find God in the really extraordinary "ordinary" things of life, AND she will find God in the depths of loneliness, suffering, death, and despair or near-despair as well. 

This journey of assiduous prayer and penance, including both external and existential solitude, is something every authentic hermit commits to make for God's sake, for her own sake, and for the sake of the Church and the veracity and power of her gospel. She does so because God has called her to do so. This profound sense of call is the only thing that could sustain such a life in integrity. Christ's peace is real, but it is not as the world knows or gives it. Instead, it is truly discovered only when one sees the face of God in one's deepest hungers and yearnings. To do this means one will journey to the place within us where those hungers and yearnings and all they promise and call us to become, have their origin and fulfillment in God. One cannot begin such a journey with a lie, much less sustain (or be sustained in) it to its depths. When one builds on sand, eventual tragedy is inevitable.

Thanks for the questions. I guess I had more to say about them than I realized at first!

Followup Questions on the Woody Allen Quote, Love to Suffer, Suffer to Love

[[Sister Laurel, even if the quote you were asked about was taken from a Woody Allen movie, couldn't it be used as an important motto by someone who believes God calls them to suffer and wants them to learn to love through the pain and in the middle of that suffering? I can see that the movie is a parody and that "Love to suffer and suffer to love" can be misunderstood to include or even to encourage masochism, but if someone were to find themselves in the midst of great pain and could do nothing about it, then couldn't this saying used as a motto remind them about the importance to love God, themselves, and others? They wouldn't be causing their own suffering then.]]

Thanks for the follow-up! I hear you putting the very best spin possible on this quote, and I appreciate your doing that. Personally, it seems to me that unless one has a strong grasp of a Christian theology of the Cross that allows one to go beyond the quote as Woody Allen gives it to us, I have to say what I said earlier about it, namely, of itself, it is not Christian and its "wisdom" is not only doubtful, but it is dangerous. For someone in the situation you describe and without a good interpretive key, to adopt this "motto" as their own and a source of inspiration, they would also be opening themselves to important distortions Christianity should never countenance, the greatest of which is the idea that suffering inevitably leads to love and is even necessarily a synonym for love. Granted, suffering can eventually lead to truly loving oneself and others, but not of itself, and not inevitably. I think other factors need to also be present in a consistent way to redeem such a situation --- especially faith, love, patience, humility, and hope --- if suffering is to help teach us to love in the midst of our pain. In other words, without these other factors, and without a larger, redeeming context allowing us to interpret the meaningfulness of these words and our suffering, suffering could teach us many things including self-pity, resentment, self-hatred, anger at God and ourselves, as well as at the world at large (or it could lead to an idolatrous piety based on a false God who sends and controls suffering), but it would be unlikely to teach us to love.

Once one begins to believe that one's suffering is necessarily synonymous with love, or that by itself it teaches us to love, it is a very short step to accepting that the God Jesus revealed to us wills our suffering (or that he willed Jesus' suffering) in order to love and so, to love us! And from here it is a short step to our own being incapable of relating honestly to God, or to proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ with its call to abundant life! Suffering can be a blessing, yes, I know and believe that! However, that does not ordinarily mean that being in pain is necessarily a blessing.  Suffering is not necessarily a blessing at the very moment one is experiencing it!! Later, once we have processed the suffering, healed from it and the woundedness that causes it and the loss it has done to our lives, once we have adapted to the limits it has brought, and then come to look at it all again from the perspective of a new life with renewed hope and energy, then we can regard the suffering as a blessing because God does indeed bring new life into being all the time, even in the face of sin and death! If, however, we accept your (Woody Allen's) quote as though suffering necessarily teaches love or is similarly synonymous with loving, that whole process will be short-circuited.

What I am really saying is that personally, I just can't accept either part of the quote at face value. When used this way, particularly when separated from the movie itself and without a really adequate context that guides our understanding, I think both parts of the quotation are distortions of the intimate and nuanced relationship between suffering and love that Christianity reveals. The imperative, "Love to suffer," I addressed earlier. It either means "love in order to suffer", or "love the pain and suffering that does come into our lives." Either of these options has nothing automatically to do, so far as I can tell, with a healthy attitude toward either love or suffering. Both options militate against justice or any tendency we have to make the world or individual lives better as we work to ease suffering. In fact, they each could well suggest we should not do anything to ameliorate suffering for anyone or anything, since this is the way a person learns to love! That is un-Christian absurdity, I think.

