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It is an heretic that makes
the fire,
not she which burns in't
W. Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, II, 3, 115-116
Préface by Timothy Radcliffe op. |
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Timothy Radcliffe is the former Master of the Order of Preachers.
This is a passionate, tender, joyful book that it is impossible to read without a smile. It is not a book about God, as if God were an invisible person about whom we might discuss, like Napoleon or Julius Caesar. This is because the central thesis of the book is that God is relationship: God is "The" relation. "And the invitation is extended to us to enter into a relationship as one enters into a dance; to enter into that relation which He is". We discover God by being in this relationship, which transforms who we are and how we are. In the Temple, God revealed Himself in the empty space between the wings of the Cherubim. Now God is discovered present in the space between the words "liberty" and "fidelity". And so God is made visible in our own transformed liberty, lived in true fidelity to each other, and to the gospel invitation.
The book is a series of reflections, which one may either read all the way through in one go or else take as a daily glass of champagne. It is a book that is profoundly refreshing, and that renews old and used words, such as love, freedom and forgiveness, with the vigour of new youth. It is filled with phrases and insights that make one pause with their unexpectedness "Man cannot live nor breathe but by emptiness, by the hollow part of his lungs."(n°8); the Holy Spirit is "the gift of self-giving." (23); "the saint is one who knows that God does not wish to be happy on His own."(39) And I will not tell you why in paradise "it is necessary to be on one's guard against pickpockets."
This is a book written by a man who is passionate and filled with unquenchable desire. He lives this desire by deepening it rather than by suppressing it. "...I place my affections, my passions, my power of loving into this gigantic frame which embraces history and humanity. A love the dimensions of which are space and time, the dimensions of creation itself, a love whose measure is to love without measure!" (35)
These words can only be truly written by the contemplative which frère Michel is. The genesis of this book is the prolonged, gentle attentiveness to the transforming word that is addressed to him and to us. One of the mottoes of the Order of Preachers is "Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere". That discribes this book.
For all its passion, this work is marked by a deep sense of God's "sovereign discretion". God is so respectful for those whom he loves, that he tiptoes into our lives, without blowing trumpets. Even his resurrection from the dead does not disturb the sleep of the great of this world, who notice nothing. "Let the one who so wishes, receive by silent contagion." (6)
The final words of the book will remain with me for a long time: "A burning question remains in my mind as I conclude: why then is it so difficult to throw oneself totally into the fire of the living God?" Yes, why is it so hard? But having read this book we may find it a little easier, knowing that we do not do so alone.
After the midday meal, I usually allow myself fifteen minutes siesta as is the custom in southern countries. Strangely enough, this short period of rest is a fertile one for the imagination, furnishing intuitions which appear to run counter to evidence: periods of reawakened dreams, freedom from conscious control, criss crossing of images, a more poetic though no less valid approach to truth. These mental epiphanies serve as material for my homelies, and in this book, I have chosen some of them, while attempting to link them together in a somewhat coherent manner. Discussion is not my objective here. What I have to say, addresses itself to the reader's intuition. It invites him or her into an unknown land, a land of surprises, in short, into contemplation.
In this work, truth is to be found by allusion, in symbol, through the heart, so it is an expression of personal witness emanating from a lived experience. The one subject which underlies the ensemble, is the question of Relation: relationship to the other, relationship to God, relationship in God.
Each chapter has its unique message and its unique meaning. The same musical theme is played on different instruments, as is the Good News itself, each section saying everything and inviting the reader to resonate accordingly.
By way of introduction, here is an outline of the themes treated.
Relationship presupposes the spoken word together with respect for that word given. Chapter I thus sets out the framework: liberty and fidelity. The relationship however is perverted once the other is perceived primarily as a rival. The question then is how to arrive at confidence in reciprocity? This seeking leads to the Paschal Mystery. We discover that sin is not so much an act as bad theology, a mask covering the Face of God. When the basic relationship breaks down, then everything becomes degraded and eventually is destroyed. But a turning round is effected when we discover in opposition to our perceptions, the God whom Jesus revealed: a God who is vulnerable, respectful and discreet.
But where does human desire come from, and what is it aiming at? In what direction and towards whom does it lean? Can it be satisfied? And supposing God's promise went ahead of and perhaps beyond that desire? To "proof by the absurd" might there be a proof "exceeding reason's calculations"? Likewise in the affectivity domain, by "proof of desire's suprasatisfaction", it becomes clear that the promise is not the result of auto suggestion. True, desire is frequently thwarted, it meets with obstacles: suffering and ultimately with death. What about the creature's relationship to God when suffering and death come upon him and what about that same creature after death?
Death marks a limit which has repercussions on one's entire life. What could a superman hope to be? What kind of absolute is humanity aiming at? Christ has transfigured the human condition, not by abolishing its limitations, but because he began by accepting these limitations in a relationship with his Father in perfect reciprocity: He received and He gave. In receiving himself from his Father, he assumed himself. Finally, He lives, risen from the dead!
God's wisdom then, is at the antipodes of our ways of thinking. It is so new, young and surpising, that it appears nonsensical. Everything is turned upside down, an invitation to allow oneself likewise to do a somersault! Human life is then transfigured! Pentecost takes hold of the nations and breathes its Spirit through the world's civilisation. That in turn brings us on to envisage the end of the entire universe and to pose the question of human history and of its accomplishment.
How can one be a disciple and live this contagious dynamic? There is the first experience, that of the Resurrection which Mary Magdalen lived in her very flesh because of her love for Jesus. We must be reborn, pass from darkness to light, open our eyes and meet Christ, and so undergo a personal experience which will present itself as a way of initiation. For Jesus' teaching is an invitation to experience, in order to love in a relationship that is vulnerable.
The apostles were forewarned of the trials that awaited them, the price of their credibility in the eyes of others, and for themselves a means of verification. Their followers will live out their baptism either in Religious Life or in marriage, two extreme modes of relationship. They will perhaps experience failure, but this is henceforth shot through with something different. As to forgiveness, it is reserved to God, and that is the reason why we are invited to practise it constantly, in order to live by Him... and finally the book, in which we recognise the author, comes to an end!
Present day urban society allows each one to live as they wish or as they can, without being too worried about what others think. The victory of liberty over social constraints, at the same time reveals the difficulty of normal continuity. Liberty is not just the possibility of perpetual choice in frantic options. It is structured in personal consistence which leads to what is traditionally known as fidelity. By contrast with a generation which dreamed of free love, today's youth dreams of fidelity as an impossible ideal. "Fidelity is a fantasy" a student told me: a wonderful fairy tale! The example of those men and women who have remained true to the promises of their youth is consoling, for it shows that it is possible and that it is good.
To persevere in the midst of changes and inevitable deceptions, leads one to a reassessment of life's meaning and to a re interpretation of one's personal history. The archetype of this approach is for me that of the disciples of Emmaus. Disappointed, and on the brink of despair, they are returning home sad and downcast. But the Risen Lord joins them incognito, and bit by bit, unfolds to them the meaning of the trial they have undergone without understanding its significance. This he does in the light of the Scriptures, that is to say, in the light of the human and spiritual experience of believing humanity, synthesised in the Bible. In this book I would like in my turn, to meditate on the present difficulties we encounter in living, hoping and persevering, by allowing myself to be led by the contagious enthusiasm of the Gospel.
I try to follow Christ. I also lose him sometimes. He appears to me under a certain aspect and then escapes me until I find him again the same yet different. My fidelity then cannot be due to some passing thrill, still less to a monotony of repetitions. Rather is it the progressive discovery of the mystery of Life and of the true face of God, ever more beautiful and always beyond our imaginings. In the Temple of Jerusalem once a year and at the call of the high priest pronouncing on this one occasion the forbidden Name, God manifested himself between the wings of the Cherubim spread out on the Ark of the Covenant. Today I have a deep sense of his presence between these two apparently contradictory words: liberty and fidelity, in order that he may reconcile them.
First of all, Liberty, the ability to make choices, to fulfil engagements. What I want to underline is: the freedom to choose, not to abstain from choosing, nor to remain on the sidelines without ever making any commitments. These latter are like Stricter's ass who dies of hunger because he delays too long over two bales of hay! Freedom to choose! To give one's word, to engage oneself!
Then Fidelity, for without habit formation which makes for consistency, without the coherence of actions resulting from the promised word, liberty is a mere weathercock blowing with the wind and bespeaking irresponsibility or instability. Liberty and Fidelity: liberty leading to fidelity, fidelity giving a body to liberty.
Indeed, millions have given their lives to become free, but what is the point of risking my life in bitter combat in order to be able to do my own choosing, if my choices lead to nowhere, if in fact I choose nothing, if I am unable to persevere? What good is liberty without fidelity? Fidelity is the triumph of liberty!
I'll go further: it is only against a background of fidelity that the Word can be spoken. if the promised Word is not respected, every undertaking, every "Yes" is fraught with relativity; they are merely "uttered noises", vain promises and hollow discourse.
This is why our gratitude mounts towards the One who is pure fidelity, the One who keeps his word, the One whose word is given to the point of dying in order to respect it, and who triumphs over the suffering by rising from the dead. He dies in order to prove that his philosophy of love is credible: He is "the" faithful One, source of life and of liberty that knows no bounds! He is my God, the One who inspires me and upholds me, and without whom my life would be unthinkable.
But who is he and how can I envisage him?
2. Omnipotence and limits. |
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I remember one day, while getting some children to mime EXODUS, one of them climbed up on the table saying "I'll be God!" The God of the heights, of the divinised chiefs, of the Caesars, Incas and other emperors in Peru, Rome or Japan. God the dictator, 'But the Christian's God is different. He is not above but below. He is on the ground, washing our feet. The Revelation of Jesus Christ turns everything upside down. The identification of God in Jesus Christ, obliges us to rid ourselves of every representation we had of God prior to this Revelation.
The myth of Adam and Eve is a good example. It brings a perpetual experience back to its origins. The worm is in the fruit, as the saying goes; the serpent is in the tree, proclaims the Bible. From the beginning, that is to say, at the origin of all his actions, man is assailed by a fatal doubt: is God after all holding on jealously to His privileges? He imagines a God at the centre of everything, a tyrant, one of those childish representations so criticised by Freud: all powerful, insensitive and self sufficient, a bugbear God, a rival and castrator.
You will be as gods". The first idol is the "ego" which divinises itself by transgressing the symbolic limits where the space of the "other" begins. On one side we find respect and confidence, beyond the limit, conflict and the death of one or the other.
The serpent's treachery stems from the doubt which he instils. "God knows what will happen if you eat the forbidden fruit, if you exceed the limits of the taboo. You will become like him. Then you will be God and He will be nothing. That is why he forbids it."
The taboo limits my desire to be all powerful. It can be an irritant, as it is the line of demarcation beyond which the other's space begins. If I go beyond this line, I deny the other who is symbolically killed. The majority of violent acts have their origin in this transgression: the invasion of one nation by another, a shooting to kill, rape, the abusive authority of some parents, the want of respect for nature, leading to ruin and degradation.
"You will be as gods". This promise by the serpent means that man desires to rule without limit. But by so doing, he enters into a kind of madness which can only lead to disillusionment. A return to reality, and in particular to the status of the human condition is a painful process.
As the Bible indicates, relationship with the other is lived out in the wake of the Fall: conflict between man and woman; painful childbirth, work on the land by the sweat of one's brow.
The perverse thing, and the essence of the serpent's deceit is that he proposes to become God. He uses the same word, but is not speaking about the same God. "You will be as gods" but what gods? He is talking about a phantom god, not about the living God, for in Jesus Christ, the living God reveals Himself as servant and not as a domineering lord; at the feet of his followers and not lording it over them; vulnerable and at their mercy; in no way insensitive nor inaccessible.
The God we imagine and whose place we dream of occupying, the God we can never aspire to be, has become our idol! The Greeks gave us the myth of Prometheus who was placed in chains by the gods for stealing the fire to give to men. The Greek gods were jealous. The God of the Bible is said to be jealous, but He is not. He is sad at the ravages brought about by error or Original Sin. There is nothing wrong with humanity's desire to stretch scientifically or technologically the limits of its knowledge or of its power. On the other hand, the desire to escape from its creature status is the cause of its self destruction, of its mortal ruin, of its more or less collective suicide. It bumps its head against the walls, and dispairing of an exit, creates its own hell.
In Christ's perspective, would it be inconceivable to aim at being "God"? On the contrary! The Bible is constantly referring to this. For example, Psalm 94 mentions the repose of God into which we are invited. Jesus Christ expressly wishes that we should share His life: "That they may be one in us". Jesus invites us to share in the divine condition. When he is reproached "for making himself God", He cites the Scripture and shows that those who listen to the Word, are children of God. On these lines, all orthodox theology expresses itself in terms of the creature's divinisation, both by prayer and by the sacraments. "God became Man so that man might become God" wrote St. Ireneus, adding, "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is to see God"
But let's get back to the sense of the myth. When I place myself in a central and superior position, in the position of God so to speak, l am straightway into a conflict situation. It begins with the man woman conflict. A single centre presupposes that one of the two, either the man or the woman, must serve the other. Theology has repercussions straightway in the social, political and even in the ecological order. If there is only one absolute person, we are in opposition to a Triune God, to community. We are tyrants, not communion people.
If in opposition to a Trinity living the one love, unity in diversity, where the relationship calls for and constitutes the person, if I represent God as an old man seated on his throne, lording it over all, exacting obedience and punishing accordingly, I am allying myself with masochistic brute violence.
As long as this perverse representation is maintained, there is no solution to the conflict that opposes man to woman, parents to children, man to his work. If "I" am alone at the centre, my wife is obliged to serve me, my children must be like me and conform to my desires in their regard. They must not escape me by introducing difference or otherness which could wound my narcissism. It is understandable that childbirth in the literal, but also in the figurative sense is a painful experience. Thus, just as man affirms himself by setting himself by force in the place of this imagined Deity, and by transgressing the symbolical taboo, likewise the children generate themselves by the various transgressions they allow themselves, following the example of the "paterfamilias"
Subsequently, brothers pursue this conflict for, in order that there be one centre only, one absolute, the other must give in. Cain killed Abel through jealousy, because he was not like him. Eventually, nature itself becomes a limit to the desire for self domination. It resists in face to face confrontation, imposing constraints. It is met with stubborn resistance and matters become difficult. Adam earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.
Thus the problem is not so much one of words, but of the meaning behind the words. What kind of beer is underneath the froth? When I say "God", when the serpent says "God", when Caesar calls himself "God", when Christ says "God", what God are we talking about? The word "God" then, encompasses all kinds of different realities! Would excluding the word "God" from our dictionaries eliminate the ambiguities? Our present civilisation banishes questions of its cultural references, but will the question of God automatically go away? Can we really pose the question of God's existence without pronouncing the word God? The "drama of atheistic humanism" proves convincingly that we cannot. By risking to use the word "God", we risk also using its opposite, its caricature, namely "idol" another word to which it might be useful to accord its rightful meaning.
The word is hardly ever used now, but that does not mean that modem idols do not exist. In the thick jungle of modem representations of God; in the New Age cacophony, the sects, the gnosis, in the confrontation of different religions, small or great, secular or not... who is "my" God? "In whom have I put my faith"? "How can I render an account of the hope that is in me"? "Who is the One whom my heart loves"? He for whom I am ready to lay down my life? He whom I adore, He whom I serve, He on whom I count fundamentally, He who I know will never let me down, at least never definitively, who I know will raise me up...? Who is he, "my" God, "your" God?
My God... I may as well state it right away... my God is above all else relation. He is relational, He is the relation: "a" relation in the sense that I can say of a friend that he is someone to whom I am related, but more fundamentally still, God is "The" relation. And we are invited to enter into that relationship which God is.
How can the odd creature that I am, find his truth, his image and resemblance to God, without a restoration of the fundamental relationship with the One who is at once his first beginning and his last end? What road brings him there if not the narrow road of suffering the road of vulnerability? The way of the Cross alone leads to true exchange, in a reciprocal relationship.
Whose vulnerability? Certainly not man's: losing the battle, he would only wallow still further in resentment. In the spiritual battle, it is God who emerges as Victor. We see this in the case of Jacob at the ford of Yabbok. "You will be called Israel because you fought against God". It is God's vulnerability, truly an intellectual and existential scandal, which explodes the alienating idea of a false divinity, at the same time freeing the person from a perverse and deadly theology. For according to the admirable saying of Saint Maxime the Confessor: "Man will only submit under the weight of God's extreme humiliation." Submerged in God's vulnerability, that of man ceases to be a fault. In the measure in which God assumes the human condition, man comes to term with his limitations and enters into relationship, a relationship which is the very life of God. God is not a proud and distrustful solitary. He is not hemmed in to a violent madness. He is community. God has refused to be the idol. Jesus, the true image of the Father, manifests this in his very person: he does not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, an inalienable right!
For having put himself in the place of God, man becomes inhuman. And in order that this failed superman might discover the true God, God had to show him what a man really is. God had to become man and assume the human condition with all its limitations - even the most difficult - that of suffering and death. In order that man might recover his humanity, someone had to show him what a man really is and how man can become authentically divine. Not only become "as" God, but radically become God!
"Those who count the stars", said Giono, "will always find the same number", which is to say that where it is a question of stars, no one - apart from some rare astronomers - ever tries to count them. If I contemplate those luminous bodies which twinkle in the night sky, it is above all to experience an emotion, something corresponding to the fundamental question: "What am I doing here below?"
"The only opportunity for the ant to see the sky, is if he gets turned over by accident!" Chance, fatigue or accident, there are moments when this little bit of nothingness that I am, comes in contact with the infinite. Some want to close the window. The cold air causes shivers down the spine. Fundamental questions are suffocating. These people want "to live the good life", simply that! No more self- examinings, but "take life as it comes" is their philosophy. They are overwhelmed by these questions which cause a kind of schizophrenia: reflection. The solution for such persons is to smash the mirror, and allow the consciousness of the self to evaporate like a perfume, dissolve itself like a cloud in a vast expanse of sky, and lose its too limited ego, to find itself once more in a vast Cosmos. But in what sort of Cosmos do I realise my potential? In a feeling of lofty mysticism? In transcendental ideas? Or in a frantic search for knowledge so as to merge into a kind of pantheism of people and things?
Here we are confronted with those famous limitations which irritate us, and which as we have already said, place obstacles in our way and in our desire to be the centre of everything, to be "as" God.
The ambiguity of the spiritual experience revolves around this point. Mystical experience is a myth, a snare, a prison, if it is not the meeting with another, hence, the recognition of my own limitations, an opening up and a welcoming of what is not me. Otherwise, the great All into which I am assimilated is no other than myself perhaps even nothingness I must die to my individualistic claims, in order to be born by another in a relationship of love, which will render me completely human. My limitations are not a drawback still less are they sinfulbut take on a positive role permitting me to reach the goal of my possibilities and to take hold of myself completely, in order to become wholly gift.
Ideas have to be turned upside down: the absolute does not reside in quantity, but in density and in totality. What does it matter how big the spark is, if its objective is to ignite the powder? One day I was born and began to exist, a tiny living creature making its way into history. To get rid of my limitations would have been to kill me, but I assume those limitations, and this acceptance, It gives birth to my prayer, the prayer of an unpretentious one, the prayer of a child.
For a Christian then, the absolute becomes real in a relationship with someone, somebody who sees, who knows, a witness with whom one can converse, with whom one can enter into a relationship.... Source of my being, God upholds my life. Jeremiah puts it well: what would be the point of making cisterns into which I might hope to conserve life? No, life cannot be put into a freezer, nor can it be preserved. It is not held on to by the accumulation of diplomas, titles, decorations or properties. A person who suffers from a cardiac problem, cannot store up heart beats for future need.
The absolute is not found in what Hegel rightly terms "false infinity". It is not attained by climbing up the social ladder, by aiming at being the greatest, the strongest, the one who makes most noise! The absolute is found in our relationship to the particular, and even to detail. For example, the desire to find fulfilment M a multitude of amorous relationships and to collect sexual partners as one might collect butterflies, can only lead to disappointment. Contrariwise, the absolute is attained m a unique relationship, when the love of a man and a woman becomes so strong and so authentic, that it is recognised as a sign of Christ's union with His Church, a witness to the love of God and of humanity.
It is in the relation to the particular that the absolute is found, which explains why one sheep that is lost and is found again, is worth more than ninety nine which do not go astray. One sinner repents, and there is a feast, for he associates all the others with love's victory. A little bread, a little wine, represent the life we offer, and our energies as gift, so that we may become members of Christ's Body, His presence in the world. The absolute is to be found in less than nothing; it causes us to reach the essential at the heart of our limitations and of our human condition.
Prayer is not the monopoly of Christians. But can one be a Christian and not pray?
Writing from Senegal where they were engaged in co operation work, friends expressed their surprise at seeing all around them, people who prayed. The shock of another civilisation helped them discover prayer as a reality. Sometimes it takes the unusual in another culture or in another religion, for certain people to question their own tradition.
Prayer is an experience to which all have not access. There are people who pray and others who never pray. For those who do not know how to pray, the prayer of those who do, is a provocation which is at times upsetting for them, in the sense in which they feel excluded. Prayer is off putting in their eyes, for it falls into none of the familiar categories. The one who prays belongs to no distinct classification. He brims over and most often overflows. He is in contact with a stranger who upsets the status quo, with the transcendent who plays havoc with signposts and with what seems secure. He bears witness to the inaccessible which dooms to failure the desire to be in total command. The one who prays has access to the completely Other, to the Immensurable, to the Infinite. He causes a lack of continuity like the window in the wall, the oasis in the desert or the flame in the night. Whether he desires it or not, he inspires fear as do all extreme experiences, like madness. And whether he is simple or pretentious, noisy or discreet, he inevitably does violence to the categories of a closed world.
While following a session in a Cistercian Abbey, a certain agricultural student felt obliged to discontinue. He was unable to support a too close to the bone confrontation. Before him were men experiencing something quite ordinary, but which completely escaped him. Yet it is a fact that from the very beginnings, the one who buries his dead is a religious being. His loftiest activities may be disfigured, but in spite of all the caricatures, it is an established fact that there are men and women who pray, and who can speak out of their experience, linked as they are to the Completely Other, to the Absolute.
This has come about in various different ways, by a sudden event breaking into the psyche or by intuition. A barely escaped accident, the birth of a child, a sudden pain, an unsuspected love, the sun on the hills or the calm on the sea, and behold something snaps, opens, weeps or wells up somewhere: and I find myself praying I don't know why, or who has overwhelmed me, but that "something" is praying within me! God has ceased to be merely pure principle, hypothesis or abstraction. Here is someone to whom I can speak. Meeting Him bowls me over! I shall never be the same again. I am "changed" by this new relationship and "refreshed" by this presence bestowed on me. But there is more than the desire and the satisfaction. I discover new obligations. God is not a feeling of ocean vastness nor is he a mere life force. He is not nostalgia for a Golden Age, nor a pantheistic communion with Nature, similar to the maternal fusion of a few months old embryo. He is not a concept either, but someone, another, a person towards whom I have certain obligations. Meeting with Him is for me a rebirth, engendering a new kind of knowledge My prayer responds to a very deep desire, but it also acts as a signpost within me, that I am treading the right path if I am to be truly human.
This experience is common to all religions: the experience of the cosmic God who reveals himself in creation; of the unique God who spoke to Ismael and to Abraham; of the God of the Covenant who is ever active in history, of the God who. took flesh in Jesus Christ, of the God who communicates to us His Spirit. All forms of prayer converge towards the mystical experience of a personal God who loves us and whom we can love. There is a divergence of expressions according to the manner in which one approaches the sensed presence. All forms of prayer manifest themselves progressively in history, and co exist in the diversity of cultures and in the variety of personal spiritual journeyings. All the covenants subsist together today: the rainbow is as resplendent as it was in the days of Noah; Abraham's call is forever true; the commandments of Moses are not out of date; certain people rejoice at the Paschal Feast of Jesus Christ. It is not necessary to travel in order to experience this truth. Even in our churches, some tend to live a relationship mainly to God the Creator; for others, it is to God the Giver of the Law; for others again. it is a unique relationship with the God who forgives in Jesus Christ.
Whatever the result of my discoveries, and the stage at which I am at present, the main difficulties in my prayer come from whatever is disturbing my relationship with the God whom I know. They stem from my blindness, from my want of attention to the mysteries of the universe, to the fragile beauty of living things, the regularity of the seasons, the mystery of human love.
Even if I recognise that God is love and that I am constantly in His presence, that my response is simply my life, lived out in this world and in time by my various activities, it is no less true that prayer is a privileged moment of face to face encounter. Even when lovers are separated by a great distance, they claim that they are never apart. Nevertheless, they always feel the need to meet in reality and more often than not manage to do so to see each other even for a short while, so as to intensify that ever existing communion in which they have put their trust, but which they need to verify, nourish and celebrate.
What kills prayer is the very thing that kills love, namely, doubt, suspicion, selfishness and betrayal. What kills prayer, snuffs it out, and prevents its upward soaring, is that very thing which wounds relationship: distractions, asphyxia, death which cherishes no hope of resurrection. Everything which claims that "there is no time for it"!, that shuts out availability attention, perception. Time exists only for the self. Every activity becomes an alibi, a pretext, an auto justification.
Indeed, prayer is always beyond our capabilities, but it is enough to make a decision, for we are never alone. God is our witness, He forgives us, supports us, welcomes us and causes us to make progress. `When you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret, will reward you."!
"Par la croix et la roue, par le feu et le pal, par la hache et la corde, dans la fosse commune de l'histoire sont tombes tant de supplicies! Et cependant, la mémoire des hommes n'est obsédée que des souffrances d'un seul." (Transl. In footnote!)
Man's memory is obsessed by One only, for all can recognise themselves in Him. The parching thirst which chokes them, He cries it out in public. The word imprisoned in their throat and which they cannot express, he cries out in their stead. When despair gnaws at their very being, He screams at the heavens and, victim of our infernal world He asks: "Why"? Georges Bernanos, in his well known novel: The Diary of a Country Curate, puts into the mouth of the Parish Priest of Tory the reflexion that each of us can, in the Gospel, try to find "his rightful place": some where, in Bethlehem, or Nazareth, on the way to Galilee or wherever find that spot where the Lord met us, that day above all other days, when His eyes met ours.
Now as if by chance, it was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the young priest found himself, and "at that moment yes", it is a strange coincidence at that precise moment when, placing his hand on Peter's shoulder, Jesus asked this question a rather useless and almost naive question yet so tender and courteous: "Are you sleeping"?
We slept profoundly. I was in a deep sleep. I was in a sort of daze, until the day when I looked at a cross and seemed to see it for the first time. It was a cheap crucifix which fortunately one sees less frequently nowadays, but I had heard talk of "The Affair", and my spirit became as it were haunted by it. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to take it seriously as though it were a question of life or death. I began to wake up and to exist. It was for me an electroshock; everything began to Vibrate. I came out of the coma and once more felt my heart beat. A bright light tore at the film which covered my eyes.
Now I did not know at that moment, whether the tortured One was a man or if he was God, one or the other or perhaps both simultaneously. That was not my question. What I did feel was an extraordinary authority emanating from him, a rootedness, a fullness, a presence, a power, a depth, a personality, something never before experienced, never before seen nor imagined; something so strong and so true, that nothing could ever be compared to it, that everything henceforth would be affected by it, in short, the eruption of some unsurpassable and absolute new thing.
How could one ever have become used to the sight of this man nailed to the wood? It is beyond me! But from the moment that the "Affair" took hold of me, I have never been the same as I was before, never more "innocent". I read an account of the Passion and my eyes were opened for good. I did not sleep that evening, nor have I ever recovered completely from that sleepless night. When in Cuba one day, Bartholomew de Las Casas opened his eyes and discovered around him not just one crucifix, but millions and millions; his life too was never the same afterwards.
I saw this unpretentious man, the essence of freedom and goodness, tracked down as if he were a savage beast. I beheld Health and Beauty destroyed, Justice condemned, the Word silenced and Life assassinated. I witnessed totally irresponsible purveyors of knowledge who were absolutely blinded. I saw the fickle crowd, the cruel and bestial populace, the friend who sold his friend, betraying him with a kiss and then hanging himself in a fit of madness and dispair...
"Light was there, but all were blind to its rays. The Word was there but the ears of all were deaf Love was there but no one suspected that Love could be a reality. They were sick to the point that they were ignorant of the very meaning of Health. They were dead and so completely dead, that they considered themselves alive. So turned away from the Living God were they, so far from his truth, that they esteemed that everything was in order. So accustomed were they to sinning, that they could not even conceive what sin is; so vowed to the abyss and so enveloped by its flames, that they interpreted the abyss as God and its flames as love."
Ah indeed! must we listen to the poets, the cursed ones and the rest, to discover that we are already in the abyss, slowly losing our sensitivities, ending up by being ignorant of what could be missing, reduced to brute status, unable to suffer, to weep, to have desires, to regret anything "The world is a bottomless drain, where the most infamous seals scramble about and gyrate on hills of filth." "Daily we descend further step by step, without the batting of an eyelid, through stinking darkness!"
If I had to say where I recognise myself in the Passion, I would have to state without hesitation: in the place of Jesus! And it is also the place where many of us merit to be, as the Good Thief clearly saw. Penitents of another age recognised this very well when they walked barefooted, carrying a cross, jostled by the crowd and insulted by the people: there are kicks which go unrecorded! Who would not merit if not ultimate punishment at least a severe correction? Who then is it who disobeys the most elementary rules of justice, the most sacrosanct laws of life and of love? Who is impious, proud, a blasphemer, taking upon himself the attributes of God? Who then will end up by destroying the wonderful Temple which is creation? Who for a long time has lost all contact with the living God, is unable to pray, is incapable of discovering his presence, incapable of listening to Him, incapable of speaking to Him? Who finds himself lost and abandoned? Who if not the great majority of our contemporaries? Everyone, except Him: He who should never have found Himself in that situation!
Here is the Innocent One, charged with the wrongdoings of which we are guilty! His Face bears marks of insults, the slaps, the spittle merited by our false claims. The roles are reversed!