"Suffer to love" can mean "accept suffering as part of truly loving others". Of course! If it means accepting the suffering that naturally comes with authentic love, then yes, I agree completely. That would be a truly wise statement, then. The problem is that, as written, the quote doesn't actually say that. Instead, it seems to raise suffering up as a litmus test for love. But that's where sadism and masochism come into play. Neither of these have anything to do with authentic love, whether of God, of self, or of others, yet I can definitely hear the masochist saying (to him/herself) either "Love to suffer!!" or "Suffer to love", and the sadist saying "Suffer to love!!" (to whomever they are presuming to "instruct" on the nature of love by making that person suffer). However,  as these stand, I cannot hear Jesus saying either one of these and especially not both of them together --- not to himself, not to me or other disciples, not to people I love, not to his Abba! "Accept the suffering love brings," yes, I can certainly hear Jesus saying this, especially as his disciples attempt to proclaim the Gospel to those in power, but again, this provides an interpretive context Woody Allen's quote badly needs.

If someone is in severe and ongoing pain, I want them to know God neither sent nor willed this suffering!! (That he "allowed" it or, more accurately, didn't prevent it, should never be interpreted as "God desired this"!) At the same time, I want them to know that God's love can transform their suffering from curse to blessing, but even here, I would need to take care with how I would say that. I would not want them thinking God will do that by taking away the pain or the source of suffering. Instead, I would want them to know that God's presence can bring new possibilities for meaningful and graced life even when the pain is not healed or the suffering mitigated or stopped.  I would want them to know that God knows their suffering, that Jesus knows it intimately, and that they both are with the person in and despite the suffering. I would want them to know that even though the suffering feels like it dehumanizes and denigrates them, or robs their lives of meaning and purpose, these are lies the Christ Event deals with and counters head-on. 

The quote from the Woody Allen movie of itself conveys none of this, and again, when taken out of context, seems to me to be a serious obstacle to hearing these things. If taken as theological truth without an adequate interpretative key, it reduces the problem of suffering and its relation to love to a form of bumper-sticker theology that distorts the truth. Fortunately, the movie is a parody of love and life, and also of suffering and death. Because of that, it has the power to make us laugh, and that includes the person who is really suffering. The clips I saw were powerfully funny because they told some of the truth! They also posed questions we could easily relate to (and may even be afraid to ask out loud). At the same time, the movie also provided a very human interpretation of that truth Christians might well want to reject. That's how parodies work. It was thus capable of drawing one out of a lot of daily suffering by inviting one to see the absurdity of some ways of viewing such significant topics and asking us to think more clearly about them ourselves. If they can bring us to laughter in the midst of all that, even better, for that can ease pain and take us out of ourselves in an entirely healthy way.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms: Pentecost Sunday (revised)

One of the problems I see most often with Christianity is its domestication, a kind of blunting of its prophetic and counter-cultural character. It is one thing to be comfortable with our faith, to live it gently in every part of our lives, and to be a source of quiet challenge and consolation because we have been wholly changed by it. It is entirely another to add it to our lives and identities as a merely superficial "spiritual component" which we refuse to allow not only to shake the very foundations of all we know but also to transform us in all we are and do. 

Even more problematical --- and I admit to being sensitive to this because I am a hermit called to "stricter separation from the world" which must not be misunderstood as isolating except for the sake of deeper and more extensive engagement --- is a kind of self-centered spirituality that focuses on our own supposed holiness or perfection but calls us to turn away from a world which undoubtedly needs and yearns for the love only God's powerful Spirit makes possible in us. Clearly, today's Festal readings celebrate something very different from the sort of bland, powerless, pastorally ineffective, and merely nominal Christianity we may embrace --- or the self-centered spirituality we sometimes espouse in the name of "contemplation" and  "contemptus mundi".  Another version of this distortion is a Christianity that is allied with the Kingdom of this world. In contemporary life, we see it particularly with a Nationalist religiosity some mistakenly call "Christian." While this religion may have the power to upend established institutions and values, in its own way, it is as powerless and pastorally ineffective as the more usual forms of nominal Christianity in bringing the Kingdom of the God of Jesus Christ. It brings only oppression, marginalization, and unfreedom in its wake. But listen again to the shaking experience of the powerful Spirit that birthed the Church, which Luke recounts in Acts, and hear what we are called to: 

[[When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.]]