"You were the high and mighty one! You wished to lord it over everyone! My lord, just a moment: we are about to serve you! You have foreseen everything, prophet of new times to come, can you identify the under the table kicks? You shine with ridicule... ah little god, if only you could see yourself!"
What is really hard is to see our own flesh and blood incarnate in another and carried to the ultimate limits of truth. It is an insupportable wrench, to be snatched from our very skin, and to be a spectator of our own destiny. Here in front of me is One who is living out my very death, someone who is not actually undergoing it, but who sees it clearly, to the very last breath, radically. His cry of despair echoes through my bones, strikes suddenly at my taste for the absurd, and denounces my resignation. The call resonates through my being. A word found for a God who has disappeared. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Yes, why, oh why, are you hiding from me?
In the moist putrefaction, Jesus is our cleansed and disinfected wound. He is our re-opened wound and I cannot endure it. It's too great a scandal, too hard to bear. "It might be just for us, but as for Him, He did no wrong" I suffer for Him. I make protests for Him, I express my solidarity: I begin to love. Hell is split open, hell is inhabited: we are invited to an immense communion...
How can God love us like this? How can He endlessly offer us His friendship, his forgiveness and His truth, however much we insult and reject Him? How can He love us unconditionally and irreversibly, jealously and perseveringly? How can He who created us, who knows us, go so far as to forfeit the initiative, and, sensitive, vulnerable and mortal, put Himself totally in our hands? It is here that all the weight and content of His word of love becomes fully credible: He gives everything, furthermore, to everyone and forever He forgives everything.
If I could put into words how the Passion narrative falls on my cars, I would add that for a long time, it caused me to say "no" to the Resurrection. Never as on those first Easter evenings, did I live through such a nightmare and feel such abandonment. A Resurrection preached in a triumphal manner, leaves Jesus out of the picture and sends Him back to heaven. It overturns the table where He eats with us the pittance of sinners. Stupidly, it passes the sponge and immediately wipes out the fundamental solidarity Jesus establishes with the condemned, the marginalised, the outcasts of all time.
No, the Resurrection cannot efface the Passion. It is just another way of saying that the Crucified One is always present, living personally. When Latin Americans are criticised for their excessively realistic life sized representations of the Crucified, with blood pouring from His wounds, and with locks of real hair, it is because these critics have not yet understood that for Jesus to assume the human condition, it was not necessary for Him just to become a man. He could have lived like some of those rich people one sees in the newspapers or on the TV., unfeeling far away extraterrestrials. The sufferings of Jesus make His Incarnation real. Since He shares the condition of the majority of human beings, so every man and woman can at every moment, speak to Him with the certainty of being heard and fully understood.
The Resurrection does not wipe out the Passion. Triumphalism maintains Jésus in a suppedly divine condition which he enjoyed previously. The real resurrection is at the heart of history, at the heart of history, at the heart of the world, as simple and as intimate as the birth of a child. It is a mystery not of absence, but of a new presence, as discreet as it is promising. It introduces the radically new, but scarcely upsets anything. Let's listen and see!
Order reigns in Jerusalem on the night of the Resurrection. Anybody can go for a walk at night and pass by the tombs, while others slept soundly. Pilate sleeps with tight fists, his well-manicured hands folded over his smothered conscience. Mrs Pilate is somewhat disturbed. Her husband did not follow the recommendations of the dream which augured the prisoner's innocence. This so called governor is in fact, a coward, unable to resist the least pressure from the people. Herod too is asleep! He is dreaming about the prophet whom he had beheaded, John the Baptiser, and whom he is still confusing with the One they have just crucified. After the Passover liturgies, the High Priests are exhausted. They are asleep, tragically unconscious of the fact of having taken part in a real drama and beside... yes beside their pomps... in the vicinity of the tombstone! As for the disciples, they cannot close their eyes. They are too unhappy and ask themselves whether they are dead or alive.
Three women, the pride of humanity, are not asleep. They wend their way through the night to show honour to a corpse, the corpse of that Friend they loved so much. They are about to fulfil those memorable rites which mark mankind's respect for the dead. They are afraid, not knowing how to roll back the stone, nor what they will find at the other side, but they head on nevertheless, ignorant of what is about to happen.
By faith, we too are present there. But we know! Like Elias in his cave, what might astonish us is the silence, a disturbing discretion, no explosion, simply a coming forth. The earthquake, the veil rent in two, the tombs which opened up and rendered their dead, that was beforehand, on the Cross, at the extreme moment, at the point of no return, when Love gave itself utterly, abandoned itself, rendered itself completely vulnerable, and in one final gasp, gave all.
That evening, the birth of Jesus from among the dead, was just as peaceful as was His birth at Bethlehem. We might have wished for fireworks, one grand flash from the media a convincing and decisive sign. At least we might have hoped that the enemies would realise their mistake and be ashamed! But nothing like that, or almost nothing, just an amazing dramatic calm. No revenge, no settling of accounts, no recrimination. Love is the conqueror, but does not render evil for evil! Love does not shoot at the ambulance, nor trample on the wounded, nor finish off those about to die.
Here there is a strange respect for Pilate's lethargy, for Herod's dithering, for the difference of policy among the high priests and the fruitless games of the doctors of the Law. It is their own business if they take themselves seriously! Pardon has been gratuitously offered, in a lump sum, so to speak, and without publicity; let he who can, understand that! Let the one who so wishes, receive by silent contagion! "I say to you, love your enemies!" At least let them have the world they have chosen! Their lives pursue their own course, ours also, but on another register. A Cross has radically pointed us elsewhere. In the Fathers' creation, there is plenty of space and varied rhythms. No one is obliged to live in an open tomb!
What a masterly lesson in being other, accepting difference and even discord! How could God create, without appreciating what is different, call up from what is not God a liberty which can go off the rails and inevitably does! Creation is not a monotonous thing sung to one note; listen to the birds' cacophony, to choral singing, to harmonised melodies: there is a place for everyone, for the deaf, the blind and even for atheists.
God waits with infinite patience and a burning passion, and for centuries! for centuries and centuries! He waits until the world is ready, till life comes into being and conscience is awakened, and one begins to speak and to share, to forgive and become creators, re creators, gods even, like Him, with Him and in Him, in truth!
Easter night is the first night of a new creation, the beginning of a new evolution, of a new change into humanity community! Since then, morning gleams with rays of that light shining in the garden of the new world. Along the road of those disappointed in their hopes, those whom love has wounded or religion betrayed, we are sent to join discretely in their conversations. The Risen Lord awaits us there. It is there that He passes by, unperceived but very active, as did Jesus incognito throughout His lifetime. After a while, we recognise Him, by His way of setting fire to our hearts as we read the Scriptures, or when He is standing on the seashore or discretely sharing a meal with us in a restaurant.
This is characteristic of His own special style: to open a person's eyes in a gaze of wonder, only to meet that gaze by accident in the heart of the countryside, where He will ask questions, questions that go far beyond human understanding. His own particular mannerism, this way of opening hearts and ears, of restoring life to withered hands, even of opening tombs! It is indeed His style, to make the cripples walk, to raise up heads bent with the weight of blame, to set ringing those bells that the "music" of official language has silenced: "You're completely deaf! Call in the specialists! Common mortals have no vote in Chapter! Deaf-mute, you can stay put! 'Better get used to it!"
Jesus encourages the craziest of desires. To the one who says"thank you" He replies: "Your faith has made you whole" It is truly His unique style to live in an open tomb between whited sepulchres!
It is because he lived this way that they killed him.... It is because He already lived a completely sacrificed life, the tomb wide open, that the Gospel recounts the story of His life, so that it can speak to us about Him today, yes, about Him who rose from the dead.
But where exactly is He? When the surprise has died down somewhat, and they recognise Jesus, they wish to seize hold of Him, to throw their arms around Him and embrace Him, Latin American style, but He has already vanished. He is too alive! Exhilarating and frustrating at the same time! It certainly costs Him not to yield, but not for Him the easy way out, He wants even better things for them. Impossible to lay their hands on Him or even to stop Him! He waits for us further afield, when we are more adult, solid and mature: fully conscious down there in Galilee, crossroad of natures and cultures, in full globalisation.
On the night of the Resurrection as on Christmas night, something happened which escaped the wise and the powerful, something which is only revealed to the simple and to little ones, and which could only be perceived by the naked and wounded aspect of one's being; something which one never receives except at the core of an ignorance that is dazzled and ecstatic.
There one meets God, but it is another God!
From its very beginnings, humanity has been saturated with representations of the divine. There have been gods of thunder, of war, of love; deesses with ample bosoms and multiple arms. Human sacrifices continue: genocides and massacres, without forgetting the "absolute" assassins such as macro economic equilibrium, racism, territorial integrity and all the other modem idols which function as non declared deities.
However, in the absence of clergy of every kind, away from Temples and altars, at the heart of the countryside, the Christmas crib offers a profane picture, the simplicity of which has reversed the idols and false representations; here is a family picture which poses in its very existence, in flesh and in blood, the question: who is God?
The one who approaches and discovers the Child, is immediately baffled with questionings; whether intellectual or not, he is confronted with this reality. If he is a believer, he recognises in the wailing babe, in this tiny parcel of human flesh, the One who is sent, the Son of God, the Word made flesh: the very expression of the living God. And the question arises: is this manifestation of a fragile, dependent, vulnerable child a mere appearance? (And we are all aware of the recommendation not to judge by appearances!). Is it then, a mere appearance, or a phase or a moment of history, later to be contradicted when God reveals Himself as He really is, that is to say as we imagine Him to be: strong, self sufficient, invulnerable, insensitive, omniscient, all powerful, the centre of everything etc. Is this Child who is unable to speak, who cannot feed himself on his own, is he already God "such as He is"? Is God playing tricks with us by using a pedagogical method which only He can find amusing: birth in an irresponsibly dangerous milieu, on straw, not a very hygienic cradle, and death on a Cross like a common law criminal... painless? Is He really present there, or will He not resume His true identity after His Ascension into heaven?
Here is my question: at Christmas is He really Emmanuel? God with us! Yes, you will reply. But the question surfaces once more: God as He really is, or God who plays the child to present us with a rather charming tableau? God in flesh and blood, or God who is pretending? In our hedonistic societies, Christmas has been hi jacked as a sentimental pageant Disney Land style. It has become the ritual of another religion, for Santa Claus is the central figure; just a fairytale moment, before life is resumed as before.
Even if this event is over 2000 years old, and even if oceans of piety have reclaimed its return, the real Christmas is still a scandal for the Jews and for their tradition, Just as it is for the Greeks and their philosophy, a scandal which is like an electric shock to the reflexes of the religious world. The Christian God is like no other! He does not fit into the categories of the divine nor into those of this world as it "goes on its way". It is not just in the inn that He is refused accomodation, but in the sacristies also! He is in fact, outside all categories, and even when He attains manhood, the "Son of Man" has not even a stone on which to lay His head.
At Christmas, a new universe, fresh and free, comes to birth at the heart of the old world. The desire of the peoples, the dreams of the prophets, nourished by the Covenant, refined by centuries, assumes a body of human flesh, so as to become accessible, tangible, concrete. Emmanuel, God with us, perfection in the making at the heart of our history, from this very moment and in this very world!
When the raw force of the Empire takes a census of its power, it catches in its blind nets this tiny germ of the future, about which it is totally ignorant. Here however, in flesh and blood, begins a world of sharing, of forgiveness and brotherhood, of communion and friendship, of which this cruel old king, latched on to his power, has not the vaguest idea. Just like the old Darwinian ape of our beginnings, Herod waves about furiously, but will never understand the extraordinary change that has come about discreetly in this little being, so human that He is divine
Has this face-to-face contact of two worlds, so different, so incompatible and so opposed, ever really been measured? To which of them do I belong? Am I ever sure of having made a choice? There is no middle road: I am an anachronism and past history, or I have changed. The error would be to imagine that these two worlds confront each other like two armies, fighting one against the other as equals on the same field. In fact, they have nothing in common. The One who comes to us at Christmas to take charge of our destiny, needs no forceful weaponry. His word alone suffices, without the slightest constraint or persuasion, save the simple evidence of His truth. The nature of His power is such, that arguments from authority find no place in His action.
As the tiny seed grows and develops by assimilating the reserves accumulated around it, so too the new world which points from the cave in Bethlehem, is called upon to fill the whole universe. Those who reject it are like lifeless shells, and are condemned to rot and die. Hatred leads to death, but fraternal love opens up the way to life.
This is how I understand the joy of the poor and the persecuted in the final Book of the Bible, when - on the day of reckoning - everything will be revealed. All one has to do is to wait faithfully, for it will all become clear. Violence carries within itself the roots of self destruction. Unjust, oppressive and lying societies, produce within themselves the poisons which stifle them, generating those very plagues which sooner or later, will lead to their downfall. There is no need to imagine here the intervention of some heavenly policeman. Justice, or rather inherent logic is sufficient proof
While meditating on the peaceful silence of the Nativity feast and its impressive discretion, I look ahead to the day of the great return, that day when everything will be brought to light, when "we shall see God even as He is". He came, He will return. How? In thunder and noise? I don't think so. What I do think is, that He will come in the same calm, the same peace of Christmas night and the night of the Resurrection.
Contrary to popular belief, appearances are not deceptive. The living God does not hide His splendour in order to be simple: He is simple! He does not sacrifice His riches in order to be seen to be poor: He is poor! And if He is not recognised, that does not prevent His being a truly wonderful creator. He is discreet. Two minutes of true meditation turns appearances upside down and makes one see that when one is God, great strength is required to pass by unperceived! That is His way, that is how He is, near us and vulnerable: "Just as He is".
When there is no longer rivalry, desire recovers its freedom. No longer does it need to emulate the All Powerful so as to emerge the conqueror. Now we must pose the question of our thirst: thirst for what? Thirst for whom?
Part II: THE HUMAN CONDITION |
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8. Desire and Repression? |
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We can say it in one word or in a hundred words, with flowers or with rapturous expressions, just as we can say it with reserve and restraint. We can speak it directly or allow images, allegories or songs express it for us. Yet, when love is authentic, but frustrated by the absence of the loved one; when love is strong and true it has to declare itself and paradoxically, it expresses itself negatively: "You are so far away. When will I see you? I miss you! Don't delay. Hurry up and come!"
"Do you know what it feels like to wait for a friend, and to experience his lack of punctuality? Do you know what it is like to feel anxiety about something that might or might not happen? To await an important event that makes your heart beat every time the topic is mentioned and which comes into your mind the moment you open your eyes? Do you know what it is like to have a far-distant friend, to wait for news of him and to wonder every day how he is and what he is doing now? Do you know what it is like to live for someone close to you to the point where your eyes follow his, where you can read his mind, where you are aware of every facial change, foresee his desires, laugh with his laughter and weep when he is sad, fretful when he is upset and rejoice when he is successful? Waiting for Christ's return approximates to something like this." JR. Newman
Belief alone then, is not sufficient. It is not enough to know that Christ will come again on some hypothetical day. We must love Him. We must love Him enough that the suffering we endure through His absence, makes us long for His return, and this, so that we can fully participate in the carrying out of His great plan. We must be passionate, ecstatic, consumed with the fire of hope and the fire of impatience.
Christian hope then, has nothing to do with static religion, be it Greek or philosophical; the religion of the here and now, that of seeking happiness in adaptation and in harmony, the religion of interiority, of God ever present, eternal and unchanging, so that all one needs to do is to situate oneself in an atmosphere of silence and of calm, without movement and beyond the existential, and all this by means of an appropriate technique of concentration.
In the parable of the virgins waiting for the Bridegroom to arrive, his absence and late arrival are a cause of suffering. The feast has not yet begun. The atmosphere is still one of emptiness, of cold, of something missing; they are anxious and frustrated. It is night time. Instead of seeking within themselves, these young bridesmaids go out into the night to look for the one who is coming - not in silence, but with the clamour and cries of a triumphal procession. That faith is a faith that does not cling to the self, but one that is generous, that goes ahead in spite of the risks involved. It is an extroverted attitude which despises comforts and security, consumed as it is by the flame of a fire, the fire of hope and of desire.
Man is sustained and urged on by what he lacks, by his desire: happy are those who hunger and thirst. In a world tormented by a suffering phobia, a world which fears nothing so much as failure and frustration, where everything is organised in a frantic cult of satisfaction and instant comfort, it has to be said and said over again: man cannot live nor breathe but by emptiness, by the hollow part of his lungs. He cannot without dying, suppress his desires; and he would be a "useless passion", a breath, a cry of despair, if hope that sets him on his way, had no meaning, no real and consistent goal; if we could not recognise in him, coming from the infinite and going towards the infinite, a gigantic movement which draws him along and sustains him.
So then, if it is a good thing to get out of the office or the kitchen or the shop, to breathe some fresh air outside; or in the evening to go out of the house, to leave behind the deafening babble of discussion, and to fill one's heart instead with the music of the stars, it is not just to merge oneself romantically with the night; rather is it to get away from useless din and agitation, to catch one's breath and discover the meaning of the universe by opening one's eyes to the enormous backcloth which is about to be brightened by the dawn of His presence: all nature, says St. Paul, sighs and groans in the pains of childbirth.
It is good during the week to stand back from things and to relax with friends by discussing fundamental questions, without which, man is but an animal or a machine. It is not to find an answer to every problem, but to challenge them by remaining conscious, free and wide awake. It is really a question of keeping one's distance from a society that seeks to muffle its ears and throw itself frantically into work, in order to prove the extent of its capabilities, and thus trample on every longing which independently it can never fulfil.
If through a keen sense of justice and a conscientious urge to effect something, I join humanitarian or social organisations; if I share the hope of generous people, and respect totally the absolute dedication of some in fighting for a cause, there is always within me a surfeit of hope which these too short-sighted ideologies cannot embrace, and which at times earns me the name of being a demobiliser. But in fact, it is the critical spirit, piercing through and illuminating these ideologies, urging me to see beyond them, and to denounce the pitfalls that are in reality simplistic, and lead to the line of least resistance.
For when reality resists, when ideologies crumble and hope turns to despair in face of the inadequate results of aimed at goals, in face of those who back out, or betray not to speak of the more or less generalised corruption, the unconscious ignorance of the illiterate disorganised masses- then the question has to be asked about the reality or the illusion of every concrete hope. My own particular question is: whether for some, the Resurrection can be reduced to a mobilising myth, or for others to a rhythm of life like that of Winter or Spring, or again if a new world is being constructed in the end, through the dramatic events, the spasms and the death of the world that was. A world that would be peopled by volunteers, and volunteers who had been tested, having passed through many experiences and many trials and had been found not wanting. The question has to be asked if one has also to pass through Baptism, and through that ultimate abandonment, namely, death. It is a question of the future, that is, of what is awaiting us.
But is the future waiting for us? Is it not rather we who should tend towards it? It is each one's business to determine his own proper goals at the heart of the present. Woe to those who sit back smugly, secure in a 'top job bent on pursuing their goal in a career which will eventually end in death. Strangers to discovery of all kinds, they will be rejected! Seeing that the feast has to be prepared in spite of their sloth, in spite of their resistance, in short, in spite of them, it will be celebrated without them! We know them only too well; their hope is frozen, for they have spent their lives securing it in the ice box.
My hope and my desire are based on a reality: Jesus has risen! That is a reality: He has risen in His Body, an unexpected and longed for reality. It is a "suspended" reality, for the Resurrection of the Crucified One has not yet achieved its full manifestation,, its full flowering. The Spirit fractures as it were, present time, by introducing a fault, a restlessness, which prevents us from settling down. He causes a certain nostalgia, a torment, an opening not yet fulfilled, to the future of God. He causes thirst, and provides an "aperitif." Everything speaks of Him yet nothing can replace Him. 'The Resurrection of Jesus is an extraordinary event, an event which is "present" in the sense of a "permanent" gift and whose energy enlarges history like a ripening fruit! Jesus' Resurrection is an event charged with promise!
Remark was
I once heard someone say we should "tame" our desire. The fact that the remark in his case was a conscious one, demonstrates the fact that he might well have deliberately deadened desire in a sort of euthanasia of Hope, by reducing it to domestic dimensions. On the contrary, nothing could be as great or as wonderful nothing could ever approximate to what is in store for us. The taming of desire means being unaware that from every aspect, the reality is far greater is capable of utterly fulfilling us beyond all our hopes. The taming of desire, the putting it in order, is spiritual suicide, for it means we are afraid. The risk we take then, is to find that the door is closed!
It is true that it is difficult for us to admit, that in the final reckoning, Christ will not come at the conclusion of our efforts, a result as it were, of our achievements. He will comw freely, at the hour He chooses, too soon for everybody to be ready, or so late that no one waits for Him anymore. But after all, if the coming of Jesus was a marginalised event at the heart of the Roman Empire, why should His return depend on our laboratories or on the European Parliament? No one knows! Whether it is tomorrow or at a distant date, or even this evening, the main thing is to be ready! His promise cannot deceive us, and that is why I love that verse of Tristan Cabral, a Nimes poet:
"I wait for the great wave that will open my eyes!"
I wait to see that Face which will shine on us "when we will become
like Him, and we shall see Him as He is!"
9. Human desire, God's desire |
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In his book The Plague Albert Camus asks the question: "Can one be a saint without God?" And a whole generation put its faith in generous activity, ready to forget about its foundations and finality. It could even be said that some went into politics as others did into religion, so difficult is it to be a coherent atheist. In most cases, it was a crossing over event in the circumstances, commitment was turned into an absolute. The "cause" was canonised, the "praxis" divinised, while the criterion of truth was completely depersonalised. In extreme cases, there was the romantic folly of the Red Brigade (Italy) or Direct Action (France) or Shining Path (Peru). For Revolution and utopia are forms of the absolute which, as is the case for every religion, sometimes demands human sacrifice.
The real question seems to me to be this: can we be happy without God? Can we experience complete joy, happiness, utter fulfilment without God? Malraux had an intuitive reply when he wrote: "The twenty first century will be religious, or it will not be". He was unaware then of the pendulum phenomenum leading to today's right-wing movements which are just as dangerous, because "God" is first and foremost a word, which in turn becomes a refuge for all kinds of paranoias, while His truth is still unknown. Was it not Jewish conservatism and the political religion of the Romans which, in the very name of God and with the complicity of the crowds, crucified Jesus and put the first Christians to death?
"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who asks you for a drink!" Humanity is unaware of this, and that is why it has to be excused. "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". There is among men an unexplained desire either for radical change or for ultimate security, an insatiable and mysterious thirst for the absolute, leading it tyrannically from one illusion to another, from deception to deception, and at times to a murderous impasse. On the personal level, there are in all of us countless attractions to money, sex, power, alcohol, tobacco, to name but these... all very attractive and fascinating, but leading us alas, into deadly snares. We go from distraction to distraction, and barely satisfied, we seek something new, always ending up disappointed and frustrated. "if you but knew the gift of God!"
If you knew what you are seeking; if you knew what you are waiting for since the day you were born; if you knew what you need and the hollow emptiness and longing in the depths of your being; if you knew the mystery that you are, that enigma that causes you to exist; if you could analyse the reason why you were created, and hear those deep waters below the surface of your being that flow and murmur like the underneath stream in Jacob's well; if only you could listen attentively to it and recognise it in all its magnitude, then most certainly you would walk straight without ever again losing your way in endless labyrinths. You would then be free in the midst of your brothers and sisters, capable of marvelling at the wonder of your being, quite simply, in giftedness and in peace!
But how can we know what we want, as long as we have not found it? Is it not always the discovery of something that suddenly and in blinding fashion, reveals what we had been searching for in some confused way? Isn't it always after the discovery that we become sensitive to what was already there, but in the subconscious veiled part of our being: as the poet put it:
"What would I be without thee who came to meet me; would I not be but a heart in a sleeping wood, a time-piece which stopped ticking at that very hour? What would I be without thee, but this babbling word?"
"If you but knew the gift of God and who it is who asks you for a drink!"
This I can in no way discover on my own. How could I even imagine it? How could I represent to myself the living God, without fabricating an idol and deceiving myself? When - independently of the Word - I imagine God, then that image is a false one. I see Him as different from me, and imagine Him as I would like to be myself. I dream of being all powerful so as not to be dependent; incapable of suffering, so that I may no longer have to suffer. I would like to be capable of living completely on my own in an auto-sufficiency, so as to be without problems or tales or worries; with no thirst requiring satisfaction and no emotion that would alter my existence.
Now the entire life of Jesus Christ teaches me that God is poor, that He thirsts, that He suffers and that He loves us passionately. The entire life of Jesus demonstrates a deliberate waiting with a freely assumed impatience. There is an underlying emptiness and even a wound in God's heart, a deep deep mystery, of which human longing is but a pale reflection.
And it is the urge to slake this thirst and the desire to meet the living God who is waiting for me, which reveal to me the truth, the nature and the object of my longing. So there is no question of suppressing this desire, but according it its proper place by recognising it as my very motivation and my deepest strength. Man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God in their very desiring, which is for the Other, that is, God Himself. And my thirst can only be alleviated by coming into contact with another thirsting which will quench it. My desire can only achieve its goal by welcoming this far more powerful desiring which precedes it and overwhelms it on every side. Joy wells up in the meeting of the "I and the thou"!
Thus, I am saved from death - or rather from my finite state and my fear of death-by the death of Jesus, which leads me into a mystery of communication and of communion, an entirely new relationship which transforms and exhilarates me: the very life of God, Father, Son and Breath common to both.
You who are reading me at this moment, welcome the One who is sent. Seated by your well, He asks you for a drink. He is ever present in the midst of your research or your daily chores. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows all about your life. He has known thirst as you have, but first and foremost, He thirsts for you. You can reject Him, His heart is already pierced, but you will find Him again, for He never tires of seeking you. If, like the Samaritan woman, you know how to listen, if you are not afraid to question Him, you will drink in His words in one go. Widen your horizons to those He will show you. Allow yourself to float along the great river of His love. Plunge yourself into that Passion which is His. Open your heart to the dimensions of the world and of history, for your desires and your thirst will never be great enough to espouse the magnitude of His plans. Forget about your past history and the false paths you have trodden, what you did or didn't do. You don't have to keep an account of merits. It will be enough just to accept, and all you have to do is to ask!
I0. Prayer of Intercession |
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The prayer of petition presents a problem. For a long time I thought it was a pointless exercise. When a nun said to me: "I pray for you", I thought she would be better employed communing with God, advancing in contemplation of Christ's burning love for us, without bothering Him with our little problems inevitably trivial. For after all, if it is a question of myself or of other sinners, the "Good God" has only to attend to His own business, and there is hardly need to ask Him: after all, is He not the first interested One?
On the other hand, some people think that they know better than He does what they need. God is too far away, or too reticent; He does not intervene enough as one might expect God to do. If they could exchange places with Him, things would be better. That was the famous prayer La Bruyere chose to make fun of:
"My God, do for the cavalier La Hire
What La Hire would do for you
If you were La Hire
And if La Hire was God!"
This is a false attitude, but why?
Because it establishes equality which does not exist between God and the cavalier.
La Hire is not God ( he is so much less than God in that he portrays God as a pure and infantile projection of what he himself would like to be), and God is not circumscribed by La Hire.
Man is a potential being, he is at a stage of development and therefore needs a teacher. He does not know, as neither do you or I or the rest know, what we really want! Besides, we do not know how to wish properly: herein lies all the difficulty.
I once knew the mother of a family who made the following bargain with her children: "you're asking me to buy you this toy today. Now if in a week's time you still want it, we'll buy it for you!" First of all, she had to be careful with money. Then what she did buy, corresponded to what was expected and desired. Finally, and more importantly, her children learned at the same time about desiring, asking for, really wanting and eventually obtaining what they had consistently requested in a mature and thoughtful way. The gap in time between the formulation of the desire and its accomplishment allowed the children to remain free in face of the tyranny of a wish, often as imperious at the moment, as diminishing in intensity in the waiting. In this time interval, they learned the lesson of their ability to choose. What then can be wished for that is really important?
This is where La Hire is ignorant and where we too can lack knowledge. Why does God want us to ask Him, and invite us to pray to Him? Because it is a first step in communication with the living God. Now it is a risky thing to enter into a relationship with Him, for we do not know how far that adventure will lead us. I throw myself into it with faith and with trust. Before the wide-open heavens, in face of multiple possibilities, what I most need is daring, the desire to live to the full, the audacity to ask for the moon, the lot! The "top job!", to ask for everything. "We must not ask God for less than Himself" said St. Thomas. We must ask Him for His Spirit.
Teresa of Avila could serve as a model of daring and even of impertinence, with that will-power which certain women like the widow in the Gospel are capable of ...and which justify the saying: "What a woman wants, God wants." We find again the symmetry of the beginning, not that of man who wishes to escape from his condition, and who claims the status of a little god, but the symmetry of the reciprocity of the gift of self, in the overflowing of love:
"If the love you have for me
O my God, is like that which I have for you,
Tell me why do I stop
And why do you?"
11. God's Promises, covenant and waiting |
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It is because our desire becomes stifled within us, without being able to expand in truth, that God's promise has to come to meet us, and reveal the magnitude of human possibilities. For the promise far exceeds all that we might have been able to hope for on our own.
Our life then, is not abandoned to an empty time sequence of indefinite duration. No, it is placed under the sign of someone's promise, and that Someone is God!
It was rather amusing to note that at the approach of the recent millenium, journalists who were short of publishing material, began to overestimate the topic. They keyed up readers and spectators to look out for some great event. But what were they promising? A big celebration without doubt, but why? For whom? To see them apply the whip, so as to appear very interested themselves, was a pitiful spectacle! With hindsight, this has become still more noticeable.
Christians however, have a different relationship to time, and the words they have to express it are not those of the press. To the degree in which the secular feast of the New Year is hollow, the simple passage of one millenium to the next, the feast of Christmas is charged with meaning. It is true that this day also corresponds to a simple convention; Jesus was probably not born on December 25, but the day has been chosen in order to tell the secret which lies at the heart of all the other days. The Eternal invited Himself into the heart of time. The Creator has come home "incognito", as someone who just slipped in! The living God opens up our lives and fills them with His own special time.
We commemorate the past, for it is the promise of the future. Our hearts are full of living hope: we wait for the day when what is already there will be fully manifested; when all that is in gestation at the heart of our history will be fully accomplished, like a promise in the act of being fulfilled...like a promise! Not just as a project which it would be our task to fulfil!
The man with a project creates his own ego, he calculates: he tends to dominate persons and activities in order to achieve a circumscribed and limited goal. As for the man of promise, he stands by and waits, open to that which has not yet been accomplished; instead he tries to welcome the gift which is offered to him. The man of promise fabricates no idols, nor does he create his own project, instead he waits for it. A promise is not something of which one commands fulfilment, instead it is received and welcomed. It creates a kind of sixth sense, a capacity for looking and listening, an attention to the welling up of the unforeseen - so long waited for. There is no question here of satisfying oneself, for such a one assumes the frustration another will banish. If the humanist conjures up projects, the Christian is more of a watchman. Changed as a result of the promise, a certain opening up, sometimes a discomfort is effected in him, by the eruption of the promised ungraspable thing. With humility and adaptability, he develops an attention capacity which allows him to welcome what comes, or rather the One who comes, as gift. God's promise transforms the one who keeps vigil. Thus it was that Mary conceived the "unconceivable". And we have knowledge of that mystery when it reveals itself to us. Happy are those who are able to recognise it in time.
This attention which presupposes waiting is in direct opposition to sleeping. It is incompatible with work when it is dishumanising, but it is possible to cultivate that delicate art of being a contemplative at the heart of action.
It means being ready, like parents who are awaiting the arrival of a baby, or sick people a visitor, or lovers a rendez-vous. To keep vigil is to desire. It is possible to develop new affective senses, new ears and eyes of the heart, so as to capture the subtle messages that come to us through the hundred and one incidents of life. God's gift does not blow a trumpet. The Nativity takes place in silence and during the night, in the presence of the poor and far from city life. He is discreet, is our God! He could pass by unperceived, if man did not hollow out in the depths of his being, that gentle silent waiting which makes of him an enlightened one.
An "enlightened one"? Buddists too use this word. Thus an extravagant idea comes to my mind: if He can come unexpectedly, at evening, at midnight, at cock-crow, could He not also come in stranger's disguise? Or speaking a foreign language? Or following another religion? This famour globalisation has complicated everything: let us too keep watch!
... and be waiting!
12. Is the faith an illusion? Auto suggestion? |
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The promise exceeds our thirst and our desire, and goes far beyond our capacity to hope. That is why those who ingenuously claim that we have invented it all to reassure ourselves, have no idea of the compliment they are paying us! Invent it all? If only we could! It is so far beyond our imaginings! One day a friend asked me if it ever crossed my mind that my faith might be just auto suggestion? Somewhat perplexed, and wishing to give him an honest answer I replied: if we invented it, then we are geniuses! But we know very well that we are not.
As for reassuring us in face of death, Socrates and Plato, much older and less tragic, did that well. Those who claim that Christ's Resurrection is an answer to our questionings, do not know what they are talking about! If they only knew what a cool breeze the empty tomb wafts into our closed in lives, and into what abyss of mystery and complexity we are immersed!
It is so rich in meaning, so concrete and radical, that in the domain of faith, the best image to portray it is that of a birth, the coming to life, the decisive entry into a very new world with all that this implies of sudden change, of separation, of dazzling light and even of suffocation.
When the child in the womb, still unsuspecting and comfortable in the embryonic fluid and in darkness, suddenly finds itself in distress and cries its anguish when the first breath of air opens up its lungs, so we too are afraid to take those deep breaths of evangelical oxygen, and to open new eyes, when the love that embraces us is too personal and too overwhelming. Yes, there is a whole programme for us to learn and everything to be discovered.
For the life in question here, is that concret existence which manifests itself in Jesus Christ, so insupportable to His contemporaries, that they did everything in their power to ensnare it, to strangle it, to kill it in the shell.
What formula can encompass indifference and death those mortal enemies! The passion for life, the life of passion, that intense desire to enliven and to provoke, to share and to share again that longing for reciprocity in friendship; that infinite power of freedom and of creation, the irrepressible delicacy and respect for the other no dogma has ever encompassed all that!
No abstract terms can ever do it justice! It can only be apprehended by allowing oneself to touch to understand it, one must yield and allow the self to be consumed. To experience it fully, it will be necessary to plunge one's entire being into the mystery! Experience alone allows us to share in giving birth to the Risen One.
Experience alone permits us to discover the Father of all life, who inspires such a Son and justifies Him. Only the vital risk of articulated prayer, active presence among the poor, the sick, those in prison; only active charity which opens our eyes; in short, only the carrying out of our Baptismal promises, allows us to verify the living strength of love which conquers all. To understand, to enter into life, to know what it is all about we must make the effort!
As a child taking his first steps, and discovering at the same time what it is to walk, the muscles in his legs and the balancing of his body, the Gospel obliges me to live upright and in solidarity with others in joy, generous poverty, and true liberty. I have to try doing so, and after a while I am surprised that I could have for so long remained in the shade and without that spring in my step.
Christ's victory over death and the absurd, throws forever into confusion the criteria of our choices. The vital road is not opened to us by continual success nor by top class results. It opens in the middle of some crisis, at our blackest moments, in the depths of the tomb. For it is out of an absolute impasse that the living God frees His Son, so that He may become the First born of a new creation.
It is because He ceaselessly manifested God's solidarity with the poor, the ignorant, those excluded from society, that Christ was rejected. And it is because He has known absolute despair, that we know now, that there is nothing ever that can escape God's love, nothing that cannot be forgiven, no ill that cannot be reversed, no just cause that is doomed to failure.
Thus, from the deepest recesses of the abyss, Christ's victory over the forces of nothingness, are communicated to all. It did not take place as might have done a performance in a theatre or on the screen. Nor did it limit itself to one place or to one particular time. Its object was not to be seen or even to be recorded. Its aim was to be lived, and everywhere and at every moment to be experienced. It communicates itself as does a breath or a movement of the Spirit. The entire universe is carried along on this tidal wave, into which we must plunge with every fibre of our being.
For the living God whom we meet in Jesus Christ, is not looking for an audience to applaud, nor supporters on the steps outside. He seeks co creators, associates for freedom. His victory is for us! He is looking for friends, partners, co workers. He wishes to be known intimately, so that He can share the very experience which gives Him life, the Breath which is His own.
'The experience of suffering thwarts us in our ascending flight. All religions, wisdoms and philosophies, have come up against this obstacle. The Stoics advised acceptance - even to despising the body. The Buddha attacked the very source of suffering which, according to him, is the desire to live. The turn of the century witnessed an option for medicine, and the great specialists of our hospitals claim to be able to exorcise the spectre of suffering and reassure their contemporaries... as long as they remain in good health.
But to live in an anaesthetised condition, insensitive to stimuli or even unconscious, is that really a life? Have Christians who proclaim a suffering Messiah not a clear and true word to offer their sick and suffering brothers and sisters? For them, suffering is not the worst of evils - let me explain suffering in itself can become unbearable, absurd, which is worse than annihilation; it is something which should not even exist and in face of which death appears as a liberation. But suffering in itself is non-existent. There are men, women, old people, children, peoples who suffer. And suffering presupposes that one is Iiving.
A person who is suffering is someone who feels in a direct unexceptionable, physical, spontaneous way, a call to something else, a deep down longing to be cured, to be freed. Every fibre of his being is electrified with a negative protest at what is assailing him in this painful state, where love is prevented from manifesting itself, injustice reigns supreme, and the world no longer makes any sense. Protest, appeal, cry, to what? To deliverance? to cure? To something that as yet does not exist, but is there somewhere in shadow, acknowledged in the screaming, in the complaint, the agony, the struggle. From the depths of suffering, from the deepest pit that seems worse than nothingness, there mounts a cry to the impossible!
Is it possible this cry could be heard? Or does it remain imprisoned, echoing off the walls, amplified to infinity? There are persons who can no longer communicate, no longer say anything, but who are walled-in, perpetually isolated by such intense suffering, that they appear unable to feel anymore. Patients suffering from autism, for example, bang their heads against the wall and do themselves injury, without appearing to notice it. As the black spaces in between the stars at night are so dense, that the rays of light can no longer free themselves, so too the spoken word is locked into these peoples' darkness and can never escape.
As a Christian, I believe that humanity is saved from this fatality, because on a certain day, a cry pierced the very depths, traversing the underworld to rejoin the living God. This cry which my parched throat would have been incapable of uttering, was wafted heavenwards on my behalf, and was prayed for me with an intensity of sound beyond human imaginings. In Christ's prayer in the psalms a word springs forth which is not just my prayer, i.e. the desire to live and get better, a word which meets mine and leads me on towards change, towards hope, towards communion.
A thirty six year old man, who was to die a few days later, said to a Religious sister who came to visit him every day: "Do you know it's very important for me that you are there, just there. When you are there, there are three of us, you, me and suffering. If not, I'd be all alone with my suffering."
My suffering isolates and closes me in, but as soon as I realise that it is not mine alone and that it does not belong to me; as soon as I remember that I am a member of a much larger body, from that moment onwards, I feel sympathy and communion. Suffering alienates and changes me, but the echo of Christ's word de-alienates, and reveals to me a new identity, on the way to being freed.
In their suffering brothers and sisters, Christians see the tortured members of Christ's Body, "I am He whom you are persecuting" He tells St. Paul, who in echo as it were, replies: "I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in Christ's sufferings, for His Body which is the Church". Jesus has passed through suffering but He has not abolished it. As Paul Claudel put it: "He has filled it with His presence". Presence and sympathy.
The Sacrament of the sick is at the same time the word which liberates, by causing me to cling on to Christ, and the anointing with holy oil on the forehead and on the palms of the hands. In the Sacrament of the sick which is Christ's own gesture, we affirm and make actual our incorporation into the suffering Christ, our passage with Him from death to life, from sickness to health, from solitude to communion.
And all this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Just as oil makes the limbs of boxers slippery, and so difficult, to grasp, so too the Holy Spirit rescues us from the snares of the Evil One. As oil and fats served in former times to heal wounds, so is the Holy Spirit a source of love and gentleness, assuaging pain and healing in depth. And as in old houses, oil lamps were used to banish darkness, likewise, body, soul and entire being of the patient are illuminated with the brightness and the warmth of the Holy Spirit.
It is to be regretted that this powerful and moving gesture which I have never personally made without seeing tears, tears of joy - well up here and there, is so little known and so little practised. It is not just a symbolic act, but truly one that brings peace and freedom. Thus several times I have heard the wives of those sick men say after the anointing, that for them too, this sacrament had repercussions. The efficacy of the sacrament far exceeds the healing of the sick person.
We must all suffer and eventually die. This common destiny poses three questions: Why? What must we do? Why do we have to? Why bother caring and battling against illness if death is always to have the upper hand? What are our faith resources?
An amateur of black humour once asked that on his tomb be written the words: "See you soon!" But the joke was found to be sinister and in bad taste, so the epitaph was rejected. It is a want of discretion to make of death a common topic of conversation. Death is inevitable, but it inspires fear. It is a scandal which revolts us and which we reject outright.
"There is no such thing as a natural death, nothing which happens to man is ever natural, because its presence calls the world into question. All men are mortal, but for each man, his death is an accident, and even if he knows it, and even if he consents to it, it is an undue violence."
We always die of "something". Remove from the hospital wards accidents caused in the work place, the overworked, those with agonising problems, those victims of external aggression... remove the victims of bad ecological or affective environment, or those who by way of compensation have become alcoholics... go back a few generations and remove those whose background is tainted in some way... transfer to medical research what is gained by the arms race; you will discover that old intuition: man in his enthusiasm is destined to live forever! God creates for life, a life to be conquered, but a life which sin drags down, in a headlong slide towards death, towards nothingness.
To sin has always been to choose death. Biological death is a metaphor for spiritual death. It is a fact that some are already dead before their bodies die. There is a saying in Provence which is both humorous and realistic: "He's dead, but we're not telling him... when he does die, we'll take advantage of it to bury him."
The Gospel rejoins us in our historical condition, that of death: a constant daily dying, death which comes to us through generations long gone by, death which has become organised into a system. No one can escape it. But the Gospel does not teach us how to die, but how to live! By giving us back our taste - the salt as it were - to our love of life, it makes death still more intolerable!
Only those who are passionate, the non-resigned, are capable of suffering. Only those who love know the cost of dying. Only the living can die! Jesus did not die as a hero might have done. Neither was He calmly resigned to it as were the Stoics. He entertained no morbid death wish. Completely innocent, He alone could cry out with every bone in His body: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me"? Everyone who dies participates in this unique dying. He enters into the death of the Man, which is now the death of Christ, and he bursts through the mighty door of the Resurrection. "Death is swallowed up in life" "I am the Resurrection. Everyone who believes in Me, even though he die, will live."
But how can we believe, when everything contradicts faith? Adherence to Jesus Christ is gained by fighting against doubt and despair. That is why, when a Christian follower of Christ becomes ill, other Christians gather round him to ward off loneliness, strengthen his hope and sustain his faith. They pray that the patient may recover, for they genuinely desire his return to full health in his family, at his work and in the community.
Between the anonymous sheets of a nickel hospital, confronted with suffering and broken bodies often deprived of their dignity and reduced to the state of objects (handled, looked at, manipulated), Christians recognise this same human body given over to men, to treatments by his contemporaries. They recognise Him who had lost all His autonomy, whose entire body was lacerated, whose liberty and responsibility has been taken away from Him. They see the body, the mask of the Suffering Servant, who takes upon Himself all our infirmities.
"All our infirmities", which besides organic troubles, must include the injustices of society; for with my faith, I recognise in this an identical suffering, an identical and unjust violence which torments all those who are affected by it. The same clamour surrounds all the cries; many and diverse are the wounds, however there is but one suffering, one passion, one human cry: "Jesus is in agony until the end of the world", wrote Pascal, and Saint Paul: "I fill up in my body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, for His Body which is the Church."
Suffering, injustice, illness, can never be explained or justified; evil is always evil, opaque, absurd, nonsensical. But our refusal in the face of it, the protests that rise up within us, find their total and strongest expression in the cry of Jesus on the Cross. "Beyond despair", through suffering and death, a breach is opened, and from that moment, all is changed. Our fight against sickness and death strengthens us, forms us, and tempers us, making us like to Christ suffering, assimilated to Him, side by side in the same battle, united in one desire, in one longing, in one breath: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me."
So it is vital to celebrate this paradoxical communion which breaks through isolation, and re-establishes solidarities. We must proclaim Hope in the very place where it is tested. We must collaborate with the work of the Spirit of life, communion and holiness. When we are sick, we need an extra dose of faith, a special sacrament.
The oil of anointing symbolises all the different treatments. It expresses the very large context into which the Holy Spirit infiltrates each gesture that activates the healing process. The oil of anointing recalls baptism and reactivates the first choice, the election and the privileged love known to the Christian. He receives the royal anointing, that of free men, of witnesses and of those ready to do battle.
As a man is never completely free on his own, but grafted on to a people, a Christian linked to the Body of Christ, so the sacrament of the sick demands a public expression, the presence of the body that is of the Church, of the community. A sacrament is never a private affair, but presupposes that the Church congregate around the brother who is testifying to his faith.
And if the hospital becomes a sort of hypermarket offering all kinds of medical care, and where a patient can be treated as just another case or a simple number, the Christian community must intervene and testify, that the doctor is there to serve the patient and not the other way round. It thus accomplishes an act which demystifies the claims of science and technology, desacralising the medical world, and restoring to the patient his dignity as a member of Christ. After all, this body is first of all a person!
Unfortunately, all this is hard to live when surrounded by tubes, X-rays, the daily rhythm of duties which of necessity and as a general rule have priority. Faith is never an easy thing, but it is precisely because this attitude cannot be taken for granted, that it is a sign both to believers and to unbelievers that it is truly a sacrament. It is a festive act, one that is public, open to discussion, prophetic - in short, an act that expresses something, a true preaching. It is completely geared towards life, requiring people who believe and are aware of what is happening, sick people who are conscious. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Extreme-Unction!
For the last moments of life, there is a final sacrament. Because it is a sacrament for the journey, for the passing over to eternal life, it has received the name of "viaticum" "Jesus, knowing that His hour had come to pass from this world to His Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end" He took the bread of His Body, broke it and gave it one last time, thus expressing the definitive meaning of His life and of His death. If there are tabernacles, they exist for that reason: we keep the Body of Christ and we give it to the dying, so that in a final communion" with the Risen Body, source of life and health, i.e. complete health and eternal life, they may cross the threshold, completing the Passover by becoming one body with Christ.
There are some who die peacefully, but there are others who in the final spasms, cry out in anguish, tear through as it were, the darkness which is closing in upon them. Rebels, you will say? But no! Christ Himself lived this torment in Gethsamene when He "offered up prayers and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the One who had the power to save Him out of death"....Heb.5.7
15. The next world: Between the grave and Resurrection |
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Where have our parents and friends gone to? When our turn comes, what will be our destination? What is that interval between the tomb and the Resurrection like? The question is simple, the answer less so!
Jesus promised paradise to the Good Thief, there and then, without any delay. Now the Gospel speaks of the Risen Christ, but never is there question of the resurrection of the repentant thief, so what became of him? The ecumenical translation notes that for Jesus'contemporaries, paradise is a place where the dead await the great final day of reckoning. So what is the significance of this time-interval between tomb and resurrection? Is one dead or alive? Can one be alive without having been resuscitated? Where are the dead and how do they live?
Images are not wanting in this kind of speculation. Men have always exorcised their fear of the unknown by forming images. In the past, there was a whole geography of the great beyond, with rivers and valleys, a boat and animals. There were even reports of money having been found, for Charon the ferryman had to be paid for his services! Today, one talks of a tunnel, a bright light, music and singing. I'm not finding fault with any of these representations, but I'm simply saying that the Bible is not - as we say familiarly - "into" images, the reason being that its concern is with a wholly different aspect. For believers, the essential is not a question of where? but of relation. The other world is not apprehended as a geographical landscape, but as a theology, as a discovery of the living God. So where are the dead? Answer: the dead are living in Christ. When Jesus promises paradise to His companion in ill-fortune, the accent is placed not on the "in paradise" but on the "with Me". Paradise is "to be with Christ". "This day I say to you, you will be with Me in paradise". For both Jews and Christians, life is first and foremost, relationship, exchange, friendship. Life is communion, while isolation is death; exclusion is hell.
A good relationship with God would seem to be the guarantee of a life that flourishes like a well-watered garden. Still, trials will beset us, ever more demanding, even to the point of scandal which seems to block out all hope. When the people are forced into exile and the prophets persecuted; when the wicked triumph and increase in numbers, and when Job languishes on the dung heap; when the song of the Suffering Servant bursts forth from the heart of Isaiah's prophecy, then the tables are turned. The road of life often passes through suffering, and being faithful to the living God can lead to martyrdom. It is better to forfeit one's life here below, than to reject love and lose the source of life; it is better to die rather than betray the covenant, to be calumniated rather than to abandon the God of truth.
This is how Jesus -to the very end - gives witness to a relationship that cannot be destroyed. Neither men's deceit, nor the torture inflicted on his body can force him to yield. He gives back his life into the hands of the Father, not esteeming it to be jealously defended. The relationship is His life, it does not belong to Him! And this is why His death is a total gift of self in a relationship so perfect, that the Resurrection is a natural sequel that is -so to speak- assured of reciprocity.
Now it is through faith that we commune with the Son of God; it is through faith that we enter into that living relationship which unites the Son to His Father, in such wise, that our death does not open a door to nothingness. It is by faith that at our moment of death,, we too can abandon ourselves, as we did perhaps one day on the occasion of our adult Baptism. When the end does come and we have to let go, we can abandon ourselves to the Father, certain in faith that He will be there to receive us and to welcome us into His presence: "I say to you, this day you will be with Me in paradise."
The unbeliever has not this chance of being able to dialogue with the living God. He knows not the name of the Father, nor the Face of His Son, our Brother. He is an orphan, but is none the less alive. So it is in his relationship with his family and friends that he can live this gift of self, this call to a relationship which is both free and disinterested, which is love and life, and already a deep reflection of God's intimacy. When those without faith meet Christ, and when in their delighted astonishment they ask: "When did we see you in prison, hungry, naked, frozen with cold and wounded on the roadside?" He will reply: "Each time you..." Matt. 25.40
Everyone knows that love and friendship are a foretaste of heaven. But there are shadows in our life here below. So I'll have to say a word here about those who prefer death, self-interest, violence and contempt. This is where I have a question to ask: ought we take away from people that liberty which leaves them their dignity? Must we renounce love because it may lead to failure? Not to mention the half-hearted, the ditherers, the "neither cold nor hot", those who are neither totally closed nor truly open. They are going to find God's wishes for them completely overwhelming, incomparably greater and truer than the timid and easily discouraged searching which they have perhaps undertaken in their lifetime.
But in the presence of the Innocent One, nailed one day to the wood by the creature's refusal to love, my eyes at last opened to Him who slipped into my night and did everything to wake me out of my sleep, I will with a sad heart, realise my unworthiness. It will be too late to deserve such love, but it will always be possible to regret the missed occasions. It will never be too late to let the tears flow, to allow the shell to crack and permit myself to be transformed, in order to meet this wonderful God ever waiting for us, impatient to allow us get to know Him as He really is.
Some imagine that this will be the end ("after me the deluge" floats through our subconscious). But history is not going to end with my death. Others will go on their way. My entrance into God's presence far from making me indifferent, will plunge me into His passion for humanity..
As long as there remain beings in evolution, as yet incomplete, still enmeshed in the nets of evil; as long as there remain men and women who are suffering, struggling, accepting or rejecting the love of the living God, how could there be total peace anywhere, even in paradise?
The saints too are waiting, precisely because they have greatly loved, and because now they love with even greater intensity. Yes, they are waiting for the final liberation of each one, and for the great assembly of all. As for the others, they are no less concerned, and for the reason not difficult to understand, that their faults too follow the normal outcome. Let's take the simple case of an assassin. He will be relieved to see the results of his crimes slowly compensated for, by concrete acts of love performed by others rather than by himself. We are all in solidarity one with the other, and evil and good diffuse themselves and intermingle.
They snowball as it were, until that final day, when each will be accorded his true place and - let me add - his true body.
That is why, with two exceptions - that of Jesus needless to say, and she whom both Orthodox and Catholic churches celebrate on I5 August - it is not true for Christians that the dead have already risen. This is why in the Creed we say: "I await the Resurrection of the dead", yes, I await! For to say as do the Valentinians of the second century, and certain modern theologians, that resurrection immediately follows death, because it by-passes space and time, is to encircle the difficulty by simplifying it in an exaggerated way. The Resurrection would then be de-materialised, and we would be returning in a subtle way to the old abstract notion of the immortality of the human soul. Not of course that I have anything against the immortality of the soul, but all I am saying is, that to rest at that position, would be inadequate to the proclamation of the Christian message.
We could never have thought up a promise that could go so far. There was no need for us to do so. Our God loves man more than he could ever hope for; He loves the whole man with all his loyalties and all his relationships. Our God is mindful of man's body, if not there would not be so many cures in the Gospel narratives, nor bread and wine at the Table of the Eucharist. Above all, He would not Himself have taken a body, been born of a woman, in a certain place at a certain time!
In one way or another then, the Resurrection will have an effect on the body, if not, it is no longer a question of Resurrection, and the word would have to be changed. It is true that we shall know another type of body, that of the Risen Christ, where no sickness is possible, and which becomes the perfect expression of the Spirit. But the Christian affirmation of the Resurrection implies body, and is inconceivable without a certain link with matter.
Our God loves the whole man. He also loves His entire creation without excluding anything, so the entire cosmos is involved here. When the love of the living God is completely manifest; when God will be all in all, then no one and no thing will be forgotten.
Part III: GOD AT THE HEART OF OUR CREATUREHOOD |
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16. Finding a rhythm in life |
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While waiting to die, we must live. But in the end, life is mortal. The crazy rhythm of everyday living is literally killing. Have we lost the secret of rest? Who is going to teach us what real peace and real rest is?
"I will give you rest." It's really strange: in this world of recreation, unemployment or retirement, one thing alone seems to be missing, and that is true rest! I'm not speaking here of relaxation, nor even of sleep, but of real repose, of that feeling of plenitude: of serene joy and of peace. I'd like to say a word about calm and happiness. Not only do people not rest, but to rest takes on a negative meaning, and is criticised and even forbidden as something profoundly immoral. Letting off steam is at times excusable, but to indulge in real repose and to indulge in it deliberately, is regarded as perverse. One has only to listen to the litany of blame: "When millions of children are dying of hunger; when there are plagues like torture and cancer, we have no right to be happy, nor to fold our arms and rest; we must be up and doing! The poor must everywhere wake up and learn how to read and count (especially to count)!; they must learn what their rights are and insist that they be respected. We must together invent an economy which will include everyone and give work to all! Research and techniques must be developed. All this is possible and it is urgent! Consequently, delay is to be deplored and repose forbidden." We must, we must, we must...
And to the collective "musts" individual obligations are added: each one must develop his/her personal gifts. We must learn how to express ourselves, in the theatre, in poetry, in dance or in singing. Each one must take stock of his own limitations, and surpass them until he literally "explodes"! and what do you think of the recent media debate? Inform yourself! In order to be a good citizen, you must go beyond the slogan threshold! You must, you must, you must... Even the unemployed, the retired or the beggar can find work, but work that is backbreaking, unworthy and inhuman.
Never, since our society has become frankly materialistic, has it been so weak in its forward march. It is as though a vacuum was created that had to be filled. Rapid progress is being made, but at the same time, man is discovering that his efforts are endless. Researches mean more researches, and discoveries mean more discoveries. His limitations are lessened, but he remains dissatisfied - even if he makes it to a better job - and he is totally frustrated because of the majority who cannot reach the coveted goal.
The experience that we have, both personally and collectively, is that of failure, which is tearing at the roots of our being and creating a gap between what we are and what we ought to be. We constantly want to have more, to be able to do more, to know more, to bridge the gap that separates us from ourselves, to fill in the ravine that separates us from our ideal. But the ravine moves along with us! Sometimes, it becomes so wide as to cause dizziness in certain people. They become wan, empty and depressive, in revolt against their mediocrity. So the number of failed beings increases, disqualified as they are from achieving their own potential. As models of sanctity proposed to them are inaccessible, they feel like lost souls, unworthy of the final reconciliation, unworthy of rest.
So then, to get away from megalomania and discouragement, I'm going to propose a parable, and to change the scene somewhat, I'm borrowing it from a different cultural background.
It seems that in order to complete the famous wall of China, the builders put forward an extraordinary piece of strategy. They built a tower and linked that to the preceding one, building the wall by starting at the end. Thus by successive and limited stages, they steadily advanced without becoming discouraged. Each block they had built, had a certain unity in itself, a certain perfection. Each link prefigured the whole and provided proportional satisfaction.
Likewise we might put rhythm into our lives, and take time off to breathe. Each one of our actions, inspired by the ultimate goal, would become like a sacrament. With a sprinkling of poetry, the smallest of our acts would be enriched in meaning and in liberty, and would become a prayer of praise and celebration. Work would become a game, shot through already with the great feast in preparation. And the final reward would be the same for all. What a surprise!
This of course presupposes that we change our ways of behaviour. In the Gospel, the widow's mite is of greater value than the superfluous money of a rich man, for quantity means nothing if it is not the expression of the gift of oneself. The joy of finding one sheep is multiplied a hundredfold, for all are found in the one which had gone astray and was found. Jesus turns it all upside down. He is glad to work precisely on the day of rest. He places sinners at the centre of redemption. Prostitutes and tax officials see Him approach them without any preliminary talk about repentance. He forgives them without asking for an admission of guilt.
Finally, whatever the sermons have to say, Jesus is not an unsurpassable model. He is not the "Superman" who has exceeded all humanity's limitations, nor the superman we dream of becoming, and who will return to pass judgement on our half-heartedness. Jesus is like us, a being of flesh and blood, circumscribed by time and space, a limited, sexual, mortal being. He knew the meaning of hunger and thirst, fatigue and anguish, sorrow and fear. Each of us has travelled further than He has. He did not invent the potato nor cross-fertilisation nor penicillin nor vaccination. If He healed a few sick people and took up the cause of some marginalised, it wasn't a lot. His life did not achieve any major success. He was born on straw and nailed to a cross, but others have undergone more suffering and were poorer than He was. The manger is not the depth of deprivation, nor Golgotha the culminating point of pain. Jesus was killed in a relatively proper way, with the opportunity of dying for what He believed.
He escapes nothing of our ordinary life, not even that sense of social culpability that we all feel on seeing the conditions in which so many have to live. He never did anything evil, yet children were massacred because of Him, and He escaped the massacre of those innocents.
No, Jesus is not the material summit of humanity, and for that reason He is unique, irreplaceable, unequalled! We all look for God in extremes, beyond our limitations. It is the idol we dream about, and about which I spoke earlier on. But Jesus is intensely human. He causes God to be present in the bread and butter situations of our lives; at the heart of our most humble occupations, and without upsetting us or forcing us in any way. It is in weakness that His power is most palpable!
Man's misfortune and his fundamental error, is to wish to become God through power and affirmation of his ego. Jesus shows us how to become human in a modest way, and to take on those divine qualities in a filial relationship born of joy and the Spirit's free gift. He did not change the world, but reconciled man with his mortal and limited condition. He invites us to rid ourselves of our imaginary burdens, in order to enter into the true repose and serenity of our God.
Is Jesus a superman? We have already denied that. The superman is a solitary being; but since the beginning, Jesus has claimed to act in the name of Another, saying that He cannot be understood apart from this privileged relationship uniting him to the living God.
"Whoever sees Me, sees the Father." What have we seen? Well, we have seen Jesus energetically empty the Temple of its traders: "Do not make My Father's house..." Sheep and doves are no longer necessary to enter into a relationship with the living God.