Roaring sounds filling the whole space, tongues of fire coming to rest above each person, a power of language which communicates (creates) incredible unity and destroys division --- this is a picture of a new and incredible creation, a new and awesome world in which the structures of power are turned on their heads and those who were outsiders --- the sick and poor, the outcast and sinners, those with no status and only the stamp of shame marking their lives --- are kissed with divinity and revealed to be God's very own Temples. The imagery of this reading is profound. For instance, in the world of this time, coins were stamped with Caesar's picture, and above his head was the image of a tongue of fire. Fire was a symbol of life and potency; it was linked to the heavens (stars, comets, etc). The tongue of fire was a way of indicating the Emperor's divinity.  Similarly, the capacity for speech, the fact that one has been given or has a voice, is a sign of power, standing, and authority.

And so Luke says of us. The Spirit of the Father and Son has come upon us. Tongues of Fire mark us as do tongues, potentially capable of speaking a word of ultimate comfort to anyone, anywhere. We have been made a Royal People, Temples of the Holy Spirit, and called to live and act with a new authority, an authority and status which is greater than that of any Caesar. As I have noted before, this is not mere poetry, though it is certainly wonderfully poetic. On this Feast we open ourselves to the Spirit who transforms us quite literally into images of God, literal Temples of God's prophetic presence in our world, literal exemplars of a consoling love-doing-justice and a fiery, earth-shaking holiness which both transcends and undercuts every authority and status in our world that pretends to divinity or ultimacy. We ARE the Body of Christ, expressions of the one in whom godless death has been destroyed, expressions of the One in whom one day all sin and death will be replaced by eternal life. In Christ, we are embodiments and mediators of the Word, which destroys divisions and summons creation to reconciliation and unity; in us, the Spirit of God loves our world into wholeness.

You can see that there is something really dangerous about today's Feast. What we celebrate is dangerous to a Caesar oppressing most of the known world with his taxation and arbitrary exercise of power depending on keeping subjects powerless and without choice or voice; it is dangerous if you are called to live out this gift of God's own Spirit as a prophetic presence in the very same world which kills prophets and executed God's Anointed One as a shameful criminal --- a traitor or seditionist and blasphemer. 

Witnesses to the risen Christ and the Kingdom of God are liable, of course, to martyrdom of all sorts. That is the double nature of the word "martyr", and it is what yesterday's gospel lection referred to when it promised Peter that in his maturity, he would be led where he did not really desire to go. But it is also dangerous to those who prefer either a more domesticated and timid "Christianity" or a more nationalistic one -- Christianities that do not upset the status quo or demand the overthrow of all of one's vision, or values, to a Christianity that demands the redefinition of one's entire purpose in life. Such a faith is dangerous if one cares too much about what people think of you or if one desires a faith that is consoling but undemanding --- a faith centered on what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace".  At least it is dangerous whenever its followers open themselves, even slightly, to the Spirit celebrated in this Feast.

A few years ago, my pastor (John Kasper, OSFS)  quoted from Annie Dillard's book, Teaching a Stone to Talk. It may have been for Pentecost, but I can't remember that now. Here, though, is the passage from which he quoted, [[Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.]] Clearly, both Fr John and Ms Dillard understood how truly dangerous the Spirit of Pentecost is.