We saw Jesus converse with the Samaritan woman. Her marriage situation is not exactly ideal, but He offers her living water. She wants to embarrass Him with questions about another religion, but He speaks of the day when each one will be able to pray to the Father in Spirit and in Truth. The Temple is no longer a necessary venue for prayer to the living God. All segregation is abolished: Garizim Jerusalem, Jew Samaritan, man woman, slave freeman. Even a pagan, and a non national for good measure, i.e. the Roman officer, sees Jesus promise to cure his son. A simple word, without going anywhere! The soldier believes, and the child is restored to health.
We saw Jesus full of joy at the sight of the fields awaiting the harvest. He forgets about meals! "My food is to do My Father's will and to carry out His wishes". His actions flow from the source, following a liberty which cuts through social conventions. By everything that He says and does, by His entire Person, Jesus announces and proclaims the Will and the presence of the Father, the inspirer of His every action. Jesus is thus the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Revelation of God.
When He notices the lame man, an invalid for close on thirty eight years, Jesus puts him back on his feet once more, even though it is the Sabbath! "My Father always works, and I also work." Jesus assimilates His own activity to that of the living God another reason again for the Jews to kill Him, for not content with violating the Sabbath, He calls God His own Father, thus making Himself equal to God.
This statement is pretentious in the extreme, as pretentious as is its humility! Fully expressive of the living God, Jesus however distinguishes Himself from it so as to make it totally relative. He recognises that all He has is from Him, and that of Himself He has nothing. (Quote John 5. I9) To meet Jesus today as always, is to get closer to this seemingly contradictory dependence, this genial imitation, which goes to the very extreme point of liberty.
Jesus refers to the Scriptures and receives the testimony of John the Baptist. But to justify His claims, He has need of no other help than that of His Father: the works that I do are proof that the Father has sent Me. Now you have never heard His voice: you scrutinise the Scriptures in which you hope to find life. But it is they which give testimony of Me, and you do not wish to come to Me in order that you may have that Life which I am able to give you! I came in my Father's Name and you will not receive Me. If another came in his own name, you would receive him!
This rejection persists today, even if it has changed camp! The Jews acknowledged God but refused Jesus. We accept Jesus, but refuse the God about Whom He never ceases to speak. We accept God, just God, or Jesus in isolation from God, but we are incapable of accepting Jesus and His Father, Jesus and the living God. When we requisition Jesus as Model, Messiah or King, He flees into the mountains. He refuses that role. He spends the greater part of his time in prayer with His Father. We are unaware that Jesus is never alone, but that the Father is always with Him.
Jesus doesn't come with gadgets to help us live better or longer. He wants us to discover a relationship: one that is a source of life, one which nourishes as does the word and |bread, a relationship which is already entrance into eternal life. Jesus wanted to help us discover "the" privileged relationship which unites Him with His Father, so that we might with Him, enter into that communion which is intimacy with the living God. What no one could ever have imagined, Jesus has revealed to us: God is Father, Son, Love. God is community! Community of persons, each different from the other, but inseparable; inseparable in their unity. Utopia is not a mere dream: a perfect sharing in common already exists somewhere. A completely reciprocal love is proposed to us. Each one can give himself totally, and thus enter into the superabundant life of the Resurrection. If only that same communion which exists between Jesus and His Father, could be established between Jesus and me, between Jesus and us, then we could really live the "divine" life by sharing what we have and are, and in brotherly service.
The communion existing in the heart of the living God, becomes the model, the source of inspiration of all social activity: "As the Father has loved me, so also I have loved you. Remain in My love." It is a love that is active, creative, exhilarating. It is not a question of anything will do, there are certain obligations attached to it. "As I have kept...you will remain in my love" (John I5.I0)
Getting to know God is a gradual affair; a dynamic experience. It is not a matter of ideas, but a communion which deepens with experience and involvement. "As the Father has sent me, I also send you."
Jesus associates his followers with his mission. He allows us to discover all at once, the difficulties involved in awakening faith, and the mysteries surrounding the imparting of it. We can sense within ourselves an experience of the living God. It is in accepting the risk of His invitation, that we discover Him in the deepest communion. "Who receives you...sent Me" (John I3.20.) We know the joy of being welcomed, but also the suffering and bitterness of failure. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. They will chase you out of the synagogues and out of the churches. Some will even go so far as to kill you, and that in the very Name of God...they will go as far as that because they did not know either the Father or Me.
Jesus is indeed the privileged way that leads to the living God. It is with Him that we can enter into a completely satisfying love- relationship beyond all our imaginings. Together with Him, we can share in his glory, never faltering in our hope, in spite of trials and adversity. "Do not be troubled...Me" (John I4.I.) If you believe in Me, believe also in God.
18. The Messiah and New Life |
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For us then, Jesus is not only a master of wisdom, but first and foremost, He is the One who has risen from the dead, the God-Man who shares His life with the Father. The question then arises: where is He and how can we make contact with Him? We know Him through His life on earth, for that allows us to perceive what kind He is, how He faces up to death and how He lives the Risen life. It is because He lived that way that they killed Him.
Let's make it clear from the start: there isn't "another world". There is only one world, as there is only one Jesus. There isn't a historical Jesus and the Jesus of faith, just as there isn't a human Jesus and a divine Jesus. There is but one Jesus, victim of money and manoeuvre, of street conflicts and power rivalries, victim of what is holy, accused of blasphemy and of profanation. One Jesus, street preacher, thrust outside the Temple and outside the town, put to death publicly and on a hilltop to serve as an example. One same Jesus, in whose hands and feet nails were hammered in, and whose side was pierced by the soldier's lance. One Jesus alone, the same and yet different! Different because truly original.
What can we say? He is not like Socrates the inhabitant of a unique world, that of ideas and the immortals. Nor is He like Lazarus the re-animated corpse who must die again. He is not a ghost for He eats and drinks. It is possible to touch Him, to prove that it is really He, but He is different; He is living as no one else lived before Him. "Jesus risen....Romans 6.9." He is absolutely free with regard to the systems of this world, where victories are always only partial, promotions but relative, and life never without the prospect of death. He is unique in transgressing that unmitigated law which inevitably puts an end to the successes of life, imposes nature's laws on every living thing, and appears to us as nonsense, an unjustifiable negation, a journey into nothingness.
The Risen Christ inaugurates an entirely new mode of existence, where life is always and forever, and death is no more. He is the first in history to be Transfigured, the supreme exception to cosmic evolution. Christ is totally free, unconditioned, sovereign, undetermined, infinite, absolute. And the apostle Thomas, who is by no means a visionary, but who has a cool head and weighs his words carefully, Thomas uses two words which in themselves alone are the most radical affirmation in the entire Gospel, words which say most and are the most profound. He cries out: "My Lord, and my God."
In Jesus, heaven meets earth. So there are no longer two worlds in opposition, but two worlds, one embraced by the other. Or, to put it more exactly: there is only one world but two modes of life, ours and God's. We are in this world, in history, in time and in space, organically conditioned; but Christ is no longer immersed in history, subject to the laws of the universe; rather the universe is included in Him. He is no longer of this world: He has "conquered" the world and the world has been gathered up into Him.
All this we believe without having seen it. We believe in this victory even though we have no proof. Even Thomas didn't see Jesus in all His glory. No one could have beheld the Risen One in His divine splendour. He never appeared in history except in a manner compatible with history's evolution. For a global and total vision of the Risen Christ, as the Spirit's power transfigured Him at the moment of resurrection, would be the Parousia, that is to say the end of the world. Such a manifestation would at the same time, presuppose a definitive transformation of this world, by direct contact with the Transfigurator. This is why the Spirit enables us to touch the event by faith, in other words, in a manner that respects our condition for seeking the truth and of being free. Thus it is under the veil of bread and wine in the Eucharist that our communication with that world through the Risen Christ is effected. When the ground wheat and the pressed grape become at the altar Table His Body and His Blood, Christ is neither the bread nor the wine, but each is to be found in Him, converted, transfinalised, transmuted into His new life. A fraction of the universe is seized, assimilated, incorporated by the Spirit of the Risen Lord.
So there is only one world: this unfinished world and its principle of a new creation. Not two juxtaposed worlds, but this world and its anticipated future. Christ is already present at the heart of the world, secretly hidden in the folds of history, until His transfigured newness deploys itself for all to see. Then will appear the entire Body of the glorified Christ, not another world, a different beyond, but this unique world that we know, enthroned finally in the courts of ages that will never end, in a life where no one dies, where nothingness is absent from the horizon of existence, where energy is undiminished, and eyes know no tears, voices are gentle and hearts know no sin. "God will be all in all."
19. Do dogmas limit intelligence? |
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Those who take issue with the Catholic Church for having dogmas, do not know what they are talking about, while traditionalists who claim to find in them their refuge, are not much wiser. Contrary to current opinion, the Councils' statements in no way intended to close the discussion, but to encourage reflection. The great Councils did not offer ready- made answers, but rather, asked pertinent questions. In affirming what is unthinkable from a human viewpoint, they call for meditation and reflection, and this until the end of time.
Let's take an example: when we ride a bicycle, we hold our balance as long as we keep going, but it is an unstable balance, for we wobble to the right and to the left. A perfect balance would mean a tumble with no movement at all. With all due proportions, it is the same for our knowledge of the faith. We are constantly between two stable balances, that is between two opposing heresies. We say "heresies" from the Greek word "to choose": when we opt for one side only, we have simplified matters, in other words, rationalised. It has become simple, but chiefly it has become simplistic, rationalistic and fixed.
So then, dogmas keep beliefs open to questioning. They impose that unstable balance and the necessity to move forward in spiritual intuition and in its expression. People who imagine that dogmas stifle reflection, are like those who repeat opinions they have heard without ever taking the trouble to verify them. An example: let us reflect for a moment on all the implications of Jesus' famous question to His disciples: "And who do you say I am?"
Behind this question, there lies another: does Jesus know the answer, or is He Himself posing the question from a personal point of view? In trying to find an answer, I'm thinking back to the debates which shook the Church in the first centuries: Is Jesus God? Is he human? Is he one or the other or both simultaneously? The Council of Chalcedon in 45I affirms that He is "one and the same Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in His divinity, perfect in His unity, true God and true Man, having a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in His divinity, consubstantial with us in His humanity, like us in all things, except sin." To my way of thinking, this declaration is not an answer, but makes the question more precise. It explains nothing; on the contrary, it raises all sorts of questions and makes one think. In order to go along with these affirmations, without getting into a left or a right camp, and without avoiding the difficulty by undue simplification, I must progress towards a point of flight, or rather towards a point of loving aspiration, knowing that truth is above and beyond its every formulation.
Thus, just as Jesus suffered, and knew the meaning of hunger and thirst and tiredness and finally died; just as His condition as Son of God did not prevent His feeling fear and crying out: "Why have you abandoned Me?" so too Jesus lived intensely the questions which are those of every human being: who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Jesus didn't know everything. He had to learn. He was born of a woman. He grew up "in wisdom and grace", the Gospel tells us so. Day after day He progressively discovered and manifested who He was.
Paradoxically, Jesus' question says far more than many of the answers. It gives the cue experimentally to who He is, not in formulae but in actions. He is the One who never imposes. He is the One who asks the question. The Revealer presents himself in the form of a question! He "questions". He is the question itself!
It is surprising that on a very first meeting, there are so few important members of the hierarchies who - instead of making known their titles and functions - allow these to be guessed at! On this point, rare are the followers of Christ who imitate their Master's discretion! If there is someone whose identity has to be indicated, so as not to leave Him out, it surely is He! Yet He chooses anonymity, carries no cross - at least not on his lapel-, claims none of His legitimate titles, and even forbids His disciples to carry them either. He never makes it clear how He is to be addressed. He does not identify Himself, but allows people to guess. "Who am I?" He asks the question, and once He receives the answer, He forbids the disciples to speak of it to anyone.
This can be explained by the fact that His question is not a riddle. He is not pretending. It is a question that He really feels, just as I might ask myself sometimes, "Who am I?" There is no other answer possible but the lived experience, including that of prayer, the memory of one's own life history and the study of its possibilities. He unravels all this, thanks to the cultural richness of His people, that wide human and spiritual experience distilled in His Scriptures. Just like us, He may also need to feel appreciated by others, to be acknowledged in his objective identity, and to find a place subjectively in their affection. "Who am I for you?" that can also mean: "Do I matter to you? How do I stand in your esteem?"
However important it may be, Jesus does not impose His Person. He lives, speaks and acts, and allows you to tell Him how much He counts for you whether as an individual or as community. He leaves you to guess and to frame your answer according to your own culture, and in the words that come easiest to you. He inspires you with a growing confidence or a blinding flash of faith, through the Spirit murmuring to your spirit the secrets of your being: that mysterious and vital link to the Source of all that is, to that Other of Whom He never tires of speaking, Whom He calls "Abba", but Whom He also addresses as "My God" Happy are you, for it is not flesh and blood that has revealed this to you (not the words of the catechism learned off by heart), but My Father who is in heaven! Happy are you to have shared my secret, and to have been admitted into my intimate friendship. You have tasted of the Spirit that gives Me life and consumes Me. I recognise myself in what you say.
There is a risk involved in asking that question. I can answer whatever I wish, deceive myself and even wish to deceive myself, cover it up with a mask or a caricature, distort it. This is the Passion. Men spit in His Face, dress Him up in order to mock at Him; place a sceptre in His hands to deride Him. Their cruel game reveals their thinking. Jesus is handed over to men. It is true today as it was then. It is scandalous, and it is this very scandal which, with the best intentions in the world of defending "the" truth, or of "protecting" Jesus, that Peter and many of his successors do not accept.
From the very moment he is entrusted with his mission, Peter begins to slip up. His dream is of power and success. The question goes completely out of his head. He forgets the real Jesus, and instead puts himself in his place. His claim: he is the "vicar of Christ". His desire is to be the follower of a triumphant Messiah, thus placing an obstacle in the way of Jesus. Peter should keep quiet and leave aside his ideological viewpoints, in short, stand aside, so that others can experience the real, true, living Christ; the One for whom self-aggrandisement has no meaning.
Jesus is in effect, the One who loses Himself in order to find Himself, who burns without being consumed; who gives Himself and abandons Himself, the better to pardon beyond measure. He is Love and He is communion. He is the way of love and of communion. He is the One calling us to enter into divine life which is mutual giving, and this of necessity must pass through vulnerability and forgiveness. The price has to be paid. Peter will have to learn this, only to discover it at his own expense.
I do not think then that this question "Who am I?" is a simple classroom question. As it stands, it contains an element of Revelation. It is already an answer, a Revelation signpost. It is profound and very serious and not at all a game. Jesus asks a question and expects an honest and true answer. Happy are those who are lucky enough to have at the right moment, attentive friends to support them in their fumblings, and to whisper to them just what they need to hear, in order to encourage an interior intuition that is still somewhat immature. To arrive at a clear perception of his identity, Jesus needed to learn from the human and spiritual experience of his people. But He also needed a sort of springboard, a mirror, a friend, someone to confirm that what he was sensing was true.
"Who am I?" He revealed Himself to Moses in that enigmatic formula: "I am who am" (which can also be translated as "I will be the one I will be", for you, in actions, in my covenant with you). The Word of God has not alone visited His creation, but has confided Himself to it. At the heart of history, He has asked Himself that question, and He has also asked it of history, "Who am I?"
Until the end of time, Jesus continues to trust Himself to humanity: "Who am I for you?" With our own words, our personal experience, our culture, our particular individual history, whether as a people or as a community, we are called upon to understand a subject which is way beyond our grasp: "Who am I for you?"
The question underlined by the first Councils, is maintained. By rejecting the individual pride which always proceeds from simplistic exclusion, we welcome the Spirit which allowed Mary to conceive the living answer to that living question. We hear then at the heart of Jesus' question "Who am I for you?" that other question so intimately linked to it: "Do you love me?" What am I for you? What do I represent for you? There is no possibility of a verbal answer to such a question. We must answer with our body in the life we live. Peter got the answer right, theoretically speaking. We could award him twenty out of twenty on that score, but in practice, it amounts to nothing. "Get behind me, Satan!" This consummate insult is applied to no one in the Bible, except to the one whom the popes consider as their model! Jesus, sensitive to Peter's deep instincts, does not give up, and in spite of everything, gives him charge of his Church. "Whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven" Why? Because Jesus always, and in spite of everything, shares everything. He takes every risk possible and no one can stop Him. We must understand Him: it's in His nature; it's His style, it is Who He is; He lives on mutual sharing. It is the secret of God that is being unveiled. Now God is the self-giver, the One who trusts: God is Love and reciprocity. In order to talk about Him, it is necessary to communicate his way of being and of entering into relationship, a way that leaves the other completely at ease with himself, in his ability to express himself and to exercise responsibility. As God has given everything, He has nothing to lose, and so nothing to keep hidden.
The Cross puts a question mark beside every institution. The Synagogue did not accept the Messiah. The Roman powers rejected the one and only King The Sanhedrin ignored the truth, and authority in the Church has from the very beginning, been relativised by Saint Peter's dishonest behaviour. Its permanent temptation and risk of high treason, has always been its refusal of the Paschal Event. In the exercise of his responsibilities, Peter will be initiated into the mysteries of his Master: "Another will put a cincture around you..."
20. Wisdom and folly of God |
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If Jesus is not a Master of wisdom like the others, because His Passion places a question mark before everything, what is to be said about the wisdom of God?
In Egypt, wisdom was perceived as a little girl, the goddess Maat. For the Greeks, she was symbolised as an owl with piercing eye - the bird which can penetrate even the darkness of night. For the theologians of the Middle Ages, the bird of Minerva, blinded by Christ who is the sun, gave way to theology. But their approach to theology remained very much in the Greek mould, i.e. intellectual, with very little concern for the body. But if we go back to the Bible, we find the body again. Wisdom has built herself a house, she has prepared a table, and called her children: come and eat my bread and drink the wine I have prepared for you! Wisdom feeds us! ...inebriates us! Wisdom is not just clever ideas, but is like a real flesh and blood person, a person yes, but oh how subtle! She is so free that she is a perpetual enigma, and so alive that it is impossible to lay hold of her.
"The beginning of Wisdom: learn wisdom. We are well on the way! The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." "You are beautiful, my Beloved...as an army in battle array!" The images shock us! We've lost track of our Hebrew!
Was St. Paul right? Folly for men, God's wisdom!
Who would behave like this: apostles and prophets put to death, all this killing which has become history now, and where the best are sacrificed! It seems like the very opposite to what a wise little girl, the Wisdom of God would indulge in! She does quite a bit of damage, and be careful, for once you let her into your house, that is the end of peace, for everything will be turned upside down. She is her own absolute mistress, leaves nothing to chance and does everything perfectly. In her books, it is a life or death choice. love or hate! No compromise! With Wisdom, everything is serious and nothing is forgotten, not the smallest sparrow, not the slightest hair of your head.
You who are indifferent, do you not want to see her? If she becomes interested in you, you will experience her stubborn quality as well as her jealousy! She will come so close and will tantalise you to such an extent, that you will throw her out of doors!
You can beat her and pin her to the wall; burn her books and put her friends to the sword. Be careful about her weak points, for you will see that it is there she will catch you out and win the contest. You think you have triumphed, but she has got there before you! When she gives up, it is then that she has won you over after her fashion, and that she re-moulds you in the fashion she desires. She loses herself, but she saves you, all in one movement! She always does what she wants, no matter what the cost!
Her logic is a uniquely personal one, and her mode of calculating truly original. She absents herself from all the wise mens' committees! Indiscreet to the point of excess, she can also be quite impolite! She is not serious, this little girl Wisdom. She takes liberties, pretending to obey the law, while disregarding its taboos. God's Wisdom is a very vivacious life companion and a very joyful one. In her company, life is never dull and one is never bored. She really is a mad little woman, this divine Wisdom. On the lightest of tones, she can make the most serious of statements. She lures the wise on to ground with no signpost to show them the way, and this with absolute lightheartedness. She inspires those who have the desire to make their mark, with a confidence which baffles them.
Needless to say, comfort is not her number one priority. She promises you a feast of succulent meats and vintage wines, but you had better content yourself with a country picnic, consisting of five loaves and two fishes. A little bread, a little wine, that for her is a true feast! She can make an entire meal out of a few crushed ears of corn. She partakes of nothing herself, for a listening ear is her food and drink.
She loves children, especially the tiny tots. The simple people understand her, but never the learned ones. Do you know why? She distrusts systems and flees from abstractions. Strange pedagogy: She never explains herself! "Destroy this Temple and in three days, I will rebuild it." Would you have understood that He was referring to His body? Another example: Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud and spreads it on the eyes of the man born blind. He says nothing. Let whoever can, understand. It is the Sabbath day. To mix clay is forbidden, yet it is the creative gesture which re models Adam. God's creative wisdom allows herself to be recognised in what she does, or rather, she leaves one to guess. She does not announce her projects; they must be teased out of life's experiences, in the reality of the concrete, in what at times appears absurd, sometimes in the darkness of the night.
Completely free as she is, one never knows how to take her. Sometimes I think she has something up her sleeve. Could she not start off the Deluge once again, or the Exodus? Save the good people and drown once and for all, the wicked? Has her hand to be forced once more? You would think that she did it unwillingly in former times, her body protesting! and that she regarded it with a secret shame which would require redeeming Pharaoh's death by the sacrifice of some lamb or other... it is said that she wept for her enemies more than for her friends
Yes, it seems like that: God's Wisdom is madly ambitious. Artist, poet and especially lover of beauty and perfection, to the highest degree, she bides her time, but is a conqueror with limitless desires. She lays siege on hearts as impregnable as fortified cities; demands the impossible, and like one who knows no bounds, is capable of sacrificing everything. And when her troops refuse to march, and when some mistake or other has to be concealed in order to maintain cohesion, she drinks the bitter cup of barbarous solidarity in which she finds herself dissolved and in some way disfigured. With death in her soul, she pursues her course with people reduced to animals, preparing her revenge when she will appear as she really is.
When one day Saint Francis of Assisi and his brother Illuminato arrived in Egypt, how overjoyed She was to see them barefooted and ready for martyrdom as they prepared to confront the great Sultan! The armies are there, on one side the Crusades and on the other the Muslims, with in the middle, two poor madmen, radiant with God's Wisdom. Where is strength and where is weakness, madness or wisdom? Francis meets the Sultan. "At the end of three days, reads the chronicle, the fierce beast turns to gentleness". With lightness of touch, God's Wisdom impresses even the great ones of this world.
Yes, it is easy with hindsight to discern the truth, and to canonise those who at first appeared deranged. It is easy with hindsight Jesus tells us, to erect monuments to assassinated prophets, but in the thick of life, we are blinded. Nothing is foretold in advance, and the actors are not too sure of what they are doing. "Man never climbs so high, as when he is ignorant of where the road can lead him". Beyond a certain point, "there isn't any road". In daily life, our choices are never mapped out. We must always give proof of initiative, of decision, of liberty and of fidelity.
Isn't it still an extraordinary manifestation of wisdom on the part of God, that to allow us develop as persons, He disappears off the map --is utterly selfless in order to allow us assume our responsibilities? Isn't it truly a stroke of genius when one is God, to slip by unnoticed?
This allows us imagine our surprise and astonishment, when we behold the living God as He is... which of course cannot be too soon!
There are moments then in the Gospel, where we are bounced around in a game of opposites, to the point of vertigo or shortness of breath. We pass endlessly from life to death, from absence to presence, and from renewed contacts to disappearances once again; from strength to extreme weakness, from semi-consciousness to resurrection, from darkness to light and from day to night; from endless joy to total despair, and from utter desolation to true happiness. It is no longer possible to say of Lazarus or of Jesus, who is living and who is dead. Everything is confused, from Jesus' death to our own death, from His Resurrection to ours, from our body to His. What is behind this cruel game, why so many stories, so many dramas, so many tears? What is to be the outcome? Let's take things from the beginning.
We have been following Jesus the Healer, somewhat Zorro, somewhat of an "actor", sympathetic, idealistic and militant; a dreamer yet extremely practical. We saw Him accessible to all, smiling, provocative when He wanted to be as good at ridiculing the stiff necks, as at answering those with hidden agendas. He was for us the very picture of youth and life, of a free and fulfilled man i.e. the one who succeeds, the challenger, the opposite to a neurotic. His very presence was a ray of sunshine, instilled deep joy, made one free. The sick were cured, those with handicaps restored to health, all forms of mental disorders disappeared, even the most serious, like solitude resulting from sin, paralysing remorse, or the feeling of exclusion. For many, He was the Saviour, the providential arrival, the rising star, the leader. A wonderful future seemed to stretch out before Him. He was the kind of man we all look for, someone in whom we can confide, with whom we could enjoy a stroll or a meal; the one who not only the Jews but every man and every woman waited for to put an end to loneliness, exclusion and squabbles; someone with whom to share, to communicate, to bare one's soul.
For He was an orator. Crowds came distances just to listen to Him. They came from everywhere and followed Him into the desert, on to the mountain, or to the sea shore. If He went into a house, those unable to gain entrance climbed up on to the roof and ripped off tiles, so that they could get a better glimpse of Him. He often had no time to eat. He took advantage of nightfall to steal away and be alone.
He spoke with authority as did no one before Him, and in a way no one could equal. His words caused life to spring forth as though He were creating it. His images came straight from the heart of reality, and no one could argue against His statements. You would have said that He encompassed all the world's wisdom, and even if He did not often quote the Bible, yet in His person, its every prophecy and event seemed to find its fulfilment. God was with Him, joy, hope and friendship inspired our lives; God was with us.
This is the image of Jesus we would like to hold on to. Yet, daily living and an attentive reading of the Gospel, leads us to detect a certain something missing, an aloofness, a gap that takes us by surprise every time. Jesus remains evasive, unpredictable, mysterious!
The disciples hardly ever understand Him. Each time they plan something for Him, He eludes their grasp. Jesus goes His own way resolutely and without delaying; He is really in transit. So that when Lazarus is taken gravely ill and unable to rise from his bed, and when Mary calls Jesus to his bedside in order to cure his friend, He remains for two days without doing anything or showing His concern. He could have been dead Himself so seemingly absent was He. Instead of driving away death, He abandons His friend to his sad destiny and only appears after the inevitable has happened. Jesus does not drive death away, but penetrates into its realm. To bring Lazarus back to life, He goes to Judea where they are looking for Him. He confronts the Jews on their own ground. To look for Lazarus in his tomb, He puts His foot in a trap which will eventually close in on Himself.
It is a veritable exchange that is going to come about: Lazarus' rising from the dead is about to result in the death of Jesus. For having raised him from the grave, Jesus will Himself be laid lifeless in a tomb; for having saved his friend from the perils of the night, He Himself will be plunged into darkness. For having freed us from the desolation of sin, He is to experience the most terrible abandon.
We would like Jesus to give us life, strength, health, joy, confidence, friendship...Now Jesus does give us His life, His strength, His health, His joy, His confidence, even up to that intimate relationship which unites Him with His Father. He gives it all to us, that is to say, He empties himself to the point of retaining nothing of it for himself. The relationship of Jesus to His father is one of perfect reciprocity. The bond He wishes to establish with us, aims at a like generosity, since it is a question of forming one single unity.
Our lives are changed, transfigured by the Gospel. Since the time of Francis of Assisi, up to that of Marthe Robin or Padre Pio, saints in the west have sometimes received the stigmata. Saints of Eastern Europe on the other hand, are transfigured saints. In the course of a conversation, while they are in prayer, suddenly they are enveloped in a sort of luminous cloud, causing them to shine in an extraordinary manner. Their bodies begin to radiate the depth of their spiritual life. Their material bodies are no longer prisoners of the soul or the spirit, on the contrary, the body is seized upon by the mystery of their deepest being: their relationship with the living God.
Stigmatists on one side, transfigured saints on the other, here we find two different- and apparently opposite ways - of living the Christian mystery, two ways that are complementary however, and which today are not opposed, and not just because Europe is beginning to be one political reality, but because the two lungs of the one Church, the two wings of the same dove, find themselves reunited in the one body.
If for the west, Christmas and Easter are the most important feasts, for the east, the Epiphany and the Transfiguration are the most solemnly celebrated. But today in the west as in the east, the same icons are venerated.
How are we to understand Jesus' Transfiguration? Did His prayer to the Father on the threshold of His imminent death, provoke an excess of life, of consciousness, of light? A kind of supertension like what happens to an electric bulb before it cracks? The offering of the Son at the heart of a prayer anticipating the Resurrection, is the authentic victory of humanity over every kind of temptation, the incandescent revelation of man according to God.
Peter as his successors after him, would like to have fixed that moment. He is always tempted to feast his eyes on images of triumphant glory. He likes to acknowledge Jesus by His glorious titles: "You are the Christ the Son of the living God." But he must also come down from that mountain bathed in light and plunge himself into the thick of what those words signify in social and even in daily living. For the truth of his Lord and His greatest glory is that of gift, even to abandon. It is a Lord who kneels at his feet, who gives himself into the hands of repentant women sinners, but also into those of stupid sinners. He disregards titles of authority, to the point as we saw already of allowing himself to be submitted to questioning, ill-treated in his body, and disfigured in His identity.
Since He is the Way, let us follow Him in order to die to ourselves, and to live by the One who died and rose for us: the Easter road, losing oneself to find oneself, discarding one's mask in order to discover one's identity, alone or as a people, or nation or Church, as an Order, a confession or a community. Away with narrow nationalisms, identical references or conservative hang-ups so as to enter the life that is gift and forgiveness, and where the gift is nothing less that self giving.
We're not talking here of some Hegelian mechanism, nor of a passage through a "speculative Good Friday", as abstract as it is automatic: this three-pointed dialectical machine does not work. No, it means as a person, as subject, entering through Jesus Christ, into the Father's confidence, living and breathing Trinitarian life which is consummate relation.
The transfigured Christ shows us the man in his full truth, divinised man, transparent to his truth. Not a Prometheus freed from his chains, but a Son, who assumes his limitations and ratifies the filial relationship which constitutes His essence. He does not steal the fire from jealous gods to guard it for himself, but shares it and scatters it with divine generosity.
The fire which Christ came to bring about on earth, does not burn to separate different elements and reduce everything to nothingness. This fire does not result in death, but rather communicates life! It does not devour tables or chairs; it does not divide but unifies! Like a sudden luminous interior brain wave, it facilitates communication. The fire of God loosens tongues and warms hearts. It is in a real as well as in a figurative sense, an "enthusiasm" that is mad, divine, ( pardon the pleonasm! ) prodigious, irresistible, contagious.
Will I be mad, drugged, inebriated? Who is mad? It is enough to open one's eyes. Far from extinguishing the fire, time afforded it infinite space over which to spread. Beyond deserts and oceans, from one continent to another, the fire of God has spread to lands hitherto unsuspected and to languages hitherto unknown. It can be expressed in quechua, in eskimo, in Japanese. The twenty centuries separating us from the first spark, far from extinguishing it, allowed it to take a firm hold, blowing it into the heart of cultures, of sciences, of civilisations.
Who has not felt touched by this "fire of God", whether or not he was clear about who caused the first spark? Who hasn't reached the conclusion that there is no real unity but in diversity? There is no true communication but in sharing the same fundamental experience. All tongues speak of the same reality, and point to an identical source of life and of liberty. Little by little, people come to the realisation that apart from forgiveness, there is no future possible. In Jesus tortured and risen from the dead, this has become forever manifest. There is no true security possible without a laying down of arms, and the strongest is He who was the first to take that risk. There is no other road to loving than the way of trust, that clinging to faith, and believing no matter what happens. To love, or as the familiar expression has it: "to have a shine for someone" is indeed to accept this frightening vulnerability.
Of course it will take time, a great deal of time, before what certain sharp minds, mystics and great saints captured intuitively, can be fully understood by peoples and nations. The atomic arms race has clearly shown how absurd is the "eye for an eye" and "tooth for a tooth" philosophy, and the wisdom of that which opts for non-violence. We find Jesus' logic more and more clearly in all this; we see it in black and white in our newspapers, and even progressively in our laws, not just as an individual way to salvation, but nowadays as a pure and simple condition of collective survival. The rest is but illusion and in the short term, a trap and frustration. There is no other way to find one's true identity but to forget oneself, to cast aside masks, titles and one's particular function in society. There is no other way but to lose oneself completely, in order to find oneself in the loving gaze of the One who longed for us, loved us to the point of dying for us and then rising from the dead.
It is a question of making real this huge Resurrection wave which opens our eyes, ears and hearts; of giving reality to this prodigious surge which traverses the centuries in order to lead us into the heart of a God who is Himself community; it means giving a body to this life which yearns to communicate itself, and of throwing all our dead branches on to this life-giving fire, so that the whole world may live and be transfigured. Let us leave nothing aside. Let us not measure out our generosity, for whatever is economised will be devalued, whatever is hoarded for one's own possession, will be lost. Whatever is not seized by this paradoxical fire, will be burnt. Life is in the gift. A Man died, and He was God. He is alive and we have been divinised. The present He gives us is to live by His Spirit, His Breath, His energy, and that present, immense and measureless, is none other than the gift. The gift of what? The gift of being able to give oneself.
The house can shudder since the world is shaken. The powers can tremble, for they have been unmasked as provisionary, illusionary, ridiculous! The high priests of every category are mere puppets. Politics is not an absolute, Caesar is not God! To feel one's heart beating in that simple and beautiful gratitude of a lost child who has found its Father; to feel in the depths of one's being assurance of that intimate alliance, renewed and lasting, turns us into men who are free, worthy and proud, ready for anything. At last, there is no such thing as failure; love will always triumph, Christ's tomb will remain empty, and for ever!
It is then that community springs up, a community of men and women so transformed that one might say they had been newly born from the fact of sharing and of living in community. The petty hesitations have been dissipated and the miserable fears are no more; the sun has risen; man can stretch himself, come out from the shadows, and emerge from the locked cenacles, spread his wings in God's image: with Christ, we are all sons and daughters of the living God! Here is the new community, the rejuvenated Church, the magnificent Bride robed in splendour for the wedding feast between God and humanity.
Are we sure of having somersaulted completely by means of a conspiracy, by an irreversible and decisive change of heart? Are we sure in this radical choice, of having
lost our foothold, abandoned our old spiritless ways of living, the ground of cold certainties, in order to swim into fire, with the risk of melting into divine Infinity?
Do we esteem ourselves hard as iron, iron reddened on hot coals, plunged into cold water to become molten steel? Have we the feeling that our faith has reached the point of no return? Space is wide open to continue further on our journey: that interior space where man makes progress and renews himself, a space of growth and of renewal, opened up by Christ who leads the way.
From this moment, the feast has begun: rid yourself of the old skins, enter into the dance and into the singing, join hands with the merry-go-round of the living. The feast is extraordinary, the joy contagious, an enthusiasm born of the fire of God.
A Symphony for sensitive chords and hardened hearts
How can we understand those who "didn't make it", those false notes of history? The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will remove from His Kingdom all those who scandalise others and those who commit evil.
Would that we could put an end to these demands, and that the wicked and the evil-doers could be stopped in their tracks when the Son of Man manifests Himself! But what follows is far too much like a condemnation without appeal: they will be thrown into a dark pit. "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
I'd love to understand how, at the awful moment of direct encounter with the living God, face to face with Jesus Christ the Judge - He who was their Victim - that they would be devoured by the flames of insupportable regret, shrivelled up with shame and gnawed by remorse. But must we speak of hell for all eternity? The question has often been raised. Since we do not have a parable, I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me, a lived experience!
I had just been involved in an accident in Peru, at an altitude of 4000 metres. A reckless driver, completely drunk, drove straight into our car, instead of passing us out normally. He made straight for our headlights like an insect for the light. The driver managed to swerve and so escape the frontal shock, but the left back wheel was buckled, and so we escaped being hurled into the ravine. Three hundred metres below, a beautiful mountain lake would have received us into its crystal waters, had not a tiny mound of earth held us back "in extremis".
The other vehicle, a small lorry belonging to an electricity company, was completely demolished, as it went on to crash on the side of the mountain. The driver, somewhat bloodstained by the broken glass of the windscreen, approached holding out his hand: "Break my arm!" he said. An Andes tit for tat? Indian cosmovision? So that the world can keep turning round, balances must be maintained and "because I broke your car, now you must break my arm." Thus equality is restored and justice is rendered. But how on earth could breaking this idiot's arm mend our car? We are in search of life, not of retribution in horror!
Let's apply this story to our subject. How could, grilling the torturers, cure or compensate for those tortured? How could the eternal suffering of Pilate, Caiphas, Herod, Hitler, Stalin or Pinochet, or those other evil men, rotters and assassins of history, compensate for the deaths of so many innocents?
I can't say that I'm happy at the idea of hell. I can entertain a hope that hell is empty. Does hell exist? I'm not saying yes or no straightway, but I'm convinced that if hell does exist, it is not a positive element in God's project. In fact, it runs counter to God's plan. It is therefore the failure of Christ, of Him who did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved; who did not come for the just, but for the unjust, who came "to seek and to save that which was lost."
Therefore if hell exists, it is not God's making. So then if it does exist, it is man who is responsible. It is man who causes the world to be a suffocating place, a "hell on earth": man who cannot forgive, who is the cause of suffering, massacres life, kills love. It is inhuman man who creates hell and desires a godless world. But "the Word of God became Man, so that we might become God; He became visible in His body, so that we might glimpse an idea of what the Father invisible is like; He bore man's outrages so that we might have a share in immortality."
All salvation history is about coming out of hell: the exodus from Egypt with its oppression and genocide, the return from captivity in Babylon, the victory over hatred and death in Christ's Resurrection. So the question remains: Can our God who loves immeasurably, stoop to inciting reciprocity in those "evil brutes" which certain individuals are? I'm not referring so much here to delinquents, prostitutes or the tax cheaters - who will be the first in God's Kingdom - but to those who are clever, sure of themselves and of their rights; the doctors of the Law and other guardians of the Temple; Pharisees with pure hands and clean consciences and who never miss a Service; those who occupy the position of accusers, like Satan precisely! Here I want to offer a parable, a story which may help us to understand in some small way, the mystery of God's patience.
Imagine a huge orchestra: several millions of musicians, and at the centre, a very pleasant conductor. The music is not written in advance. As in classical Indian music or jazz, a soloist begins, and all listen attentively. He initiates both the theme and the rhythm, which is then taken up by the entire orchestra. Improvisation yes, but each instrument blends in beauty, harmony and in the rhythm of sounds. But lo and behold, in the orchestra there is a wicked undisciplined musician who refuses to lend his instrument to the general harmony; in short, his plan is to sabotage. He introduces wrong notes, tries to play the big fellow, and to entice other musicians into his game.
Then a strange thing happens! There is a gigantic competition of unheard-of-before musical virtuosos who rapidly blend in harmony: a fifth, a third etc. twelve-tone harmony and up to contemporary music, Olivier Messiaen and other geniuses. It meant integrating the false notes and reducing them to the simple effect of not unpleasant dissonances - even if the harmonics became more and more sophistocated-the effect being that what was originally a musical error, was eventually absorbed into a vaster ensemble, giving the impression that it was intended.
There were difficult moments, sombre and grave moments, tragic and chaotic times even, but the orchestra held firm. Gradually the break-away musicians began to follow the central conductor. Left to himself, the disturber got tired, discouraged, and abandoning his game, allowed himself to be impressed by the group's solidarity and fraternal connivance, as well as by the calm demeanour of those who resisted him. He finished by calling it a day, before eventually giving up!
For the end of my story, I'm hesitating between two possible outcomes: he flees, furious at having lost the battle to indulge in nail-biting for all eternity, or with a smile on his face, he begins to applaud, a gracious loser!
25. Mary Magdalen, Apostle of the Apostles |
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As we wait, we must go on from day to day as Christ's disciples, in the daily living out of a story which is not always a heroic one. The very first of the disciples was Mary Magdalen, who in a way, represents humanity embraced by the Resurrection of Jesus. The meditation which follows, is my effort to accompany her and tune in to her Easter experience.
"I thought night would never come to an end, and could not resist the urge to move about, to do something. Lying in bed weeping, did not offer much relief... no, I'd have to face death fairly and squarely, so I got up and made for the Tomb. Near the abandoned corpse, I could at least light a lamp, burn some incense, arrange the shroud as one might cover up a sleeping child, give vent to my sorrow, express my love.
My attachment to the One condemned filled me with a strange liberty. All fear had gone. He was my sole preoccupation. The judges and the soldiers no longer made any impression on me. It was obvious that the crowd had been manipulated. The trial had been a mere parody. The strikings and beatings had rendered the Man from Nazareth still more noble, closer, more human. His public crucifixion had forever separated Him from us, while at the same time revealing His nearness, His weakness, His nakedness, His poverty. It would have required an ocean of tenderness to allay His thirst, and if His ultimate cry did not rent the heavens in two, at least it wrenched open our hearts for all time.
More than His life and His actions, His death caused us to forget ourselves, and we were conquered. His last breath opened up a space of peace and abandonment where we entered with Him. His poor tortured body, limp in our hands, disarmed us and caused us to forget ourselves. On my way to him, as I drew closer to the Tomb and on entering in, I felt that my body was also His body, and as I approached the spot where He lay, I wanted for the last time, to pour out all the love I had for Him in my heart.
But His body was not there! The corpse had been taken away! My grief knew no bounds, and my love was so shattered, that my heart was at breaking point. I thought that I was going mad, for it was beyond doubt that His presence had been removed for the second time. I succumbed to deep distress, as deep as it was unreasonable, when suddenly I perceived the gardener. "Woman, why are you weeping?" With tears streaming down my cheeks I begged him: "If you have taken Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will go and take Him." I'd have done absolutely anything! I might even have killed that man!
"Mary!" I recognised His voice! And I turned round as one might turn on seeing a ghost! as if I were no longer who I am! I didn't recognise myself any more. Everything had changed. How could everything have become topsy turvy so suddenly? Like a sleepwalker, I heard myself murmur: "Rabboni!" It was indeed He!
But I was unable to seize Him and hold on to Him forever. He was so completely in the embrace of His Father, that He evaded my wish to cling on to Him, asking me instead to go and tell the others that He was ascending to God. I don't know how I did it, but I turned round to go and do His bidding.
Where did I get the strength to part from Him? did I lack the courage? Given that I was so broken and dejected you might think that, but in fact it was the complete opposite. In letting Him go, in wishing Him to be where his duty lay, my bond with Him grew closer. I tuned in to His movement, united my will to His, to his burning Spirit. Taking the entire world in my arms with Him, I could not be contented with anything less. I was totally united to Him. So I wasn't embracing a corpse, nor indeed a corpse restored to life, I was taken outside of myself, and carried by that contagious love which inflames the world, and carries it as does a nursing mother. I was a woman and also a mother, not only because of this new conception dwelling in my heart, but chiefly because I allowed the Son, First-born from the dead, to go to the Father.
On the road back, there were so many questions racing round my head, that I could not think. An extraordinary joy emanated from my being, as if the world had changed radically".
Part IV: DARE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN |
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"In order to be my equal, he would need to be born again!" As much as to say: that is impossible! The Peruvian who made this wish, was expressing his disdain for the Indian about whom he was speaking. The English language is not accustomed to using the term rebirth about something impossible, while it is quite common in Spanish culture. The Bible uses the term in a very positive way, to emphasise how radical is the transformation effected by the faith.
To the old Nicodemus who comes to disturb him at night, Jesus does not mince his words: you have to be reborn! That is all you need to do. Young or old, age does not make the slightest difference. Will that be just for others? Must we also try? Be truly born again?
"How can that happen?" Asks Nicodemus. I can understand why he is puzzled. Jesus is not speaking of Baptism as though it meant a few drops of water on the forehead; nor is He speaking about moral rectitude. He tells him he must be born again, no more, no less, be completely reborn of water and the Spirit. Now Nicodemus is no child; he is even a great theologian. How can that come about when one is old, old in one's spirit, (which is a far more serious matter than to be sick or tired), a prisoner of one's little routine and as it were, mummified in advance in a rigid personality, bound up in compromises. How can this happen when one comes from an old civilisation, an old Church, an old religion? How can this be done? Asked a young girl from Nazareth. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you... for nothing is impossible with God." The promises of the living God, reach far beyond what we can or ever could dare hope for.
To see everything in a new light, to begin again, or rather to turn over a new leaf. Begin to live, to love, to believe, to breathe, to walk! All that far exceeds the exuberance one feels in Springtime! Begin to live a resurrected life, a saved life, a life of the sons and daughters of God!
Getting away from the flock, the "what everybody else is doing" mentality; the closed situation; the stock-in-trade thinking...to live truly your own life and not as someone else's clone... to slip out as unpredictably as the wind, yes, unpredictable as geniuses are, or artists, or inventors, "The wind blows where it will; thus it is of anyone born of the Spirit". Break-away, Solitude. Personality, originality. No disorderly individualists in search of "I don't know what" kind of disconnected autonomy, but a community of unique men and women, original and perhaps somewhat eccentric, because they are interconnected. In the first place with their origin, the Father, source of their lives and foundation of their liberty. Then as a result, united with each other. So there is no individualism, on the contrary, there is the coming to birth of the "we" which Jesus himself began to employ: "We speak of that which we know, we attest to that which we have seen."
What did we see? Not an invisible God hidden in the clouds, but the only Son, His image. Earth speaks of heaven. Heaven has descended on earth. Moses' serpent was not a zoo idol, while the golden calf was. Judas' kiss was not an expression of love, while the washing of the feet was. The High Priest's scruples were not a sign of fidelity, while the healings on the Sabbath day were. We must learn to see. We must be reborn and change our viewpoint, our behaviour, our Spirit.
Nicodemus, that old apprehensive theologian, whose dark and complicated researchings, could only be done at night - for fear of what one might think- he too will know rebirth. With Joseph of Arimathea, another secret Christian, he arrives at daybreak, to ask for the body of Jesus. He brought with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes - about a hundred pounds. They took the body of the Crucified, and bound it in linen with perfumes according to the Jewish custom... just as in traditional societies, a newly-born infant is wrapped in swaddling clothes...
As everyone knows, the newly born comes into the world with eyes closed. Even when our eyes are open, we do not see very far. Everything remains clouded in a kind of darkness. We ceaselessly rub our eyes to purify our vision, wiping away the mud that clings to our eyelids. Never, it seems, will we attain perfect vision, full understanding. Never is it possible to embrace everything simultaneously with one look, or be fully conscious of totality. Every system is insufficient. This is an aspect of our liberty.
Neither shall we ever be fully conscious of the elements of our choices nor of their consequences. Because of this, we are forced to take risks and to invent. No road is cleared in advance. The darkness surrounding us is much denser than simple ignorance, for the future has to be invented just as much as it has to be uncovered. Death alone terminates our endless quest. Death alone comes along to end an existence which is essentially an unfinished symphony. Is death then the final darkness, endless night, or a journey towards the light, with birth into a different life? How am I to know?
By faith? Faith, Saint Paul tells us, is not clear vision. Our knowledge is imperfect. We catch glimpses and in a dark manner... and if I am convinced that death is not the end, it is because I believe, not the other way round. It is not because I see, that I believe.
In order to have the light of faith, we must then take a leap and cross mysteriously the abyss of a doubt, which the crossing over, however, does not get rid of. The living God is a "dark night"! "No one has ever seen God" He is not see-able! We must believe that He is a hidden God; when we pray He is there, but in secret. The man whose eyes are covered with mud cannot see anything, but he obeys blindly, and placing his confidence in the Word, goes to the fountain to wash them. He returns with perfect sight, baptised in the light of faith, but he has not as yet seen Jesus, only heard Him and believed.
Certainly I believe and I hope that one day I will see Him face to face. I hope for this with every fibre of my being, and do not want to be afraid of it. But for the moment in the world as it is, and for men as they are, the Father only reveals His presence by His absence; we see His face only in the faces of His creatures; His power in lowliness, and His life only on the other side of the grave. Mystery and darkness! It was the sixth hour...yet it was midday, but the sun was eclipsed, darkness covered the entire earth for about three hours. Night at what should have been noon. The accomplishment of love. Here was the promised word, the written promise, all the Scriptures signed with a cross in the blackness of Golgotha. Mystery and darkness.
Everything began at night, at the Nativity. It was at night that at a final meal, the ultimate gift was made. When Judas went out "it was night," night of sorrow and abandonment...the mount of Olives... A fatal night for the hardened one, who says "no" to love, and who blindly passes on death. Impenetrable night for the "learned one" who, blinded by his systems, claims to see.
Relentless night for the one who wishes to see nothing, but luminous night in the monotony of our daily life, a sure signpost along our journeyings. Radiant light as of old in the marches through the desert: mystery and darkness, presence of the living God. As the cloud which enveloped Mary when the Word of God became Flesh; as the radiant cloud which blinded the disciples before Jesus transfigured, as the cloud which hides the Resurrection from our gaze, this radiant night gives us freedom, urges us on to take initiatives and hastens the step of the Church's onward march. Nothing is perfectly clear. Everything is sign, sacrament, symbol. Our knowledge and our foreknowledge are both limited. But when the end comes, the limited will disappear. At present we see reflections in a confused and partial manner, but then we shall behold everything directly in one glance, face to face. At present, my knowledge is imperfect, but then I shall know Him as I am known. For the moment, I am still in the night, but then I shall see Him as I am seen.
What title can we give to the story where a man blind from his birth is cured? "Cure of a man blind from birth?" rather dull don't you think?; "Passing by the fountain..." to suggest the baptism at Siloe? No? and this more poetic one: "The mud and the light"? more graphic: "The spittle and the Sabbath"? That seems more apt, for this is the reality: Jesus did spit, it is written down! Happily, ophthalmologists today have discovered other methods. One is not permitted to spit. It is not easy to see the link between this method of cure and its object, which is to see clearly. Mud is at the opposite end of transparency, just as spitting is at the opposite end of purity. Now while I was preaching on this Gospel, I was tempted to ask the assembly to imitate Jesus, i.e. to spit on the ground, and then anoint the eyes of their neighbour with saliva mixed with dust. However, I had second thoughts; I feared the congregation would have been shocked, and I don't think those whose job it was to clean the floor would have been at all pleased! I also guessed at the objections of the more educated lay people: "You haven't understood anything! That text must be understood in its cultural context. When Jesus made a paste of mud and spittle, He was imitating the Creator's gesture in Genesis, when in those early days He fashioned Adam. This silent gesture is eloquent: Jesus makes Himself the equal of God and the Jews are not oblivious of the fact. He furthers creation by curing the blind man. He restores his sight, symbol of the faith."
All right then on this point. But why mud and why spittle? Why the straw of the manger and the wood of the Cross? Why tears of blood and the soldier's whip? Why the stone at the Tomb? Just to pretend? If one were to say to me that this is the human aspect of Jesus and that it is only provisional, something that will pass, an exception to the real nature of God; if someone were to say that to me, I would protest! For everything in the Gospel has sense and meaning! And everything that is said about the Man Jesus, is also said about God.
We have no right to attenuate reality: the sufferings of Gethsemane are the agony of God. The torture on the Cross is the death of God. The stone at the tomb is His burial. And a spit is a spit, and it is thus that this too has a literal meaning! All the mud in the world is needed to open eyes. It is only when one has suffered derision, and been spat at with scorn and contempt, that one is able to realise that men know not what they do. I understood that better the day I was spat at with scorn and contempt.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ is not limited to the more or less clear understanding of a few tenets of catechism or points of theology. The Mystery is far deeper. To reach it, one must be properly initiated. What I mean here by "initiation" is a teaching which first of all causes us to experience in our flesh and blood, at the heart of life and in the wide context of nature, a hidden reality which the Word later on is to uncover. Quote John 9 35-38
These revealing words are not spoken at the beginning, but come towards the end when the ground is prepared, i.e. when the heart and the eye are ready to receive them, when man hears them and they make sense to him because he feels he has been understood. Before that, the least one can say is, that the anonymous blind person, who could be any of us, stumbles along, feeling his way. A passer-by places mud over his eyes, bidding him go and wash in the pool of Siloe. The blind man takes him at his word. He could have protested saying that an infirm man should not be ridiculed; but no! he trusts knowing that he has nothing to lose; so he carries out the Lord's bidding, believing the word, and we know the rest. He then proceeds to announce his cure to all, insisting that it is true, even if his proclamation is ill-viewed by the authorities. Three times he repeats his story.
This long polemic plays a role of social initiation, allowing our now-cured blind man to open wide his eyes, by personally experiencing the mystery of Light which shines in the darkness and which the darkness has not received. In spite of himself, he understands the normal condition of the disciple, physically excluded, literally "thrown outside", socially buried. I would willingly entitle this episode: "The blind mans' trial"
Let's re-read it from the beginning: "Passing there, Jesus saw a man blind from birth." There follows a debate on the question of evil: Why is it like this? There must be a reason for this infirmity, a cause for this effect! "Who has sinned?" Who is responsible? ask the disciples. If I were a Buddhist I would reply: "The blind man himself in a previous existence! However, he can make progress, redeem himself and enjoy a better condition in a future life". The disciples also offer another explanation, by suggesting that it is the responsibility of his parents: their fault perhaps if the child turns out to be handicapped? The question is indeed soul-searching, but who, one day or another has not had to confront it?
This type of question manifests a closed-in logic: infirmity presupposes culpability. When you are ill, it is terrible to hear someone say it is your fault, that you had it coming to you, indeed that you deserved it! It would make you think you were listening in to the dialogue between Job and his pseudo-friends. Faced with the problem of evil, we would like to be able to reassure ourselves with a reply to the "why?", and knowing the cause of the malady, try to prevent its happening to us. Let it happen to others, if possible to the wicked ones - as in Hollywood's films - while the good guys are always protected!
In the deepest sense then it is a strategy to protect God: He ought not to be responsible! If we wish to be more precise still, we see that it is not so much a question of protecting God, but the system itself in its automatic functioning: the Good march towards success, the Wicked towards their punishment. In this system, God becomes an instrument to reassure us. It is not the God of the Bible, but a childish representation, for if Job is sick and ruined, if our blind man is thus finally excluded; if Jesus finishes up by being condemned by both the religious and political tribunals, expelled, thrown outside the town, put to death, it is because God does not intervene in time in order to protect Him! But we believe Jesus is innocent, Job and the blind man also. Who then is going to open our eyes? Quote John 9, 39
I see clearly that the living God is not an all-risk insurance, nor an alarm device nor a guarantee. Still, I remain blind in face of evil, of scandal that is opaque, absurd and always inexplicable..
What I see is a blind man cured and that is good and beautiful: well for him! What I do not see are the wounded who have recovered, the innocent who have been acquitted, the countless victims of drought, famine, earthquakes, floods, epidemics, wars, orphans consoled, all the dead restored to life! I do not see any of this, but I believe I will see it! Just as I see this blind man cured, the symbol, sign and hope of what is to come. The title here takes up Isaiah's prophecy: "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great Light"
To the problem of evil, Jesus does not oppose a debate. No theory, but actions and deeds. He is absolutely opposed to evil. Our God is "the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob; he is not the God of the dead but of the living." He accomplishes the whole of creation. Our recently blind man, now seeing clearly, finally meets the One who cured him; outside the town, and as in the case of every Pascal visitation, he does not recognise Him. But he recognises His voice - as did Mary Magdalen recognise the voice of the one she believed to be the gardener - and every fibre of his being resonates, not with intellectual conviction, but with exultation. He hears himself saying: "Lord, I believe!"
So I'm going to propose one final title: "Easter visitation for a man born blind!"
Jesus is certainly no ordinary teacher. He uses both fables and the Socratic method. He employs an initiation process geared to experimenting what God is like. Experimenting? Yes... not just knowing with the head, but living, as opposed to mere knowledge. Quote John I7.6. Nothing is more important for us, nothing more urgent.
To be honest, Jesus' success in the short term is quite limited: the Cross, the tomb, at the foot of the Cross a few women, then dispersion: Peter goes back to his fishing; the disciples of Emmaus return to their homes. Let's dare to say that it is total; the authorities have paralysed his movements; the crowds were slow in following Him, the apostles were without understanding.
But in spite of the seemingly continuous improvising, there are some signs of pre-meditation, of deliberate action, as though failure was foreseen and arranged. Jesus reproaches the disciples for their tardiness: "Spirits slow to believe...do you not then understand?" (Luke 24.25.) But occasionally it is intended. "I speak to them in parables so that they will not understand." (Luke 8.I0). He doesn't even try to explain. It would be pointless, as the time has not yet come. Impossible to explain so long as it is impossible to understand. "What I wish to do..." (John I3.7.) It is only later on that they will be able to understand. Later on when it will be too late, and they will recall His words!
There is an element in Jesus' method of teaching so original, that it inspires fear, especially in His liberty with regard to failure. For me, this is the most sublime spiritual experience, that of God's vulnerability. And if I am a Christian, it is for this reason. In the debate with Islam, this is our strongpoint: our God is so powerful, He is even able to be weak!
Along comes a rich young man. He is in search of eternal life, "true life" as Rimbaud would say, but this young man is well brought up and respects the Law! He has everything one could wish for: good manners, style, education, talent. We might say: this is the kind of "vocation" one would like to come across more often! Jesus looked at him and loved him. The Gospel does not often indulge in this kind of emotional statement. However, things don't turn out as expected. The young man goes sadly away. Jesus has not been successful, nor has He even tried to convince him nor to explain things.
Any priest would have seen this as failure and would have felt blameworthy. Jesus was not a very good vocations' director; He esteemed liberty too much!
Jesus very teaching is Easter-oriented. It integrates failure, rather than fight against it, for it is a Resurrection pedagogy. The Master accepts His own death and takes a back seat in face of success!
The disciple will do even greater things than his Master! (Quote John I4.I2.)
In fact, there is question here of an initiation pedagogy... initiation in the sense of a personal relationship with the teacher and of a lived experience. Jesus does not arrive with formulae, theories or demonstrations. He neither "proves" God nor does He describe Him. He is not a teacher in the accepted sense, nor is He a professor of theology, but rather a provocator.
If, by initiation we mean what is reserved to an elite or to a limited group, here whatever is transmitted is to be shared with everybody.
It is a pedagogy which accepts failure with perseverance, sharing the questionings and even the doubt!
Let's take the case of a particular student: Peter belongs to the senior group; he is not particularly brilliant, but hardworking and sociable. He is eager to answer, and attempts what he deems to be the right answer. What he says is correct, but even though it is correct and well expressed, this student when confronted with the reality, manifests a behaviour which does not tally with his previous statements. It becomes evident then, that his understanding of the subject was superficial, limiting itself to a mere formula, the content and deep significance of which, had not been grasped by him. "No Lord, that will never happen to You!" "Get behind me Satan!" We saw this already: Peter recognises Jesus as the Messiah, but his a priori representation falsifies his understanding. Twenty out of twenty in theory, zero in practice.
Jesus is patient. A prime quality for a teacher. He is likewise faithful. He does not abandon Peter, but assigns to him responsibilities. I would add here that Jesus does not regard himself as indispensable. When we consider the difficulty the future V.I.P.s had in resigning, we might be surprised that Jesus remained only three years, and that He was not taken more seriously. "It is good for you that I go." He leaves the place to successors (plural)! "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you everything."
Jesus complicates the task of those who are looking for guarantees.: He leaves it to them to calculate what is best. He has not studied at the feet of some great Rabbi. He is pupil neither of a Master nor of a School. A pity perhaps, but neither does He belong to the caste of the High Priests. His home is elsewhere. He is foreign to every category. What institution could categorise an original of this quality!
The one who acts without authorisation, without acknowledged authority, to lay claim to what he says and to what he does, runs the risk of seeing his action rejected. Outside the normal structures, it will be poorly received, regarded as displaced, a "utopia", unlawful, non-conformist. The one who acts outside the common norm, causes eyebrows to be raised and upsets healthy routine. Can such a one be trusted? There is no way of knowing. One trusts or one does not; ultimately it is a question of faith, a question of the source of all authority: the authority of authorities is not accessible!