We live in a world where two Kingdoms vie against each other. That has rarely been clearer in our lifetime or recent memory than it is today. One of these Kingdoms is marked by oppression, a lack of freedom --- except for the privileged few who hold positions of wealth and influence, power and prestige --- and it is marred by the dominion of sin and death. It is a world where the poor, ill, aged, and otherwise marginalized and powerless are rendered essentially voiceless. In this world, Caesars of all sorts have been sovereign or pretended to sovereignty and harmed the powerless and poor with their pretense. The other Kingdom, the Kingdom which signals the eventual and inevitable end of the first one, is the Kingdom of God. It has come among us first in God's quiet self-emptying and in the smallness of a helpless infant, and then in the generosity, compassion, and ultimately, the weakness, suffering, and sinful death of a Jewish man in a Roman world. Today it comes to us as a powerful wind which shakes and disorients even as it grounds and reorients us in the love of God. Today, it comes to us as the power of love that does justice and sets all things to right.

While the battle between these two Kingdoms occurs all around us in the way we live and proclaim the Gospel with our lives, the way, that is, we worship God, raise our children, teach our students, treat our parishioners, clients, and patients, vote our consciences, contribute to our society's needs, and generally minister to our entire world, it is our hearts which are ground zero in this "tale of two Kingdoms." It is not easy to admit that insofar as we are truly human, we have been kissed by a Divinity which invites us to a divine/human union that completes us, makes us all whole, and results in a fruitfulness we associate with all similar "marriages". It is not easy to give our hearts so completely or embrace a dignity which is entirely the gift of another. Far easier to keep our hearts divided and ambiguous. Easier by far to choose accommodation and exclusion over courage and the confrontation of a radically Christian and inclusive love!! But today's Feast calls us to truly open ourselves to this union, to accept that our lives are marked and transformed by tongues of fire and the shaking, stormy Spirit of prophets. After all, this is Pentecost, and through us in the Holy Spirit, God truly will renew the face of the earth.

Walter Breuggemann RIP

 On Thursday, one of the most important American Old Testament scholars most of us have known, studied under, or maybe "just" read, Walter Breuggemann, died at the age of 92. Most famous for work like The Prophetic Imagination, Breuggemann had a wonderful career that educated and influenced all of the contemporary theologians I know. He influenced us in terms of preaching, particularly in his notion of prophetic vocations (i.e., vocations to hope and empowering hope in our world), and he provided us with a coherent (though not univocal!) theology of the Old Testament.  In The Prophetic Imagination, he once said, “It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”

One of the presentations Breuggemann gave a few years ago, to be found below, has to do with the dialogical or relational character of Yahweh and also of the human person, where God is always involved dynamically and relationally with us.  When we try to understand central elements of theology like grace, law, and justice, faithfulness (fidelity), Breuggemann explains that we must understand them in terms of this great dynamism and relationality. It is a dense presentation focusing on Hosea and three other texts; I think it is really wonderful and timely. You will recognize that, especially in his comments on who can never be excluded from covenantal blessings, or in the mandate to be holy as God is Holy. It is this mandate, viewed in terms of relationality, that becomes crucially important for us today because it allows for no one to be excluded or marginalized or to exclude and marginalize themselves, except paradoxically, to proclaim a radically inclusive Gospel to everyone. 

May God give Walter rest and continue to bring his work to fruition for God's sake, in and for the People of God and the world to which we belong and minister prophetically.

Do You Love Me, Peter? Being Made Fully Human in Dialogue With God (Reprise)

Today's Gospel includes the pericope where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. It is the first time we hear much about or from Peter since his triple denial of Christ --- his fear-driven affirmations that he did not even know the man and is certainly not a disciple of his. After each question and reply by Peter, Jesus commissions Peter to "feed my lambs, feed my sheep." 

I have written about this at least three times before. About four or five years ago, I used this text to reflect on the place of conscience in our lives and a love which transcends law. At another point, I spoke about the importance of Jesus' questions and of my own difficulty with Jesus' question to Peter. Then, about three years ago, at the end of school, I asked the students to imagine what it feels like to have done something for which one feels there is no forgiveness possible and then to hear how an infinitely loving God deals with that. The solution is not, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have termed it, "cheap grace" --- a forgiveness without cost or consequences. Neither is it a worthless "luv" which some in the Church mistakenly disparage because they hear (they say) too many homilies about the God of Love and mercy and not enough about the God of "justice". Instead, what Jesus reveals in this lection is a merciful love which overcomes all fear and division and summons us to incredible responsibility and freedom. The center of this reading, in other words, is a love which does justice and sets all things right.