What author allows you to publish under his name? Who covers you, who gives you the imprimatur, who is your guarantor? Is there an author inside you, an author with a large "A"? Another, at the centre of your being who inspires what you do and what you say? How can we be sons and daughters of God without speaking the Word? A Word which comes from elsewhere, always unexpected and often badly received?
"By what authority do you do these things?" A question asked of Jesus.
"Did John the Baptist come from God?" reply of the interested one.
Silence of the objectors.
"One" does not wish to reply? "One" doesn't know.? "One" would like an official label?
"In that case, replies Jesus, neither will I reply" (Mark II. 27-33)
30. Apostolate: Fishers of men |
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Returning one day from a meeting with a group of students, I asked myself the question: "What's the point?" I was measuring the distance between my ambitions and the results. I got lost in considerations about the fragility of human beings and the precariousness of our lives, the limitations of our intelligence and the narrowness of our horizons. The students in question, had a limited culture and a very elementary experience of human life, and - to offset perhaps their scientific aptitudes - a paucity of expression when it came to my favourite subjects, which are philosophical and religious. Am I so different stranger?
Why then do we have to criss-cross different interests, continuously reaching over frontiers: forcing literary subjects on those with a scientific bent, and wishing to share spiritual questionings with those who live differently? Would it not be simpler to go and live, reflect and develop that fundamental research with those who dedicate themselves wholly to it: a theological faculty for intellectual research, or a monastery for affective experience and aesthetic perfection?
That would be to forget what was always my deepest motivation, that which led me to become a preacher: not primarily to obtain results, (nor to change the world, nor to forge a career, nor to reform the Church), but to nourish a God-given contemplation of waiting for and desiring Him. "I will go before you into Galilee" proclaimed the Risen Christ.
I know Someone who goes before me along the highways, at the crossroads of human encounters, a deep-down presence who holds his Breath. Someone whom I know from experience and even as a Friend; someone... let us not be shy to express it - whose project I espouse, with its sufferings and its joys. In my modest way, and in the efforts I make at meeting the other person, I find encapsulated, summed up as it were, the affective movement underpinning that immense adventure which makes up creation, human history and eventually Revelation, with all its dramas, its mistakes and its divine moments.
When I arrive early at a conference hall, I have the feeling of being in front of the unknown, waiting for "I don't know what" to arrive, "I don't know how"! It's something completely different from teaching, and utterly different from a technique to be shared.
My intervention takes place outside school or social context. I say too much? Not enough? Go off on a tangent? I never come without being invited, even if by chance the invitation is taken for granted. I come as a water-diviner in search of a thirst often deeply buried and unaware of its need. It is only afterwards and when it has manifested itself, that one becomes conscious of an unidentified need. I come from elsewhere, inhabited by Another - -forgive the pretentiousness - my role is that of an Ambassador. St. Paul says the same thing, and reassures me that he shares the same megalomania.
In reality, it is I who am the beggar and questing...courage is required to make inroads, especially at first, when there is no particular social reason to ring a doorbell... "I'm a priest... just calling to know how you are and to introduce myself..." One is coming in the name of Another, hard to put a name on...often unknown! I come as a beggar, asking to be welcomed, aware that I may appear somewhat uncomfortable: the door opens, always on to the unknown!
I come in the name of Another, but also to meet this Other who goes ahead of me to this place. We have a tryst, and which of our hearts burns more ardently? The desire to meet God which awakens timidly in the human heart, is nothing compared to the impatient and devouring passion felt by God for us.
It often happens that on such visits, I get feelings of anguish and unease, a pathos of the living God: all that he has to accept in the line of latecomings and shortcomings, missed opportunities or blatant refusals, indifference and contempt, so that the seeds of real confidence may germinate in the human heart. And this allows me to accept - as though they were already inhabited - these spaces apparently empty, widely extended, together with collective evolutions and personal failures.
The arms of the living God - all powerful though He be - are tied. He has to wait a near eternity, before humanity arrives at a confident adult face to face encounter with Him; before men know the meaning of true liberty, so that beyond divisions and rejection, they can experience friendship in a trust that is lucid and freely chosen. A lot of time is required, as well as many failed attempts, mounds of corpses and irreparable destruction, in order that humanity as such, may come to realise the huge choice of initiatives available, and so that men may discover the extensive field of their liberty, and the unbelievable responsibility placed in their trust.
I am a contemplative, a passive witness before being an active one. If I dare to speak in the Name of God, even to the point of compromising Him, it is in the guise of an echo, because I accord its full weight to the alliance concluded between us.
31. Contemplative life and Communion |
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"What I wish to do, you do not know now; later on you will understand." Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the days of Holy Week succeed one another, each one very different from the other. On Thursday, Jesus speaks to his disciples who do not understand. On Friday, He is handed over to pagans who understand still less. On Saturday He is dead.
Contemplatives consecrate their lives to a meditation of this unique drama. It seems to be outside time, but in fact, it goes right through time. It is the tension of history, like the string of a bow. This mysterious Presence, paradoxical inaction of God, presence-absence, action-passion: during the days of the Passion, the relationship which God wishes to realise with humanity, reveals itself in its deepest, scandalous, insupportable truth. A "high risk" relationship, as we say in common terms. A relationship of love, where God in His folly - delivering Himself in to our hands, assures our death.
"You do not realise now what I wish to do". The three days before Easter day, are characterised by a mournful asymmetry. Love calls for reciprocity, even when it is cruelly absent. On Holy Thursday, Jesus speaks, but is not understood; on Good Friday He gives Himself, but is not received. On Saturday, he goes through the underworld, solitude and death. Afterwards, there is reflection in the murmuring of the Spirit.
The role of contemplatives is to make themselves present through the heart, to what the world does not understand, but which is its concern, and which affects it in spite of itself. What we are celebrating is not a mere memory. We live it anew. We are caught up in the mystery, whether we wish it or not, whether we know it or not. No one is a contemplative because of a cold deliberate decision. It is an answer to a call, to a seduction. It is because one day, the heart overflowed...the opposite to a victory: a biting defeat but a liberating one with a bitter-sweet effect. There was the battle, the defence and finally the willing surrender. "You have seduced me Yaweh, and I have allowed myself to be seduced. (cf Jer.20.7) The centre of gravity is altered, and one is literally alienated!
We are never so near to Christ as when He is alone, and as if abandoned; when He prays during the night and when everything is going badly. It is at a moment of great sorrow that one can get nearest to Him. The crowds are at a distance and so cannot disturb Him. But it is not to discourse. Communication is non-verbal. The Word is in agony. "I have many other things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now". The word of Jesus which He addresses to all of us: what contemplative, what nun, what Christian would not wish to hear in the silence, what Christ could not say to His brothers because they were not yet able to bear them.?
Holy Thursday is first of all for us. It is reserved for friends, those who are initiated. Jesus performs gestures, he washes feet and shares bread. The meal is ritualised, a feast with a significance reserved for the morrow, and whose meaning will only later be divulged. The trial which has to be undergone unto death, is signified by the drinking of the cup, to the very dregs, i.e. to death.
Such is Christ's teaching. He does not say a lot, but leaves much room for experimenting. explication comes afterwards. It would be better here if He explained beforehand... the apostles will not understand the words they will hear, but with the experience gained at Easter, and with which they live after the Ascension also, they will recall His words and find the necessary clues to unravel what they heard. This practice is revealing. One must go along with the movement. "Happy will you be if you do these things". We would like to know before engaging in action. Here, one must engage in action in order to know.
I don't know why the Passion of Jesus is often presented to us as something unique, and then as though its fruits were reserved to the Church as to a private club! We are expected to content ourselves with observing and following, as one carefully follows an explanation. Our role then would be to receive its fruits, its graces and eventually distribute them to others. "God has not spared His only Son but has handed Him over for us." It is true, but it is short. First of all, we hadn't asked for anything. Then, like Clovis when he cried out: "Ah if only I had been there with my Francs!", we would like to have prevented the destruction. It is logic such as this which caused Saint Peter to cry out at the announcement of the Passion: "No Lord. That will never happen to you!" On Holy Thursday, we are called to say "Yes" to that manner in which Jesus will give Himself up, namely, that He will be taken from us...to consent that He give Himself to the whole of humanity: we receive a gift which goes beyond us. We are the beneficiaries of a treasure which belongs to others too. We are sent to distribute this treasure. But that presupposes that we too must consent to be handed over!
Christ's Passion does not function for us as a kind of insurance policy. On the contrary! The apostles present were in no way preserved from difficulties and rejection. All were in fact killed. Christ calls us to live by word and example as witnesses, right up the what that word signifies - the ultimate test. Long centuries of Christianity have caused us to forget this little by little, but Religious Life is a substitute for martyrdom precisely because of its radical stance.
To receive the gift, nothing is better than to give oneself in return. It is not enough to be an onlooker, even an admiring one. It is not enough to applaud the brilliant trapeze artist who we think is going to fall, but who manages to hang on to the support rail. We must enter into his movements, practice his teachings and verify their results. It is by following in a concrete way the One who has prepared the way, that we understand existentially who He is. "He who welcomes you, welcomes Me, and he who listens to you listens to Me and receives the One who sent Me." Thus we are truly members of His living body, in truth "dynamised" by Him.
On Holy Thursday, Jesus introduces us to a liturgy which is no longer separated from the rest of life, in the same way as the heart is not separate from the rest of the body. Traditionalists can turn it into a fetish without understanding it, but the power behind the sharing of bread cannot be divorced from the sharing of what one has. The wine of the popular feast reminds us of Isaiah, and already announces the great celebration longed for by so many of the poor.
Only the poor, those who possess nothing, are capable of giving all. Like a poor man, the living God offers the best, the most intimate, the most personal thing He has. He keeps nothing back nor does He protect himself from anything or hoard for the rainy day. He gives His Son, His Word. He gives the Scriptures, the prophets, the apostles, all His best friends. In no way does He protect His Church, except from selfishness. He does not hide Himself from it. He sends out his disciples as lambs in the midst of wolves. He wastes his most precious belongings. For Him, it is only at that price that the world can be lived in.
Can we be considered by the living God as the best that He can give? Can we comprehend such generosity to the point of taking part in it joyfully? Is it possible for us to fear nothing, confident of that all powerful magnanimity, that endless forgiveness, that divine love.
32. Praying for vocations: Labourers for the harvest |
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We often hear complaints about the lack of vocations in the Church, and it is easy to imagine that in ten years at the most, the reduced number of priests will mean that we shall have to make radical changes in the way we function. As this question is not -at least for the present-open to reflection, I thought that I might here have another look at the Gospel to see if we could approach the question from a different angle, and have another look at how we have been viewing it.
At a first glance, it would seem that Jesus chose His images rather badly. Perhaps He did so on purpose. "The labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send labourers into His harvest." This Gospel functions backwards, beginning as it does with the harvest. Why not with the spadework, the ploughing, the harvesting? Then there is the criticism about the small number of workers, while normally complaints are made about a poor harvest or a bad year.!
At the time of the combine-harvester, here is a farmer who does not want to work on his own. He could do so of course, but He wants to associate us with Him. Strange mind-set! He appears to be loathe to send out harvesters if he is not requested to do so. Still, it is His harvest, and so it is in his own interest. I deduce from this that our God holds back from helping us... He does so only if we ask Him. His attitude is not that of a too generous godfather, nor does He indulge in paternalism. He asks us to ask Him. He invites us to pray.
Then, He sends us as "sheep in the midst of wolves", in other words, without protection. His is a well-meditated choice. Have we really understood Him, we who are always seeking protection for ourselves? We find here the intuition of the Order of Preachers, when at Montpellier, Diegue of Osma and Dominic, advised the papal legates to leave aside their retinue, in order to go two by two as mendicants, to preach the Gospel. It is impossible to be an apostle while surrounded by soldiers.
It is hard for us to understand that the manner of preaching the Gospel, is itself a part of the message to be transmitted. The form cannot be at odds with the content. Jesus speaks very little about what is to be proclaimed. He composes no catechism, while constantly insisting on methods. The Message? He gives His Church time to elaborate this progressively at the end of long and difficult debates. It will take several centuries and numerous Councils in the wake of all kinds of heresies, in order to tease out elements of the faith as fundamental as the divino-humanity of Christ, the Person of the Holy Spirit, the importance or the relativity of the holiness of ministers for the efficaciousness of the sacraments etc.
"Eating and drinking whatever is offered to you" In the Jewish context of Kosher regulations, the position is radical, with all the risks of contamination, in the first instance ritual, but also a question of hygiene.
"Carrying neither money nor purse nor sandals..." meaning no material props. In the poorer churches of Africa and Latin America, so beholden to financial assistance, this advice is rarely respected, and indeed impossible to carry out literally. However I consider it as very important, for the call of faith ought to be accompanied by an experience of sharing in mutual dependence which is the very heart of the Gospel. Besides, that is what is proposed: "The Kingdom of God is very near" The disciple who is not welcomed, is invited to go further on, shaking the dust from his feet as he does so.: those who turn aside from the neighbour, by-pass both the Kingdom which had been offered to them, and this life which they had been given to share with others from the first moment of meeting.
"The harvest is great!" Good News! But it is frustrating! It means harvesting, not sowing! It is humiliating perhaps, but we have to accept it. There is always someone who has been sowing before us, our job is to harvest. Before we can give, we must be able to receive. For the apostle who regards himself as indispensable, or for the teacher who pontificates, the word of Christ is a call to humility, to a profound change of mentality, to a radical conversion.
Are we sure that we have really understood? Perhaps we function in the completely opposite direction! Too anxious to plough the furrow, too impatient to give, rather than to receive, and all this without showing respect for local cultures.
It was a beautiful Spring morning. The mistral blew freshly, and the slightly cruel morning light threw into relief the Alpilles of Provence. Seventy persons whose average age was about thirty, had come from all over France. All were members of a consultancy firm.. They were staying in a hotel in Saint Remi. The guest speaker was an outsider. He spoke about his own particular organisation, a service enterprise, which had an outlet in Montpellier.
The listeners were very attentive. The idea was - in the guise of a game - to try and guess the name of this mysterious enterprise. There was a token prize for the winner, so everybody was stimulated to shine and be first. Now the audience could not believe their ears. What they were hearing was too good to be true. Here's an idea of some of it.
In the labour market at the beginning of the third millenium - which we have to admit has not yet shed its feudal status, even if it is not exactly patriarcal - the speaker claimed that his enterprise was run as a true democracy, yes, a democracy with elections and even checks and balances, and this at every level: local, regional and international
When it was discovered that it was a multinational, with an agency in Montpellier, and on seeing the expression on the speaker's face, someone cried out: "It's I.B.M.!" Silence followed. But all the participants remarked that to qualify as a democracy, it was necessary to investigate further. Then the speaker explained how his business project was structured, mentioning laws with regard to work....someone interrupted: "What is the percentage of women in the workforce?" He paused for a few moments and then replied: "About three women to every man, which means that in the whole of France, we have between three and four thousand employees." He continued his discourse on the manner in which human resources are deployed.
"The workers identify with the group to such an extent, that 90% of the former remain attached to the enterprise, which manifests agreement, not only with the business itself, but with its methods of functioning. Investment in formation is therefore all-important, and for the period of activity one could count ten years. Recruitment is on all levels, from those with no diplomas at all, up to third level or doctorate... everyone is encouraged to develop his or her talents as far as possible. The person who interviews candidates at present has graduated in business administration." The speaker then revealed that he himself was a specialist in rural development. A voice echoed: "So am I!" The atmosphere of the room became electric. Endless questions were asked, but no one could guess.
The speaker launched an appeal: "Without wishing to lure you away from your present activities, let me say that it is people like you that we are looking for: dynamic, in touch with past and present realities, good communicators and not afraid of confrontation." The manager began to regret his choice of speaker. Someone asked: "Do you pay well?" He answered: "Well I cannot guarantee a fortune, but you will not be disappointed." After half an hour, the speaker began to bend a little. "I think that you will be able to guess, he said, I must speak to you now about our relationship with clients. It is quite unique. We are in an extremely competitive situation, in the sense that we cannot survive unless we have a particular empathy with our clientele, by offering an abvantage that can be found nowhere else.
Note that we take risks to the point of deliberately placing ourselves in a precarious situation, so as to be stimulated and constrained by difficulties. Now we have proof of the paradox that it is not those who benefit from our services who contribute most to the finances, but those who no longer have need of us. Having discovered the vital help afforded to them in the beginning, they provide us with the means to live and to work. Thus we can set our sights on the future, and we are so confident of the quality of what we produce, that to enjoy full liberty, not only is the work done not taxed, but better still, we give the clientele ownership of the capital, that is to say, the buildings and the infrastructure."
At that, someone bounced up from his chair: "It's a Religious Congregation!" Another added: "It's the Dominican Order!" And for the next two and a half hours, we launched into debates on fundamental questions such as: "How would you define faith?" "What makes you live?" "What is your opinion of the afterlife?" "What were your motives in coming here?"
My motives were to obtain a free consultation on how better to organise our communities, but naturally our listeners were not preoccupied with our domestic living! They had, in fact, found someone to whom they could speak, and they were not going to let the chance slip. My disappointment was only very slight.
The Gospel can never be accused of false publicity. No sound of trumpets in the market place! "They will lay hands on you and persecute you" (Luke 2I.I2) It is clear. "That will be the occasion for you to bear witness." But why exactly in persecution? Therein lies the question!
"Make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves".
What we most often have in our heads are the answers, and often answers to questions that no one has ever asked. Here Jesus asks us not to worry about them. Contrary to what we often think, witnessing is not an intellectual exercise, nor a bombarding with precepts and canons, even the Canon Law variety! For twenty centuries, history has proved this, from the time of Blandine the catechist, to Jeanne d'Arc and Bernadette of Lourdes: those unable to read or write have shown themselves strong in logical argument, whether their questioners be hostile pagans or qualified theologians.
"I will give you language and wisdom which none of you..." (Matt. I0. I9-20) What have we to witness to? Certainly not to ideas or complicated systems. No, what we are asked to bear witness to, is faith, and above all to trust: a peaceful and sure relationship with God, which is unruffled and determined. And this relationship lives and breathes and is proved minute by minute, so strong and so intense, that the persecuted one finds himself identified with Christ. "Why are you persecuting me?" He is at that moment, the living body of Christ at its most sensitive and most vulnerable point.
But that is not everything. The martyr must be prepared for real hardship, even to living a paradox.: "You will be betrayed by your parents, your brothers, your family and your friends; some of you will even be put to death." (Mark I3. I2) Your friends will turn into your worst enemies, the most cruel and the most intransigent: as was the case with Jesus, rejected by the Chosen People and in His favourite city. "You will be hated by all for My Name's sake," (Mark I3.I3.) Detested, those who witness to Love! Killed, those who witness to Life! Excluded, those who announce pardon and forgiveness!
It is because they are testifying to a love so strong and so open, that those who wish to content themselves with clan solidarity and the culture of the tribe, are unable to endure it. Every self-seeking and exclusive love, every affective bond that is ungenerous and too limited, dissolves and burns up before the love of the living God.
Let us be at peace, without bothering about what is going to happen, or what we have to say. And because it is not often that we are asked to confront trials such as these, at least let us be afraid of nothing. How is it that there are so many Christians, so many priests and Religious suffering from anguish and depression? If they are worrying about the shortage of labourers, let them begin with themselves, trusting simply in God. In order that we may have a future, at least let us give ourselves a present!
35. Covenant and conception |
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It took centuries and centuries for the believing people to welcome in a collective experience, human as well as spiritual, an image of God which would no longer be that of childish caricatures such as the "Gott mit uns", that warrior god whose chief attribute was power, or the god who threatened and made one feel guilty. It took centuries and centuries for community experience through wars and reconciliation, for the Covenant between the Jewish people and the living God to assume an attitude of deep and strong love, where each of the parties was won over to a fidelity as strong as death. It took centuries and centuries of meditative rumination, in the noise of battle or in the silence of the desert, during the night of the exile, or at the dawn of the great homecoming. It took centuries and centuries of slow conception, in the bosom of the believing people, before - at the heart of humanity - the living God could open a breach for His presence in truth.
"Conception", I like the word, just as we might talk of drawing up plans for an aircraft, or a project, or even a theological treatise with its chapters, ideas and concepts... just as we also say that the Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit...
Covenant and conception, I use these words even though I am celibate, but no..., not "but": "because"! Because I am celibate. I make a vow of chastity "because" I place my affections, my passions, my power of loving into this gigantic frame which embraces history and humanity. A love the dimensions of which are space and time, the dimensions of creation itself; a love whose measure is to love without measure!
If marriage is a sacrament, the sacrament of the covenant - the Covenant between Christ and His Church - the covenant of God and humanity - if marriage is both mystery and sacrament and signifies the love which inspires the Incarnation, in the context of a limited family with the daily rhythm of work and the education of children... Religious profession is not a sacrament. It does not signify anything else, for it is already directly and mysteriously that other reality. Mysteriously, because it is poorer, a human reality frustrated, incomplete, premature: suddenly in blossom by the anticipated irruption of the already realised Resurrection, but in the "not yet" of its manifestation. The preacher's engagement corresponds to the charism of prophecy, to the gift of living directly the pathos of God in His desire to communicate. "Having the world for cell, and the ocean for cloister", our wingspan extends to all of humanity loved by God. We do not live outside time, far from it! We are contemporaries of each moment of history, since, "dead to ourselves, we live by Jesus Christ, risen from the dead for us," in that victorious love which sustains time.
If then it required centuries and centuries before, from among the chosen people, a young girl from Nazareth would conceive the inconceivable and give flesh to the Word of God... it also requires of the one who sets out on this road, perhaps not centuries, but a long period of time, to allow the word to mature in his whole being, body and mind, in the depths of his emotions, in his gestures and even in his accent... in those areas too of which he is not always master, a word which will be truly his but at the same time is not wholly his, and whose force will carry him beyond himself and even at times beyond his understanding. A word of life, which will at times surprise him in its power to heal and to bring comfort; a word of forgiveness which affords radical healing, a word of tenderness carrying with it joy, plenitude, a happiness not of this world. A word which one-dimensional man of our times has not the faintest idea, for it is unknown to the supermarkets.The young apostle must stir up the desire, cultivate a thirst, and like those before him, be patient in his turn for years on end.
The difficulty is that man the sinner, has to speak this word against what is frequently a very old-fashioned background. The task is to announce the Good News "with words that are alive and into hearts that are alive"...the Good News unceasingly renewed... Tradition it is true, can weigh heavily, but it carries with it a dynamism, a value system, a memory and above all a passion.
A few decades ago, many Religious, with very noble ideas of austerity, chose to insert themselves into current reference systems, by adopting the then prevailing culture. Their motive: so that what was essential might not clash with the form in which it was being expressed, thus forming a barrier. As the Jews would say: they were "assimilated" ...and they disappeared in the crowd, incognito, unperceived. For some, it was at times leaven in the dough, for others, salt without savour.
Others on the contrary, disturbed by the aggiornamento and changes in the wake of Vatican II, clung tenaciously to traditions, cloistering themselves behind walls, and regarding this as their sanctuary...not even a living museum...they solidified in a dead shell without the vital inspiration which gave life to the whole undertaking. Is it necessary to wipe out memory and force oneself to make the same mistakes of yesterday? Must we repeat identically as do marionettes or parrots? How can we receive the living sap of tradition and allow it to bear new fruit? This subject would merit a long discussion.
"Confieso que he vivido", wrote Neruda. "I can say that I lived a lot!" The Church is already two millenia old! The Order of Preachers can also boast that it has lived! references are not lacking from St. Dominic to Pierre Claverie, the bishop of Oran assassinated in Algeria, without omitting St. Thomas Aquinas, Las Casas, and some other less famous persons such as Torquemada and his companions whom we must not forget. When the mayor of Montpellier teased me on the subject of the Inquisition, I told him that a repentant sinner was worth more than a young unconscious villain! What we announce is the very experience of the message.
Besides, Jesus had no option but to assume His genealogy. Rahab was a prostitute, she who welcomed the Jews in the town of Jericho. Thamar was threatened with death for having conceived a child in her widowhood, but it was Juda the father-in-law who had to lay claim to paternity. Ruth, the wife of Booz, the sleeping one, dear to Victor Hugo, was a foreigner, one of those idolators whom it was absolutely forbidden to frequent, a sworn enemy! Finally, there was Bethsabee, the mother of Solomon. She is not mentioned by name, but by him who was her husband, Uriah, the faithful foreigner whom David had executed. Adultery plus a husband's murder! The standards of the Gospel are certainly different from ours, and nothing is hidden. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness.
The apostles who wrote the Gospel are not "unconscious villains". "That which is not assumed, wrote St. Ireneus, is not saved", but Christ assumed everything of our humanity. "How can this be done? - nothing is impossible with God!" Jesus takes on a troubled genealogy. The message cuts across all of our humanity, all our inheritance, and expresses God's fidelity and His patience. We echo this by with our commitment. Having assumed our humanity, Jesus asks us for a reciprocal sharing of His own vocation.
"As the Father loved me, I also have loved you"
"As the Father has sent me, I also send you."
There is here such a parallelism, that it is almost like a repetition and a logical conclusion: as the Father has loved and sent me, I also have loved and sent you!. Or, as the Father has loved me and has sent me, I also have loved you and therefore sent you! The greatest gift that God can give us, the gift above all gifts, is God Himself, the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the Breath, the Communication, the gift of gifts, that is the Gift of self-giving: the dynamism of God who makes Himself known. What Christ reserves then for His friends, is to share in His own particular mission, His own passion, the same mission which He received from His Father. Thus we are completely associated with Him, and that permits us to know Him intimately.
For that, there is no better initiation than to be plunged directly into a human community, one which celebrates the marvels of God and shares intensively God's word. The members put it into practice by sharing what they have, and by the democratic manner in which they arrive at decisions, aiming at consensus, with respect for those who happen to be minors, so that discussion may be the means of mutual enrichment and not of quarrelling or division. Certainly there are the black spots! I ought to know: there are abusive superiors - or worse still, irresponsible or non-existent ones!! But there is a limit to their mandate, and we are part of those silly ones who elected them! Our vow of obedience corresponds to our willingness to live a common life, to share what we have, to reflect together in fraternal exchanges and in agreed decisions. The Word which we proclaim matures in this cell of fraternal living, sometimes a bit too hot and explosive, at other times tepid or even icy! But it is a shared word, verified in common.
36. Freedom and commitment |
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After several years of noviciate, there comes the day of profession: a conclusion and a beginning. An engagement "until death". The formula is awesome. Is it a death sentence? No indeed, but the fruit and consecration of liberty. It is certainly the point of no return, but in the vital forward thrust of the road already covered, a free and joyous flight! Something that is beautiful and that is great, triumphant! There is something here that is very impressionable - who can deny it? - but paradoxically, it causes no surprise: a simplicity taken for granted, not as routine, but as a beautiful continuity. Something light and yet strong, graced and graceful, the grace being simultaneously aesthetic and spiritual, liberation and reconciliation, strength and beauty.
The man or woman who makes this commitment, responds above all to a call. This call is heard in the reply which is given to it! The particular moment is lived in utter peace and with the calm of veteran troupes and the poise of those who have outgrown their first emotions or early inclinations. They face the future with the assurance of trained sportsmen or musicians who are not daunted by what lies ahead. Something surprising then occurs: at the most tense moments, one has the impression of something completely natural, of utter simplicity, a subtle mixing of the sublime and the matured human being. This extraordinary "natural" allows one to perceive at once the discipline involved and the result of that adventure in a liberty that is contagious. This natural behaviour in the case of the human person, comes as the fruit of long discipline and perseverance, of efforts at personal and community culture, and as the discreet fragrance of a very pure perfume.
Solemn profession is before everything else, an act of thanksgiving, the festive celebration of a charism that has been welcomed and acknowledged, that has matured and become stable. Of course it is man who gives himself, but that would not have been possible had not the Holy Spirit first of all bestowed on him the gift of self -offering. It is as we know, the person who makes the promise, but it is first of all the community which engages itself before the Church, to say that this person can undertake this lifestyle with the grace of God. It is the community which gives the green light for the candidate to launch out body and soul on the adventurous road of the apostles of the Risen Jesus. It is therefore the community which, with the candidate who is about to make profession, gives solemn thanks for the gift which has been given to it.
With fear and trembling... for if it is true that this celebration places a definitive seal on the orientation of this man's life, we are all aware that nothing is ever fully acquired, and that everything in both our personal and community history can suddenly be called into question. Each one of us is aware, and sad experience is there to prove it, that drama is always round the corner, with the rupture of serious engagements, even those which had been well prepared. We have been warned. We are not ignorant of the difficulties, and in spite of the fear and trembling, we persist in taking the risk of accepting an engagement, and thus to ally ourselves with the person who undertakes it. It is the inherent risk in every human life, in every human word, in every human history. It is the risk taken by our God when His Son took flesh, when He called His disciples, when He confided Himself to us in His vulnerability, to awaken in us the reciprocity of friendship.
The one who makes profession not only gives "of" his time, but gives all of his time. He donates his entire life, and by this engagement alone, he becomes a witness. A thorny question for his contemporaries!, a scandal even, let's admit it: to live every moment a mad logic of which the world has no idea; to breathe in every second, a Breath which humanity does not know, or - tragically, rejects; to live as closely as possible to the Beatitudes which he does not even attempt to explain. It would be pointless anyway! Let him who can, understand!
It is the living God who engages himself first of all. He makes a promise to us which transfigures our lives, and which is so elevated above the ordinary, that here and now, there is no other means of welcoming His gift to the full except through symbols and through the Liturgy.
The word promised in the vow, witnesses to the Word which communicated Itself, which offered Itself, and was sealed in the gift of Christ to His Father and to humanity. The word is given in response to the Word of God. The human word is carried by the Word of God, taking its place in the joyful song of redeemed humanity, happy in its turn to pronounce the words of love, in the assurance that fidelity is possible, and that love has already triumphed over every form of betrayal, in the Passion of Christ Risen from the dead.