But, especially at this time in the church's life, today's Gospel also takes me to the WAY Jesus loves Peter. He addresses him directly; he asks him questions and allows him to discover an answer which stands in complete contrast to and tension with his earlier denials and the surge of emotions and complex of thoughts that prompted them. As with Peter, Jesus' very presence is a question or series of questions which have the power to call us deeper, beyond our own personal limitations and conflicts, to the core of our being. What Jesus does with Peter is engage him at a profound level of heart --- a level deeper than fear, deeper than ego, beyond defensiveness and insecurity. Jesus' presence enables dialogue at this profound level, dialogue with one's true self, with God, and with one's entire community; it is an engagement which brings healing and reveals that the capacity for dialogue is the deepest reflection of our humanity. (Can you hear echoes of the present emphasis on synodality and the call for a synodal Church here?)

It is this deep place in us that is the level for authentically human decision-making. When we perceive and act at this level of the heart, we see and act beyond the level of black and white thinking, beyond either/or judgmentalism, beyond narrow ways of thinking, Tillich might have referred to as "technical reason". Here, where we perceive with a larger rationality, we know paradox and hold the tensions of paradox together in faith and love. Here we act in authentic freedom. Jesus' dialogue with Peter points to all of this and to something more. It reminds us that loving God is not a matter of "feeling" some emotion --- though indeed it may well involve this too. Instead, it is something we are called and empowered to do in dialogue with the Word and Spirit of God, which transcends even feelings; it is a response realized in deciding to serve, to give, to nourish others despite the things happening to us at other levels of our being.

When we reflect on this text involving a paradigmatic dialogue between Peter and Jesus, we have a key to understanding the nature of all true ministry, and certainly to life and ministry in the Church. Not least, we have a significant model of papacy. Of course, it is a model of service, but it is one of service only to the extent it is one of true dialogue, first with God, then with oneself, and finally with all others. It is always and everywhere a matter of being engaged at the level of the heart, and so, as already noted, beyond ego, fear, defensiveness, black and white thinking, judgmentalism, or closed-mindedness to a place where one is comfortable with paradox. As John Paul II wrote in Ut Unum Sint, "Dialog has not only been undertaken; it is an outright necessity, one of the Church's priorities, " or again, "It is necessary to pass from antagonism and conflict to a situation where each party recognizes the other as a partner. . .any display of mutual opposition must disappear." (UUS, secs 31 and 29)

But what is true for Peter is, again, true for each of us. We must be engaged at the level of the heart and act in response to the dialogue that occurs there. Because of the place of the Word of God in this process, lectio divina, the reflective reading of Scripture, must be a part of our regular praxis. So too with prayer, especially quiet prayer whose focus is listening deeply and being comfortable with that often-paradoxical truth that comes to us in silence. Our humanity is meant to be a reflection of this profound dialogue. At every moment we are meant to be a hearing of Jesus' question and the commission to serve that it implies. At every moment, then, we are to become and be the response that transcends ego, fear, division, judgmentalism, and so forth. Engagement with the Word of God enables such exploration and engagement -- engagement from that place of unity and communion with God and others that Jesus' questions to Peter allowed him to find and live from. My prayer today is that each of us may commit to being open to this kind of engagement. It makes us the dialogical reality, the fuller realization of that New Creation which is truly "not of this world" but instead is of the Kingdom of God --- right here, right now.

On the Woody Allen "Motto," Love to Suffer and Suffer to Love

[[Sister Laurel, what does the motto, "Love to suffer and suffer to love," mean? Is this a common Christian motto or wisdom statement?]]