In the Order of Preachers, only one vow is pronounced, that of obedience. It includes the others, for it means that the preacher wishes to conform his life to the priorities of the community. There is nothing servile or infantile about this. We do not regard authority as something sacred. It is quite simply a question of being coherent: of respecting those elected, and of following the orientations voted upon. It means too, living in conformity with the rules one has chosen, and in an institution which, by chance, is evangelised in its very roots.
The vow of obedience renders us free in our responsibility, as members of a community which consecrates itself wholly to the Risen Christ in order to welcome the Spirit, and share whatever has been received. This vow of obedience sums up the frustrations which we freely impose on ourselves, and which usually go under the names of poverty, chastity, obedience. The limit is that spot which thwarts our initiatives, our desires, and where in the beginning, we suffer as in a strait jacket. But it can also be the starting point from which we feel ourselves possessed by the life of Another, and from where- in communion with Him- we can leave ourselves open to an encounter where frontiers have been abolished. Our engagement is not "so far, no further", but a wonderful opening up. Our vow of obedience does not close us in on ourselves, but launches us out with others on a mission. For the Beatitudes are for everybody! Our present engagement is our personal response to an engagement offered to everyone; a commitment which we promise to share, that of entering into the joy of the living God. It is the prayer of Christ, His entire plan, His unique desire, that burning desire which we make our own.
That they may be one, as we are one: I in them, and Thou in Me. That their unity may be perfect; thus will the world know that it is You who sent Me, and that you have loved them as You have loved Me. (John I7.2I.)
Paul arrived too late. Besides, he was only playing as a sub. If we consider that the public life of Jesus constituted a sort of noviciate for the apostles, for Paul, the mould had already been broken. He is the only one to be named apostle who had not known the historical Jesus. As to his Curriculum Vitae it gave very little reason to recommend him! A fanatic, one of those traditional types with identical reflexes; to be avoided at all cost; dangerous! Not only preoccupied with incense, lace albs and Latin, but a veritable extremist who had already carried his beliefs into acts. Let's not beat about the bush! An assassin!
"Paul approved of the murder"
It is always the same paradox, the same Paschal experience: the future of the Church passes at times, by its worst enemies. We know what happened to Paul, and how "the one born before his time" as he liked to term himself, the "parvulus", the little one, is the apostle who did most. He was the most determined once he understood (as he himself was understood). He stood his ground against the Judeo-Christians in the opening up to pagans.
"It is among smugglers of goods, that one finds the best customs officials", but it is perhaps among the customs officials that one finds the best smugglers! For the walls separating peoples have fallen down. The best ferrymen are those who command the frontiers: with those who are hemmed in, once they have understood, that one creates free and open men, open as are the arms of Jesus on the Cross.
If an exemplary Pharisee like Paul felt the need to be converted, it shows that no one can escape from a path leading to conversion. I can believe in God. Paul believed in Him. I can be active. So was Paul active: zealous, convinced, and committed, he went too far! But he changed gods, or rather the representation of God. He went from an exclusive alliance, to an open covenant. He changed his theology. What theology? The Risen One identifies with the suffering people. Paul becomes a witness. Thus he passes from the God of the Law to the God of grace, from the exacting God to the God who gives, beyond every kind of infidelity. On horseback for his principles, he is struck down by the sudden realisation of God's humility. He joins Him in the dust, overthrown by this disarming and unarmed God whom he was persecuting.
As for Saint Peter, let's say a word about him. His testimonial is not exactly first class either! He was not always celibate, a detail which ought to be more instructive than amusing. Neither was he too mischievous. Still, he managed to deny Christ. Three times he lost his head and allied himself with the group which excluded Jesus, and once again when under pressure from the Judeo-Christian group, he showed how conformist he could be, fearful of what one might think of him, afraid of the remarks of a servant girl as well as of rumours in the community. Yet it was he whom Jesus chose. We might question His discernment over this first choice, but we know that Jesus persists in His choice, maintains His decision and confirms Peter in his responsibilities. He does this in spite of his denials, perhaps because of them. The witness has not to witness to himself, but to the pardon he has received and which is offered to everyone.
Both of them have become pillars of the Church, reassuring finally, a renegade and a persecutor! Everything is really possible: they were able to witness by experience, to the fidelity and mercy and never -ending tenderness of the living God. Normally, when we celebrate the important saints, we highlight their qualities and great deeds. I have chosen to speak about their faults; it is shorter and makes us feel closer to them. It is through their faults and failings, that Peter and Paul best show us how we too can become apostles in our own way, by giving ourselves to Christ so as to proclaim His saving love. We are neither angels nor are we perfect. Or to express it in pedantic fashion: Let us be on our guard against clerical monophycitism!
Certainly both Peter and Paul have each their strong points. But they are to be directed in the opposite way of their speciality. Armed with a sword, Peter, the resistant, wished to liberate the lands of the occupying stranger. He ended by baptising a Roman centurion! Paul was the best specialist one could find about Jewish questions. He was ready to sacrifice everything and even to incur damnation, to save his religious brothers, but it was to the pagans that he was sent!
Peter and Paul are two giants, but in their weakness is our strength. It is because they failed, realised their mistake and made amends, that it has become possible for us also to take heart. "Once you have recovered, you in your turn, must strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22.32.) Peter and Paul, weak and human, are - thanks to their particular failings - universal and close to each one of us. God can forgive you also. He can put you back on the straight path, just as He did with Peter, giving him the strength to be a witness...even upside down! Just as He also did with Paul, snatching him off his horse of pride and sectarian smugness. The evidence of what had happened made him blind; the more he claimed to defend God, the more he caused Him to suffer.
As a Dominican, I am going to propose to you another saint, whose greatest contribution to my mind, is to have reconciled elements too often opposed to Christianity. Let's see how he went about it.
"It is in studying their genesis, that one gains the best understanding of things." It is therefore important to know that the young Thomas had to face the fury of his family at the very moment that he was making his fundamental choice. But when to the great disappointment of his parents, who went so far as to sequester him in the house by force, in their efforts to change his mind, Thomas categorically rejected the monastic life, it is clear that in no way did he despise its discipline nor its rigors. No Angelism on that score! He was well aware of the importance of asceticism in order to cultivate a solid liberty in face of the desires of the body and of the imagination. Neither did he despise the regular organisation of the abbeys. Laboratories of fundamental research, they lead to permanent prayer, in the meditation of Scripture, celebration of the Liturgy and contemplation.
This genius who was to become the greatest intellectual of his time, certainly did not find fault with the richness - almost a scandal at the time - of these monastic libraries so carefully kept, which were to ensure the continuity of Western civilisation. Thomas revelled in all that, and was to find it with the Preachers who inherited the same values. But why did he refuse to give pleasure to his parents by choosing an Order that was new, fragile and less reassuring? Through an adolescent's simple opposition to family authority? Perhaps there was an element of that in it - even though Freud was not yet born - but there was then a new attitude to authority, in the community as well as in society, and it had to do with power as well as with the mind.
It meant passing from the patriarchal model to the model of fraternal community, which presupposes equality and unanimity. But first we have to understand the "why?" A Religious Order is defined by its mission, by its final objective, so the question here is to pass from priority of prayer to a priority of the gospel's transmission. Consequently, it means a shift from "stability" to itinerant preaching, and from economic security, to the dependence of a mendicant; from manual work geared to auto subsistence, to intellectual work freely given in the service of others. "To vow mendicancy, wrote Pere Chenu, meant in the thirteenth century, to refuse categorically, institutionally, economically, the Church's feudal system with its benefices, collection of the dime... and all this in order to extract from these heavy feudal regimes the liberty of the Word of God... poverty is then, by its very nature, the efficacious symbol of the primal act of evangelical reawakening..." It is in truth a new Order, and not only in the sense of another congregation, but it is another Order, because it belongs to another order!
And it is controversial, we must admit; controversial, because first of all, it was a question of self-defence. Without the protection of the Royal Archers, lectures would not have resumed at the Saint-Jacques convent in I255, and without St. Thomas's defence in I256 and in I270, the threatened Order of St. Dominic might have disappeared.
The diocesan clergy had such a poor understanding of what these new Religious stood for, that by every means in their power, they endeavoured to clip their wings, forbidding them for example - an amusing detail - to have clocks! Clocks in the literal sense would never be wanting, nor unfortunately in the figurative sense also. Public opinion likewise, did not understand these "false monks" and Matthew of Paris explained that "the world was their cell and the ocean their cloister". So then, let us recognise that St. Thomas was indeed controversial!
For Jesus did not found monasteries, but He created apostles. Thomas in Q. I06, is not afraid to point out that love has different degrees, and that those who choose to be undisturbed behind monastic walls, do not necessarily love God more than those who accept to travel far away, in order to serve Him in their contemporaries.
In my youthful enthusiasm, I innocently chose this text for the invitation card to my Solemn Profession. A Carmelite prioress wrote to me: "our life too is difficult!" Certainly! But we are not rivals for the most difficult contest! If you think you would be happier in another mode of life, then change!
Change then of a new Order, choice of the apostolic life in itinerancy and in poverty. The Word became Flesh! And we know how! At the same time, a positive choice for the intelligence.
As Truth is holy, the intelligence is a place of holiness! It is as simple as that, and it is so very important! "In St. Thomas, the doctor is a holy man, given that this holy man is holy because he is doctor, and that this doctor is doctor because he is holy" Wonderful unity! Wonderful coherence which is always evident in him, in what he thinks, in what he teaches and in what he lives.
What is separated elsewhere, indeed in opposition, is reconciled in Thomas Aquinas, unified in synergy. If he distinguishes, it is to unify, if he argues, it is the better to reconcile. It is no longer a question of the body on one side and the soul on the other, but of an animated body, no longer action and contemplation, but what he calls a mixed life, in which experience and knowledge are no longer two but one. "Through the love of friendship, the Friend is in his friend, in that he espouses the happy events and the misfortunes of his friend. It is also natural for friends to wish for the same things, to suffer and to enjoy the same things... in such wise, that the Friend appears to be in his Friend and to, identify with him. Conversely, the Friend is in the Loved one, in that the latter wishes and acts according to the desires of his Friend, whom he regards as another self."
A man cannot love Christ in the same way as a woman does. But he can love Wisdom, desire to espouse her and wonder at her logic as well as at her fantasies. It is for these anthropological and not just historical reasons, that the Order of Preachers is three dimensional, with its sisters. friars and lay members.
To love the friend, there is nothing like being associated with what he does, with what he feels and with what he lives. "As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." To resemble Him as much as possible, to be His spokespersons, His lieutenants, and to be one in the same passion, in one perfect humanity, in one Breath with Him "He who welcomes you, welcomes Me; he who listens to you, listens to Me, thus to the One who sent Me."
It is love that permits one to know and of this is born understanding. It no longer grace, which supplants nature or interferes with it, but it is grace which assumes nature and perfects it. The more christian I am, the more am I called to become just, generous, artistic, intelligent. The more christian I am, the freer I am, for it is no longer a question of the Law on one side and my liberty on the other, nor of opposition between what is permitted and what is forbidden, but my personal conscience as my direct guide and before which I am responsible, just as I am responsible for informing and refining it. It is a theology of the intelligence, to claim that the more I believe, the more I dare to ask questions; the more I believe, the greater is my desire to understand and to know, to experiment and to verify. Thus St. Thomas questions everything and we would do well to imitate him for if our churches are empty and our sermons boring, it is perhaps because we do not dare to ask the vital questions being posed by our contemporaries.
Poor Thomas! Like all the great masters, he has suffered the betrayal of narrow minded folowers. The breath of his thinking attracts certain weak minds, who attempt to capture his thoughts and put them in cold storage. But these thoughts escape their prison, and it is these very disciples who are renewed, becoming a little more intelligent in the process! In comparaison with other well known thinkers, like Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, I prefer Thomas Aquinas. His disciples do less damage!
For St. Thomas obliges one to ask questions. He does so as would a child "Does God exist? It would seem that He does not! etc." It is a theology bristling with intelligence and a philosophy of happiness! God is love and He made us to be happy. And if there are commandments, summed up in the greatest of them i.e. the commandment to love, it is because when you leave preoccupation with yourself by loving your brothers and sisters, you will be the happiest of men!
Life, "real life" is the life of God, and this life is fundamentally relation. And in the life of the Trinity, it is relation which constitutes the person. As for us, we exist before we enter into a relationship, before we love. St. Thomas says that in God what is foremost is relation We are called to enter into that exchange which is life, by giving and receiving, by dying and rising, by plunging into the baptismal waters, so as to emerge fully alive!
St. Thomas is buried in Toulouse in the church of the Jacobins. I go there sometimes to pray to him and to confide to him the Order of Preachers, our mission. St. Thomas was not a monk, but better still, he realised his ambition of being "monos", unified. He reconciled in himself and around him what should never have been separated, because with an alert heart and intelligence he knew how to love. St. Thomas is a model of synthesis and of unification, and for me, everything can be summed up in his motto: "Quantum potes, tantum aude!" Dare as much as you can!
Every year we celebrate the Feast of all the Saints. Is it really fair to forget about the others on that day? If I were a saint, I'd be sad to think that behind the door, lurked those who didn't qualify: the cheats and the sad-faced ones, who could only come in twenty four hours after, for All Souls' Day! But in the end, what is the difference between the saints and the others? Is a selection justified?
What is a saint? Answer: someone who you are sure is in heaven.
And as we are talking about heaven, I can't resist telling you the story of Hatuey, a native Chief of Santo Domingo. Having revolted against the Spaniards, he was pursued by them and was eventually seized in Cuba where he had gone for refuge. There they decided to behead him. However, "good" Christians as they were, they naturally worried about the fate of his soul, so they proposed that he be baptised before they killed him. "Why do I have to be baptised?" asked the native Chief. "In order to go to heaven, otherwise you will go to hell" replied his capturers. "Where do the Spaniards go, to hell or to heaven?" "The Spaniards go to heaven!" "In that case" replied Hatuey, "if the Spaniards go to heaven... I prefer to go to hell!"
Yes, it is the sad story of Christianity that has been imposed, by planking on it rituals and ready-made formulae, resulting in an abominable counter-witnessing.
Entrance to heaven was thus guaranteed if one had a permit: Baptism, a visa without which the would-be entrant was banished without mercy. Today our thinking has shifted: one doesn't even have to be a Catholic... protestants such as Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King or even a non-baptised like Ghandi, take their place in our Pantheon...
What are the new conditions? A good curriculum vitae essentially, and an important status in society. Thus is made the selection, from the intellectual to the professional world, and even beyond death. Now to me this is what hell really is: this selecting, which poisons life, and turns it into a hell, as though exclusion were part of one's destiny, or human sacrifices determined by fate.
The saint is the one who knows that God does not wish to be happy without sharing that happiness; the one who knows that "nobody" can be happy all alone! The saint is that person who has perceived with the utmost clarity, that the longing in the Heart of God will not be appeased, until He has welcomed into it all His children. Even if the saints are numerous, indeed very numerous, they cannot be contented with their own "promotion": they want the others included, i.e. all the others without excluding anyone. We know that among the saints, there are of course the prostitutes and the tax collectors: those who got first into the Kingdom. But all the others should be there too, the mediocre ones, those who hadn't the courage to take risks, the self-centred ones, lacking in generosity: able thinkers, "do-gooders", narrow -minded snobs, stiff-necked Churchmen, lukewarm Religious of every hue and colour. The saints had lived with them and loved them too. Christ saved them and died through and for them. They are there also, and like little children we can count them: one, two, many! 144,000! When we love, we do not count anymore. The story goes, that an African woman on being asked how many children she had, replied somewhat indignantly: "Really and truly, you Europeans count everything!"
The real question then, is not one of number, but of boundary: the night separating the Feast of All Saints from that of "All Souls". I would prefer to say "the longest day", so as not to reproduce in the liturgy the reactions of a world that is both competitive and exclusive. Where in fact is to be found the line of demarcation between being a saint and not being a saint? Between little saint and little sinner? I can of course see the difference between a great saint and a great sinner... but between a little saint and a little sinner; a little sinner redeemed and a little saint sanctified; a little redeemed saint and a little sanctified sinner?
Can one become a saint by one's own efforts? We know that the answer is "no!" We can become a sinner all by ourselves, and we have all done so, but as for becoming a saint by our own resources, we know that is impossible. It is God's love which sanctifies, transforms, and causes us to be what we are. Our merits, if merits there are, are never anything but responses to a greater love, to a love that is primordial. Our merits are simply our participation, nothing more. Anything else is voluntarism and will have no enduring permanence. Whether we happen to be a little or a great saint, we are first and foremost, the one who has been made holy, the child who has been found.
The big catch then, is to refrain from making comparisons, to free ourselves from this obsession with classifications, which is poisoning our competitive society and which inevitably leads to exclusion. Our peace does not come from knowing that others are worse than we are, but from
the knowledge that we are loved in spite of ourselves... it is up to Him who was victim and who knows how to love us, to do the judging. "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts." (1Jn. 3.20). Our God is obsessed not with judging, but with reconciling! "There is more joy in heaven for the sinner who repents, than for the ninety nine just who need not penance." (luke 15.7.) The joy in the hearts of the ninety nine just, is the joy of being associated with that of the one who was lost and is found!
I am an egoist, I don't deny it, but I claim to be an intelligent egoist. I want to be happy, but I know that I can't be happy all on my own, for the knowledge that entire peoples are wasting away in misery, excluded from the "international economic and financial markets", mars any happiness I might feel. Now I have an intuition I am not alone in feeling this malaise: it is also that of the God of Jesus Christ. Let's look back at what we have said.
"A saint is someone who we are sure is in heaven." But who is the only one the Gospel assures us is in heaven? Answer: the "Good Thief!". Jesus promises it to him as He hangs on the Cross: "This day you will be with Me in paradise." He has broken open the door. True to his thieving instincts, he has stolen heaven. So when you go up there, beware of pickpockets!
The problem is however, that heaven doesn't have any doors! Since the Risen Christ went through them, entrance is free! "Let him who desires come and drink the water of life, freely!" ( Rev. 22.17) Some advice for amateurs: God's heart is wide open to all, absolutely and without conditions. All are welcome, whether they merit it or not, and without making distinctions between little saints and great saints. In God's eyes, each one of us is mediocre with all kinds of flaws, poor specimens of humanity with sullied baptismal robes. The living God makes His rain fall on the so-called virtuous ones as well as on the truly wicked. The Church is a collection of children who had been lost, founded on the renegade Peter, and on Paul the persecutor. In it, there are not any saints, but only those who have been "sanctified", made holy by the unilateral, unconditional and impassioned love of the One who gave everything in order to find us, of Him who through love denied Himself so as not to remain alone in heaven.
Does your curriculum vitae give you cause for fear? But look! I've just heard that your candidature is just the one required in the business! You are the first to be selected. There is no charge for the celebration and work begins immediately.
Part V: GOD? NEVER WITHOUT YOU |
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One of the loveliest titles given to Jesus is that of Prince of Peace. And here we have the Prince of Peace disguising himself today as a war chief. Prince of Peace? No! rather prince of the sword or of the dagger. He does not bring unity but division. "Division", a negative term, "diabolic" is the term he uses to speak of himself. "Do you think I have come to bring peace to the world? No, I say to you, not peace but division!" He does not bring peace to families in conflict, but on the contrary, adds fuel to the fire! He is not a fireman but an arsonist: he brings fire!
And all this is supposed to be Good News! Not that I am an anarchist, or that I make my own the famous cry: "Families, I hate you!" It is good news quite simply, because without being accomplished psychologists, we know that our human groupings, especially our families, are quite often in reality, wasps nests, closed-in dens, black holes where reign death, suffocation and even madness. Ash pans, rather than families! A mortal curfew decreed by nobody, reigns there, and no one knows when a leaden cope-stone from goodness knows where, will arrive as a sort of fatality...oh the peace of cemeteries!
Good News! Jesus did not come to establish this false peace. He is not afraid of provoking a crisis. He pierces the gold-beater's skin. He pierces the abscess. It is better to be alive, even when that life is lived in a conflict situation! When tensions are revealed, the need for discussion becomes evident and calls for explanations.
The word of Jesus is sharpened like a two-edged sword. It penetrates the joints and the inmost recesses of the heart. It distinguishes between false and authentic peace, between true and false unions.
Among these false unions, are all those unhealthy associations, groups turned in on themselves, who sooner or later experience a salutary break-up. Relationships of dependence which one day or other will be reversed... fawning affections, which reduce the other to the status of object. How could the Gospel of life respect these sad associations, exclusive clubs, collective ego trips?
And then there are those "sacred unions". These too are unhealthy because they are violent and entirely pervaded with the logic of exclusion. They are nourished by hatred: rejection of the other, of the one who is different, of anyone who is not "family", of the tribe, or the clan; hatred of the Jew, of the Palestinian...
For if we examine it well, the problem is not confined solely to families, but extends to the majority of human groupings: their union is cemented by opposition. This is manifest in rivalry between businesses, between sport teams, between convents, provinces, congregations, between different confessions, different religions, and the union among nations is forged in opposition to a common enemy. There is thus in humanity a kind of permanent lynching.
This is why the word of life acts like a fire. The fire which purifies, and calls us to live and to love in truth. To improve our loving! To live in true solidarity which is open to others, to all peoples. The Gospel calls us to be reborn into a family which knows no frontiers.
The family, like all that is natural, has to die. It must die in order to rise as a universal family, that of the sons and daughters of God. "Who is my mother, who are my sisters and my brothers?" asks Jesus. Those who put God's Word into practice. Mary keeps nothing for herself, not even her maternity. Everything is shared.
On the Cross, Jesus points out the disciple he loved, that is to say the model disciple, the archetype, the disciple who has no name, for his name is yours: "Woman, behold thy son, son, behold thy mother!"
41. Doubts and Boldness: Love's fears |
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The ways in which people view human love vary considerably: the psychologist may see in it a therapeutic regression; the biologist hormone influences; the sociologist a disturbing but necessary element; the lawyer an occasion of amorous business. As for the poet, it is a major source of his inspiration. And then there is the theologian, the canon lawyer, the parents and of course the couple themselves! Finally, let us not forget the celibate servant, the priest who has no direct experience of the reality, and yet who - paradoxically - is invited to address the bride and groom as they pronounce their marriage vows. That is the category to which I belong, and it is with a full realisation of my limitations in this area, that I gave myself permission to include this chapter. It goes without saying that I would be critical of adolescent love's young dream, the Sleeping Beauty and her Prince Charming who marry and have lots of children! On the other hand, I examine the event from a theological viewpoint, and this may perhaps weigh rather heavily on this human reality.
One of the first questions to ask is whether they can and if they wish to engage themselves or not. When a man and a woman begin to realise that they love each other, the moment arrives when this love, acknowledged and accepted, can no longer be lived passively from day to day, but has to be proclaimed, made public and shared. Many are content to submit to this, but for love to reach its full maturity, it is essential that it be willed. Its whole nature changes, when it no longer rests at the level of the emotions, but when it is also an affair of the will. Contrary to what is imagined, marriage is not a private affair between two people, but has a social dimension which must be acknowledged.. Marriage is that fundamental act which makes of two different people, a new, coherent and fruitful unity. It affects us all, for when our friends wed, it is not mere social regulation of sexuality, but it is also a feast, expressing not just the couple's newly-found joy, but also a global symbol of what humanity in general is called to.
Two questions immediately follow: number one, why engage oneself publicly and celebrate a feast on a particular day? And number two: why marry in Church?
It is true that the adventure is so ambitious that it seems to belong to the realm of dreams rather than to that of real life. We all know how difficult life can be: jealousies of all kinds, work fatigue, the daily grind, the multiple complications arising from the world as it is, the "what will they say?" the violence, the hoarding with a view to security, the inward-looking attitudes, or on the other hand, hyper activity with its inevitable consequences...
It is because they have weighed up all this, and have found the risks too great, that many refuse to undertake such an engagement. Why pronounce words that run the risk of not being respected? Since in their eyes, words which pledge their love for each other are in the long run, mere "words, words, words," beautiful incantations or poetic outpourings, why not, they say, live from day to day, and enjoy life as it comes?
All the more so, since the words "marriage" and "love" have only in fairly recent times been linked together. Up to the last century, lands or families or properties were the consideration.; common interests were "married" and the love element only entered in later on...or was enjoyed elsewhere! Today on the contrary, the couple, and particularly the couple in love, have occupied the entire horizon with their fantasies and their romantic pursuits. The word "love" is all around us, but for the most part, it is degraded and dishonoured. An "affair" lasts for the summer months, a season perhaps, when the beach is inviting and one is in need of a companion. One lends oneself for a short while without ever really giving, and the inevitable if sad separation follows: "I did love you and it was good, but I don't love you any more; that's life! You can't make me love, it is stronger than I am." In fact, the present form "I love you" - because of its intensity - is deliberately avoided. And in the case of those who do choose to commit themselves, you will hear things like: "It's a pity!" or "they have courage!" "For life? but they cannot see the end of the road!" Questions will be asked: "Is it really responsible behaviour? Are they not asking too much? It is so chancy! Aren't they risking disappointment?" In the general grey situation, it is not often one hears a clear word about love which goes beyond recipes, morality or psychology. Even in the churches, clear words about the meaning of the sacrament are alas rare.
We are weak and inconsistent creatures, and only too conscious of the limitations of our will. Failure is not foreign to us, so who is going to lead us to believe that we can risk a word or affirm a project? Who will give us the strength, the stimulus and the endurance to see it through to the end and to lend it substance? Who will convince us that the one who makes a promise is trustworthy and faithful, so that fear of infidelity is completely dispelled? ...in a word, who will be responsible? For love lives by faith, and most often in what has not been felt or experienced, in what cannot be proved and where there have been no prior experiments. The one who is constantly looking for proofs and guarantees, is on the right road to wearing out the beloved, smothering love and causing it to wither.
Declarations of love even when rapturous, are usually rare and fleeting; one must deliberately believe in it.
Only those who take risks can know what failure is, just as only those who really hope and invest in a great adventure, can taste bitterness and disillusionment. In truth, only those who live are capable of dying and only those who love are capable of suffering and of tears. In welcoming Christ in their midst, as did the two disillusioned companions on the road to Emmaus, or the bride and bridegroom at Cana when the wine ran out, those who marry will not be able to avoid cares and crises and disillusionment, but they can assume them and go through them, transforming them into their opposites: fulfilment and joy. The sacrament of matrimony is not a kind of mascot, to bring good luck to the couple in life's lottery - no! it means welcoming into the couple's life, the presence of Him who forgave His torturers and triumphed over death.
It has to be admitted that without faith, marriage in church is completely devoid of meaning, This is true even when the ceremony is a routine affair, but it is likewise true if the celebration is taken more seriously. There are countless unbelievers who wish to solemnise their wedding in church, so as to add a "sacred touch" to their union. It is not necessary to be a Christian in order to realise that love is terrible and fascinating like death, that sexuality is an enigma and human love a mystery. A man and a woman do not have to be Christians in order to discover that what is happening between them, surpasses them both, sweeps them off their feet and propels them much further on. There is a spiritual and mysterious dimension to love which certain couples feel very strongly, without knowing how or why it is present, nor whither it is going or what it signifies. So they come to the priest In other places, they approach the witch, the Ayatollah or the Guru. In the former communist countries, they went to the Lenin mausoleum or to that of the martyrs of the Revolution. As we are not animals, we seek a transcendence, references and witnesses. A respectable proceeding no doubt, but for all that, not a Christian one.
Now the sacraments are signs of the faith. Without faith, not only are they empty, but untruthful, for they make a statement which is not shared. Just as Baptism is an empty gesture without a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, likewise matrimony without the Breath of the living God. The baptism of an unbeliever does not give him faith, just as vows pronounced before the Registrar of marriages does ot produce tenderness and love. The Rite of marriage in Church does not give access to the living conscience of convinced Christians. It is just mimicry - I would go so far as to say deception - unless it is perceived from inside the faith. As long as the interested parties remain outside, the gestures attached to the administration of the sacrament, are seen as a kind of folklore, old-fashioned certainly, but always rather charming!
But - believers or not- there are very many who wish to know the deep meaning of their love. How can we convey to them the sense of what we live inside the faith? Without claiming to have the monopoly where love is concerned, Christians still have a Word which reveals its secret. Again, without claiming to have a privileged monopoly of joy and hope, Christians have received a promise which strengthens joy and transforms "I hope it will" into "I know it will!" Without claiming to own God, Christians are called to share with others the knowledge they have of Him.
For Christians - even when there are only two of them - never feel completely alone. The love which flows through them is a passion which sets fire to the entire world. The ardour which consumes them is that fire blazing across history and setting the earth on fire like a burning bush. The love which draws them together is not an anonymous and passing sentiment, but a presence which is younger than the future and older than time itself. The love enfolding them is not a dark force, but a gentle invitation from Someone. They have seen his face and they know his Name.
As a young man - having celebrated the wedding of good friends - I have felt the need, with heart racing wildly, to disappear on my own into those remote Mediterranean regions and to walk for long hours, so that my spirit could digest what I had experienced. The others made way to the festivities and to dance the hours away, but I felt the need to be alone, in order to commune with the great vision of Hosea. All of creation, the heavens, the earth, the sun and the rivers, the entire history of the universe, the long march of humanity, all were there in concert to celebrate and to sing the canticle of perfect harmony, the song of perfect reciprocity. It seemed to me that the summit of life had been attained, that one was entering into a domain of infinite harmony, into an era of justice, tenderness and peace; that the ultimate had been reached and finally accomplished.
In the light of faith, the parallel established between the union of a man and a woman, and the marriage of the earth with the living God, is called by Christians a "sacrament". The love uniting Christ to His Church is the same as that which develops between the bride and the groom. That is why "this is a great mystery", this sacrament is great. Nothing is more precious, nothing more holy, and nothing ought ever to separate what God has joined together!
42. Is christian love different? |
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Is it possible to distinguish between two types of human love, one Christian and the other not? There is of course only one love, which each one - believer or not - discovers with wonder, touching the sacred in a certain sense. It is a mysterious relationship which appears to exist on its own, summoning as it were from above the man and the woman whom it unites; an intriguing adventure which promises life yet is dangerous as death, for it demands everything; a promise kept but so strong that it seems to have no end in view, as though by its intensity it bore the seeds of eternity. There is only one love, experienced by Christians as by all others. Christians must know that their experience is no more wonderful than is that of others, even though they know its secrets: they can tell from where it comes and whither it goes.