Thanks for your question. I had to Google this saying and found it (or at least a close variation of it) is associated with a Woody Allen movie called Love and Death (1975)! This means the brief answer to your question is no, this is neither a Christian motto, nor, as it stands, is it common Christian wisdom. (That is, as you have cited it, it may be common, but it is not Christian, and I would argue that its wisdom is doubtful and, possibly, destructive!) Since I haven't seen the movie, I can't tell you what it means in context (and context is key). The film is, however, a parody of the complexities of loving and suffering, and (perhaps too of living and dying). In some ways, it seems to be about the messiness and even the apparent irrationality of human love. 

Some of this is summarized in a passage by a younger woman speaking to her cousin Sonja about someone who is in love with another person they both know, while that second person is in love with someone else who is having an affair with another person entirely, who loves physically but not spiritually, and whose love interest is also in love with. . . and on it goes in a long chain of frustrating instances of love producing suffering! (I'll add the clip of this below.) It is both hysterical and fraught! One comes away with the sense that human love is complex and intimately linked to suffering, but also, that whether we love or fail to love suffering ensues!! The blunt conclusion that one is to "love to suffer and suffer to love" is a simplistic way of cutting away the nuances and complexities of the relationship between these two realities, while shining a light on a situation that Allen found both funny and absurd. As the young woman says in the clip referred to above, [[Cousin Sonja, I never want to marry. I just want to get divorced!]].

That said, from a Christian perspective, the saying of itself is a distortion of the truth about loving and its relation to suffering. Yes, no question, suffering is intimately related to loving others. To open ourselves to genuine love is also to open ourselves to the pain of compassion, grief, loss, bereavement, having our love unreturned or betrayed, and ultimately, even having it abused and otherwise rejected. Love requires the gift of self, and that self-gift implies vulnerability that entails real sacrifice and pain.  In loving, we open ourselves to suffering and loss, but also to real joy and fulfillment when we choose to live our lives for the other's sake. The greatest image of this interrelatedness of love and suffering for the Christian is the Christ Event. God gives himself to and for us, and the Word is made incarnate in Jesus. Jesus says yes after yes after yes to allowing this incarnational event to be made real in space and time in and through his own life. He gives himself exhaustively for God's sake and the sake of all that is precious to God, right on up to Golgotha and beyond. But none of this equates to the Woody Allen conclusion, "Love to suffer and suffer to love!" (Remember, this movie is a parody, and parodies raise complex realities to a simplistic expression that is absurd! They do this to make us laugh and also to think more deeply and clearly.)

I don't think anything the Scriptures teach us gives the sense that Jesus "loved to suffer" in either the sense that he loved so that he might suffer, or in the sense that suffering was something he loved to do -- the only senses I can see "love to suffer" really bearing in this sentence. Quite the opposite!! Jesus was a highly social man who loved life and celebrated it and the grace of God in every way he knew. I suspect this is why he was labelled a glutton and drunkard (and perhaps something of a party animal) by some highly religious folk! Certainly, however, his love implied or occasioned suffering. It is the case that Jesus' suffering, both throughout his life and in his passion and death, was occasioned by the fact and faithfulness of his love for God and for the whole of God's creation. The idea that we suffer in order to love only makes sense in this way: viz., we accept suffering as an integral part of choosing to love. If, on the other hand, we are saying that suffering necessarily implies we love others, this is a mistake. There is such a thing as masochism, where suffering is a personal imperative, and it has nothing to do with loving oneself or others.

Each of us is to be realistic about love and life. Suffering (or at least a vulnerability to suffering) will be occasioned by both, and certainly by a faithful life of obedience (attentive responsiveness) to God. But so will abundant fruitfulness and joy! Additionally, suffering is the result of sin, not necessarily personal sin, but the state of sin -- the state of estrangement or alienation from God, who is the ground and source of being and meaning. As I have reiterated here over the years, God did not will Jesus' suffering; God willed an abundant and truly human life filled with the love of God and others, and lived for the sake of the Kingdom. God willed that Jesus live this life with integrity, generosity, and compassion, so that God might be Emmanuel (God with us), and so he did!! Jesus suffered (or embraced suffering) because he loved, and he loved despite his suffering, so perhaps this is a better paradigm (or motto) for Christians. It is quite different from the Woody Allen imperative! In any case, the excerpt from the movie clip is included here. I think you can hear the parody in just this small piece of the whole.