"My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God... God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him. This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another... God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him."
Human love finds its truth in a larger circle which enfolds it, moves it forward and at the same time provides for it a structure. In the history of humanity, a unique adventure traverses the centuries: the Bible is nothing else but a tremendous love story between a people and their God. Like a huge fresco, it illustrates a gesture of love unparalleled in the world. Through a series of errors, searches and encounters; of exile and wanderings through the desert, the desire for union through listening to the word, results - through crises and healings, separations and reconciliations - in victory over everything, even over death, the ultimate barrier. The stakes of this luminous drama retain all their intensity - though on a smaller scale - in the drama of the human couple.
The wedding at Cana marks a major turning point in this covenant, for it is in fact, jars put aside for ritual purification which - filled to the brim - become through Jesus' intervention, the bottomless reserves of a delicious wine, at once surprising and providential. Six jars, an incomplete number, for to make up the number seven, one is missing. This is not just an interesting anecdote, but a well-constructed theological text. If "the hour has not yet come", it is because the New Covenant which is to follow on the bethrothal, is tragically to be sealed in the blood of Jesus.
Love is not an easy matter. When after years of instruction, the Word of God comes to live the human adventure, place himself close to his people, putting himself completely at their disposal, he is misunderstood. Not only is he not welcomed, but he is judged to be subversive, sacrilegious and a blasphemer. He is tortured and finally executed.
Why? Because we do not know how to love. We prefer to dominate and to own things. We are incapable of giving, much less of giving everything, of entrusting ourselves to another. Is it possible to love without trust? In a situation of mistrust, at best is established co-existence, which can only exist in opposition to an external third party considered to be dangerous. If there is a bond of some kind, it is of a negative sort, for it is but a union established "against".
Jesus of Nazareth was put to death. Why? Because he contested everything which forms the basis of our societies, that which permits us to avoid others, not to take the risk of meeting the other, and of being open to him. He contested the Law, those traditions and powers which, in order to maintain order and justice, authorised one to exclude and to condemn. To all these general principles, Jesus juxtaposes love of the neighbour. He proposes absolute honesty in face of the other, without shield or protection, with a seventy seven times forgiveness, even if the result is to be persecution. "You have heard it said: `You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' Well, that was the immature philosophy of the Old Covenant! I say to you: "Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors". Such is the madness and the folly of the living God; they will say of his disciples: "They are full of red wine!" At the wedding we are invited to drink of that vintage!
When speaking of Jesus Christ, I am not talking as might an archaeologist, but about the present: the innocent one is condemned, the prophet is assassinated, the hopes of the poor are betrayed, and jeered at, truth is muffled, love is set aside: the trial of Jesus Christ is repeated every day.
That was two thousand years ago of course, but it was a once for all time, for it was once and for all time that the living God wedded himself to humanity, that he gave to it his Word, that he sacrificed his very self to the limits of his being, joining his cause to that of the excluded ones, and ridiculing for ever the riches and the tranquillity of the powerful.
It is perfectly in order to ask questions about Christ's divinity! He who was assassinated, eliminated, because all through his life he preached against false gods: the Cesar turned into a deity by totalitarian power; society's empty taboos, the demagogic idol of the miracle candidate... The One who fought until his death to free us from straying along false paths, must not be clothed in the tinsel of those pseudo gods which he has overthrown.! We must choose between Him and them!
If Jesus is really dead, then they are the stronger. That is why the Good News which the Church announces to the world, is not the divinity of Christ, but the Risen Christ! "There is no greater love than to give one's life for one's friends": love such as that is always discreet. It can neither be bought nor impose itself, but it triumphs over death, and completely escapes the laws of power and of market forces!
43. Sentiment or the commandment of love |
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The marriage took place in the middle of the summer. Jesus was there with his friends. What could be more natural than a wedding, a love proclaimed in public! And Jesus was there, which was also very natural. That a cloud can begin to gather over the initial rejoicing is alas, even more natural. When the first bloom of romance starts to fade, then there are the regrets... we all know that! The spontaneous attraction no longer suffices and sometimes disappears completely. Must we then say that the couple have fallen out of love? Or ought they to love differently? What is love?
In such darkness and at the heart of this night of the senses, the Gospel light may well shine! Love cannot be reduced to a feeling; rather is it an engagement, a gift of the self. "He who loves, knows God." Love lives by trust and is nourished by faith. At first it is one-sided, and the mutual sharing oneself comes as a deferred surprise, as a resurrection. We must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves; die to self so as to be reborn into a transforming relationship, the same yet different!
Broad and treacherous is the highway, on which travel those who love for a day, and change partners as often as superficial sentiments no longer sustain the relationship; narrow is the road of faithful and absolute love, the love lived by Jesus. "There is no greater love than to give one's life for those whom we love." Love then cannot be reduced to mere sentiment: "I did love you, and that was good. I don't love you any more. That's the way it is!" "I love cherries and I spit out the stones!" Love is not just a feeling, as we said. It is not just that delicious thrill, irrepressible and at the same time terribly fleeting: love in the Gospel is a commandment. "Love one another as I have loved you!" Love's appeal is not simply to the affections, but also to the intelligence and to the will. The sacrament of marriage, in strict theological terms, is the reciprocal agreement of the spouses, the mutual assent of two wills, the exchange of promises.
The love of a man and a woman becomes a sacrament when it is lived inside the faith. It is not simply a liturgical affair. For over a thousand years, Christians married in the context of a family feast just like all the others, with exchange of vows, without its being a specifically religious ceremony. It was only towards the sixteenth century that it was decided to register marriages, and this contributed progressively to the popularising of the celebration.
The love between two Christians is not a different kind of love. It is the same very natural love, though potentially rich with the supernatural. They were two, they are now one, in the image and creative resemblance of the living God who is communion, unity in diversity, One and Three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the same very natural love, but Christ's Revelation opens it up, tears it apart, crucifies it on infinite horizons, so that it may live on his limitless pardon and on his boundless solidarity with the deprived.
Christ's Revelation alters one's outlook, turns around what was hitherto obvious, reveals an unsuspected happiness, one that is pure, gentle, peaceful, full of compassion for human misery, and driven by the urge to see a world united in love. Christ's Revelation causes us to desire solidarity with the whole of history, with all the living, both past and present. "I love you, you will not die!"
Love makes one blind, they say? Passion perhaps, but authentic love causes one in particular, to see what has not yet come about, except in promise. At present we see in a confused manner, but then, all will be clear! We shall see clearly, face to face... and all that is imperfect will disappear!
When an engaged couple comes to the Church to seal their love, by grafting their mutual commitment on to the Covenant of the living God, they can receive a sap so rich, coming from such depths and mounting so high, that it nourishes fruits in abundance and at every season. God has but one Word, His Only Son, and he gives him to us totally and without reserve. We despised him, disfigured him, muzzled him, buried him, without ever managing to silence or to discourage him. The Church is nothing else but that section of humanity, which replies "yes" to the mad gesture of God.
She assembles together all those who risk believing, who give themselves unequivocally, relying - as a small child entrusts itself to its fathers' outstretched arms, on Gods' fidelity in Jesus Christ. When a couple takes the risk of engaging themselves in this spirit, sharing with the other Christians around them, and confiding themselves to their prayer, they then become a sign of the Covenant. Because their love has reached this point, Christians can in their turn risk recognising it as the mystery which unites them and constitutes them as Church. Having attained, in their gift of one to the other, a dynamic stability, and as it were a point of no return, breaking up becomes impossible. It would be human and spiritual suicide. It would appear to those around them as a terribly destructive scandal, demonstrating "a contrario" that the quality of such love reaches the irreversible, i.e. that of sacrament, the tangible sign of the radical love of the living God.
To say of a human love that it has become a sacrament, may however lack some nuances. The affirmation "all or nothing" furnishes sociological and legal viewpoints, but it omits the time dimension: both as to duration and the steps necessary for maturation. Just as Jesus became what he was, just as each one of us becomes progressively more truly christian, in the same way, love is called upon to become each day more sacramental.
Jesus compares the Kingdom of heaven to a tiny seed, which slowly develops until it becomes a great tree. Love, at first hesitant, is thus called upon to develop and strengthen itself, in order to receive not only the birds, but also children, friends, and the poor, whom it welcomes in simplicity. The tiny seed is promise of the great tree, and the love of two young persons, fragile though it may be, already carries within itself the ambition of God's wonderful plan.
It is comforting then to tap into Biblical memory. The dramatic moments are always times of the most difficult crises. The Egyptian genocide, the thirst in the desert, the exile and death of the prophets, all culminate and are recapitulated in the Pasch of Jesus. The least one can say is that the couple in love who are part of the people and their God, is a couple whose relationship leaves much to be desired. We constantly hear of marriages that are strained and in situations of conflict. Even in the Canticle of Canticles, the manner in which the Bridegroom searches for the Beloved is not a smooth one. Communication is difficult and constantly pointless. The Word has difficulty in making itself heard in the mêlée of constant misinterpretations about what constitutes real power and true happiness. From the beginning of the Covenant, everything appeared to be destroyed. The unfaithful people merited death, but they were to cross the desert. In the end, love, manifested in the face of a person, spoke his Name and signed it with his naked body in the form of a cross. It is there in fact that everything is to begin, for Jesus has risen, love has rebounded in pardon, and an eternal alliance has been sealed. Christians, the reminder of the cross forces us to become cruelly lucid, but love has triumphed and our hope is well founded. With this certainty, the commitment to total love becomes the only reasonable madness.
We proceed from the Deluge to the reappearance of land, from darkness to light and from division to reconciliation. Love, at first one-sided and denied, ends in reciprocal sharing. This however does not happen until after the crisis which gave rise to the conscience examination, and after the word had reinvented a future,
To love each other in the form of a sacrament, is freely to choose that manner of loving. To inscribe one's covenant in God's Covenant; to plunge into it, steep the relationship in it - as one would temper steel, baptise the union in the passionate love story of God's marriage with humanity!
This tremendous adventure traverses the centuries, and history finds in it its most intimate raison d'être, its deepest meaning. For us, the same issues are there in symbol and in a reduced form in the lives of the couple.
44. "May they be one as we are one" |
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Otherness and unity? The couple and the Trinity |
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Love is diffusive of itself and communicates its energy. It endows the timid with a surprising boldness. It opens eyes to see into secret places, and to perceive what is possible and within reach. Above all, it allows one to see what lies hidden under deceptive appearances: beauty disfigured by tears; the event which is about to happen, stored in the hidden recesses of memory through sorrow or repressed by tyranny. Love transfigures those who are under its thrall as well as the world in which they live. It lays bare the future and provides the strength to risk its challenges.
We ought not to wonder then, if a man and a woman appropriate to themselves ( but are they alone if love includes everybody?) those most intimate words of Jesus which sum up his strongest wish: "Father, that they may be one as we are one, I in them, and thou in me." These lovers feel themselves inhabited by the same Breath which unites the Father and the Son, which reassembles and personifies the breath of life. Ambition and self-importance? Not at all! The intuition is sound and well justified, for since its very origins, the human couple is created in the image and likeness of God. For if "Adam", that is the unspecified "human", is the icon of God in the first account of creation, he is not man and woman taken separately, but precisely as a couple. The second account in Genesis puts it very clearly:
"Man and woman he created them, in his own image and likeness he created them." Man and woman, even in their difference, and in the relationship they have with each other, are in the image of God.
Image and resemblance, why? Not only because their fecundity prolongs creation: children, loved as different, and work which in this chaotic world, makes for a place where one can breathe and feel welcome. Not only because they were once two and are now one, without ever ceasing to be different; unity in diversity in the likeness of the Trinity, three Persons, but one God. But more especially by the desire which unites them.
Certainly, desire usually means that something is lacking, and in philosophical systems, we have difficulty in imagining that God could experience a lack of anything. But God is love, and as the human couple is the icon of God, the "sacrament" of God, as the Orthodox like to put it, it is precisely in the happily married couple, that we can contemplate the truth of God's desire. But where do we find the happy couple?
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, day starts with nightfall. The Sabbath does not begin with the first rays of the sun, but when the first two stars appear. This symbolises a whole concept of life: the going away from slavery to liberty, from death to resurrection, from repudiation to a new seduction; from the "old man" to the spirit of childhood, and from conflict to reconciliation. Belief that Christ has risen, helps us to understand that everything is possible. There is no longer anything to be feared from opening our eyes clearly, for love can triumph over everything. As for the concerns about human love, it is simply a question of moving from war between the sexes, to contemplating the Canticle of Canticles.
Let's talk first of all about the wanderings and the denial of a human desire, which does not manage to find fulfilment. There is a certain desire-passion which has destructive aspects. As is the case with a sudden burn, it cannot support the passage of time. It finds its appeasement in the momentary ecstasy of sensuality, but soon yields place to something which is rarely peace and more often deception. Obsessional desire, lacking as it does an object, is followed by a state of emptiness which the use of drugs exacerbates unto absurdity. There is then born the urgent need for something which cannot be identified. Desire wishes to go beyond pleasure, beyond need, in both of which it is trapped.
Fire of straw or burning bush? To extinguish the flames of desire, it is not sufficient to deceive one's hunger: satisfaction turns to deception, pleasure to bitterness. It is not sufficient either to nip it in the bud. To stifle desire in order to retain mastery of oneself, is to choose death in preference to frustration...It is a question of accepting desire as an essential movement of life, allowing it to express itself in surprise: "Here is bone of my bones!" and naming the other: "She will be called `Isha' for it is from `Ish' that she has come forth"
The very first human word in the Bible designates the "other", the same yet different, the absolute so near and yet inapprehensible. The very first word expresses wonder. A message prior to the Fall: true satisfaction is not derived from possessing the other but from a personal communion.
To love is to accept being consumed, the saying "yes" to a desire which can never be completely satisfied, a desire which accepts to endure and which recognises itself to be open to infinity: a need which never ceases to be need, and which ultimately becomes prayer. Desire becomes love when it engenders thanksgiving, and so a word. The word is the beginning of communication; it begins a story, several stories, a covenant, a common adventure. The reduction of the "other" to the self does not give birth to joy. Joy comes from facing together in common and in dialogue, the world, space and time, the unknown, without ever again having to be alone. The "we" rises up before "another", different from the other: new as a baby, distant as a stranger, mysterious as the living God.
"They were two, now they are only one". The wit will retort: "The problem now is to know which one!" But in the case in question, unity is not uniformity with clone-like identity. The Persons of the Trinity are not interchangeable. Representing them in the form of a triangle is not an acceptable symbol no more than is that of three juxtaposed identical persons, which we find sometimes in Latin America and which was forbidden by the council of Lima.
Union differentiates. Each one loves the other for himself or herself, so that they may realise their full potential and so that each may become more and more what in the depth of their being they really are.
"God is love", but what kind of love is he? As long as God is perceived as an oriental monarch, it will be impossible to understand fully the mystery of the couple. And as long as the couple themselves are unable to display the truth of the mystery, its subtle balance and all its fruitfulness, the mystery of God will remain hidden. From polygamy to a total and unique commitment,, from inconstancy to fidelity, little by little truth found its way into the chapters of history, by the reciprocal enlightenment of God and of the human couple, in the all-revealing experience of love.
For love gives vision, so that a lover could exclaim: "What exists between you and me will have to be experienced by the whole world!" That young man in his ecstasy, perceived already, what is to happen the new reconciled humanity, when God who is Love will be all in all. "I love you, and the old world is about to be consumed!" Love, lived to the end, turns upside down what seemed evident and opens up a wonderful hope. Love confirms the peaceful prophecy of Isaiah and rejoins the vision of St. John: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth. There will be no more death or mourning or sadness or pain, for the old world has passed away. Then I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven from God: beautiful as a bride dressed for her husband."
45. Checkmate and resurrection |
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We all experience failure and that is what renders us human. It also divinises us, making us receptive to grace. But it is a painful experience, and more painful still when it is the others who are suffering, those whom we love, those who had been confided to us, those who are more vulnerable than we are. It is then we learn the meaning of compassion, a feeling not much thought about today, but very evident in the behaviour of Christ's friends at the foot of the Cross. It is not easy to see someone we love suffer and to feel utterly powerless to do anything about it.
Nurses and doctors in hospitals are learning little by little, the relatively new art of palliative care. This presupposes an acceptance of one's powerlessness in such cases to cure the invalid, or to prevent an eventual death, and being content instead to accompany the sick person. Some technical devices exist for comforting (an exaggerated word!) the patient and achieving communication. But in the end, there is acceptance of one's poverty and limitations in this area, and a bowing to the inevitable.
In the case of personal failure, there are several phases. There is the anguish before the actual event, the fight when every fibre of one's being is being mobilised, the calm which eventually ensues with its retinue of sufferings, regrets, and wounds that can never be healed. Yet, a new balm can enter through those raw wounds, like the oil of the Good Samaritan. This does nothing to redeem a redeemless situation, for such tenderness belongs to a different order. Everything is changed however, through the fact of sharing the suffering and through seeing one's gaze reflected in the eyes of another.
This transformation is in no way alas, automatic alas, but it does happen as though by a miracle! It is always unexpected, but miracles do not function as exceptions. Or to put it more precisely, it is exceptions which confirm the rule. They are signs of a reality which concerns everybody, a reality normally hidden and which is a stepping stone to faith.
Failures put brakes on the thrust towards life. Failure in love shatters those deep springs, essential as are the wings of a bird, in order to fly. But since God experienced failure and placed the symbol of shame on his shoulders, since he took upon himself all the refusals and all the betrayals: happy are those who weep, they will be comforted! The underworld is inhabited, filled with a Presence, for Jesus has descended there. And he came up again, taking Adam and Eve by the hand. With a few strokes of the brush, the icon describes the new solidarity that has been established between all those who were imprisoned there, and who by hints and surmises, understood one another.
The heart of stone has become a heart of flesh. It has received such a battering, that it has become liquid and tender in the extreme. "My heart is like wax, melting inside me" sings the psalmist.
A new communion can be established. If we have not given everything, at least we have lost everything! A mysterious exchange has become possible. Humanity flourishes like a tree in blossom. Many of the blossoms are dead, frozen over or blown away by the wind, or again destroyed by predators. But the fruits are there. Flower and fruits are the pride and joy of the whole tree. There is but one humanity as there is but one life, one sap, one Spirit.
Those wounded by failure communicate their tenderness to those for whom it is lacking. And the "so-called" winners, by their results, give meaning which "justifies", or at least shows up the absurdity of passing failures against a much larger background: life has passed by. Children have been born, and in the end, truth has made itself heard, and justice timidly, has triumphed.
"There is no happy love" according to the poet. Love crucifies. It is on the rack as long as history lasts, "in agony until the end of the world", for its dimensions are global and extend over all time, without any exclusivity or preference. But I'm wrong there! There are preferences, but they are turned towards those who suffer most! Because it is poor, love is completely open. Because it is so often frustrated, it is unbelievably creative and subtle, youthful and ready to be moved by the smallest thing. We are never alone in failure. Others have known sufferings greater than ours. Another has scraped the foundations. He is the foundation. He upholds everything. For the moment we don't know what the outcome will be, but another knows it on our behalf. He sees our suffering, and looks at us with compassion.
46. Patience and Forgiveness |
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When a person comes looking for a priest, it is usually to confide to him a distress or an unhappy situation. The penitent is first of all somebody who has had a rift with others and consequently with the living God, and who has come from a distance after much suffering.
Sin of course comprises a variety of actions, but first and foremost, sin is a state. What the sinner is acknowledging then, is not a series of deeds or actions, recounted in detail, but primarily, the fact that someone appears to be calling and inviting; someone who is not asking for excuses or justifications; someone who does not ask for pardon, but who desires to be welcomed for who he is, in short, someone who is asking to be taken seriously.
He does not ask for pardon, for that cannot be purchased. On this level, pardon is something wholly unsuspected, wholly gratuitous, unimaginable, unheard of. The Prodigal Son thinks he will be treated as a slave; he does not return expecting to be forgiven! Such treatment would not even have entered his head! He returns to confess his fault: Here I am, a good-for-nothing, lost, broken, ruined! But he had hardly begun to speak when he discovered that he had already become someone else and that he is speaking in the past tense. The source of the word once freed, causes tears to flow as it were spontaneously. Light inundates and cleanses his eyes and a taste of salt appears on his tongue. Everything takes on meaning and life, while his ears are conscious of a new word, a creative word never heard before, a word that creates, that re-assembles and causes the ruins to sing as they are caressed by the rising sun, the word of Jesus Christ, the word of the living God...a word spoken by the mouth of a brother who as a fellow traveller on the road, and conscious of his own unworthiness, is witness to the wonders of God's pardon.
In the well-known story of the Pharisee and the Publican, the troubling thing is that it functions backwards! The good man has got everything wrong, and the lost one is saved! And the worst part of it is that they are ignorant of it all. Why? Perhaps because they did not have the chance of going to confession. Each of them is alone with the idea he has of himself. They look at themselves in the mirror of the Law. The Pharisee's image is to his advantage, but that of the publican is a real catastrophe! Their fatal error: the most important Person is absent. Now Jesus tells us that God sees things differently. Who then can warn them, who can speak to them with authority?
For we rarely know where our real sins are hidden. I feel guilty because I did not do what I knew I should have done. But perhaps that was exactly the thing which I ought to have done in spite of everything, because it was a bearer of life, even if taboos, the twisted morality I received and the wounds which were my lot, prevented my assuming it! How many adolescents remain adolescents and at the very moment when they should be free in their budding adulthood, see guilt all round them instead! What is taken for granted in certain societies, can be lived out in tears and dramatic situations in a family that is over traditional or hemmed - in. One day at Cuzco, I said to a twenty -five year old woman, who blamed herself for making her mother sad because she no longer wished to live in the same house as her parents: "Not only is it not a sin, but not to live elsewhere would be a sin against your own life!" There are certain precise cases where not to take certain risks, would be to behave like a good-for-nothing. One can have clean hands, and yet "have no hands" "I didn't do anything sir!" You didn't do anything! precisely!
Jesus ate with all kinds of people, as would a drunk or a glutton, says the Scripture. He disobeys the all-holy precept of the Sabbath; allows himself to be touched by a prostitute, ridicules the Temple, insults the philosophers and the wise men, but he cures people, forgives the condemned woman, preaches truth. He bears witness to a different kind of God. "I refuse to accept pardon for what I did according to my best endeavours" wrote Andre Malraux one day. Perhaps what we perceive as a transgression and which gives us cause for fear today, will on another day appear in a different light, transfigured! There are bad consciences which are sick and erroneous, just as there are so called "good consciences" which have gone terribly astray. David experienced no remorse for what he had done with Bethsabee, until the prophet told him the bland story of the sheep that had been stolen. David is furious and the prophet administers to him these simple words: "That man is you!"
That is why it is good to be able to confess our sins, to find someone to whom we can talk. I'm only a poor wretch I know, but here I am, quite simply, before the grace of God. I try to throw some light on things, to clear my conscience, having nothing but this little compass to guide me. It will take a long time, a whole life and more, to refine it and put it in order. For the moment, here I am, just as I am, before my God, in front of the priest, who can guide me at least for a few more steps of the road., so I come along to confession and to bare the secret places - good or bad- of my being, just as they are.
One day, I heard a poor fellow's confession. He doubted and trembled all over after he had confessed what he had done - I've long forgotten what that was - and he put to me this question of fire, a direct question which I shall never forget: "Do you think that God could forgive as far as that?"
I knew immediately that there would be no point in my saying anything to him. As for trying to answer his question in my own words, they would have been foreign to him, superficial, mere external sounds, so instinctively, I began to prepare the ground with another question: "Why not?" The placing in doubt of the very doubt itself! A deeper dig! Into the why he came along to me in the first place, and if possible into the subterranean depths of his being, so that water might gush forth, muddy at first, but then crystal clear as from an artesian well. Lots of silence. Few words. That man believed in God, a God who was judge, who took what he did seriously, an all-powerful God. So then if God is all-powerful, how could he be limited in his power to forgive?
He went away happy, and I left him...exhausted!
The priest who is witness, calls for an act of faith. Above all, it is a question of confessing one's faith in God's forgiveness, manifested in Jesus Christ. When I set out to confess my sins, it is not a question of once again having a good opinion of myself. The priest calls me to certain forgetfulness of self, to the leaving to one side excessive introspection, in order to encounter the God in whom I believe. He is there, he sees me and he knows me. And even if my conscience condemns me, God is greater than my conscience. He knows more about me than I know myself. I look at him, and I forget myself in him, renouncing an evaluation of myself or the comparing of myself to the ideal person I dream of each morning, the idol to which I am attached. I abandon everything, and close my eyes to open them in that same regard which the living God has for his poor creature. And suddenly, "it is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me!"
I come back to it again: what can I possibly know about the seriousness of my case? There is an unhealthy probing which consists of endlessly asking if I am obeying the rules or not, but without ever questioning the real harm that I may have caused to others. If I tread on your toes, is it up to me to ask if I hurt you or not? Would it help if I were to tell you my weight or how big my feet are? It is not my business to revel in a narcissistic evaluation of the gravity of my transgression. It is up to the victim, to the one offended, to say if he/she has or has not been hurt in any serious way. Instead, I admit my confusion, express my contrition, and ask for pardon for everything which I do or do not remember. What happens afterwards, i.e. the moment immediately following on the risk I took to present myself does not belong to me. Nothing is obligatory or automatic here. I leave myself totally in the hands of that mysterious Other. I entrust myself to his good will, because it was he who in the first place, gave himself up for me. I have confidence in him that he will make me whole again, in whatever way he wills and in relation to him. Before sin is this or that, it is primarily a wound, a rupture in a relationship. It turns me in on myself, and makes me wallow in my ego as though one obsessed. Pardon on the contrary, is an Easter experience! A death to oneself, so as to rise by the power of Another whose desire is that we be living and free.
Historically, the word "confession" comes from confession of the faith. Its initial meaning is not riming off a list of sins committed. It signifies confessing the faith! The priest in front of me is also there to lead me on to believe, to believe that I have been forgiven, that I have been lifted up, that I am loved and loved truly in spite of everything.
To sum it up in a word, refusal to forgive is very hell. Its opposite is just as simple: acceptance of God's pardon manifested in the Risen Jesus, living it in community and announcing it to others. A vast programme for renewed living! A mighty programme indeed in a world which no longer regards forgiveness as a positive thing.
Human cultures which see in pardonning the wrong doer as nothing else but weakness and submission - or even a dishonour - are rare indeed. Is there any single society where forgiveness is looked upon as a civic duty, where it is recognised and even institutionalised. And yet the question is asked, not just in small print for our own individual lives, but in large headlines in the press, with a view to balancing the world's finances. Forgiving others is acknowledged as a good thing and recognised as such by the institution. Nevertheless, the question is asked, not only in small print for our lives as individuals, but even in large letters in the newspapers, to ensure global balance in the world of finance.
Questions are asked about cancelling the debt of the poorest contries "deuda externa, deuda eterna" (foreign debt, eternal debt) is the remark heard from those abused. Evangelical idealism, or in n other words the prophetic vision of the biblical message, will perhaps one day prove to be the only condition of our survival.
The importance of forgiveness applies to the economic life of nations, just as it was recently applied to the various disputes over the renunciation of major forces of destruction: hell in all its fury, or forgiveness, the sharing of riches or slow asphyxiation through selfish protectionism.
Whatever about the global realisation of this hope, what has always surprised me and filled me with joy, is the existence in the world of communities which - like tiny living miracles - endeavour to live by sharing and forgiving one another, fully conscious of the reason why they have elected to live in this way. Tiny laboratories, they welcome and give credence to the Word of Life.
We have to admit however, that there is nothing so difficult as to forgive. It is easier to start from point zero, easier to begin afresh than to begin anew. The person who manages to forgive reactivates the life movement beyond the point where it was broken. He opens up the future at the very point where it was blocked. More than a "survivor", he begins to live with a "double share of vitality": wounds healed, he forges on ahead. Superman? Inaccessible Stoic or perhaps even disdainful? No! for pardon is not only self -healing but even succeeds in restoring the relationship. It is a new creation. That is why in the Old Testament, it is a prerogative of the living God. God and God alone can forgive sins. To forgive then, is to know - in the sense of living and experiencing - the very mystery of God! Vast programme for a renewed life!
Ambitious programme which presupposes an apprenticeship and self-training going beyond the superficiality of little apologies weighed and numbered "How many times?" "All the time!", and not just now and again, but day after day. "The measure of God's love is to love without measure." Even if a certain parable expresses itself in terms of bankers, debts and delays, the logic employed puts paid to the "give in order to receive" mentality. The commitment which Christ proposes is without limit. It opens up to space and to time, with all the concrete faces envisaged there.
"(for) Christ plays in ten thousand places," wrote the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins,
lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His,
through the features of men's faces."
It is of course impossible to go on forgiving ad infinitum; impossible that is, if we rely only on ourselves with our very limited resources. But we have been given a credit account into which we can call on generously. Already - isn't it true - a very considerable loan of multiple and varied gifts, complementary and adjusted to our needs, has been accorded to us. In truth, this is not a loan at all! This capital is our very own...let's be quite sure of that (education, common sense, health...) As the parable of the insolvent debtor points out: paying back has become impossible. The initial gift will not be taken back, for it has been given for good, but first of all, it has been received, even if later on like the talents, it has gained more.
Why not ask for more? More will be given, so that we in our turn can give to others, and find the energy always to forgive. The demand to do so has no limits. There is within it a dynamic, a plenitude, (seventy times, the perfect figure), which goes even beyond death itself.
For the secret lies there. It is the key which changes everything and turns everything upside down. It is a question of remembering what we have received. We call it quite simply...gratitude! A word which the world does not understand. "Eucharist" in Greek, Thank you, in English. To say "thank you", to celebrate the Eucharist, to offer up what we have received, even if it is only a remembering. To go beyond forgetfulness, or rather to go below the forgetting the thing we forgot... for we have forgotten that we have forgotten! All has been wiped out, from the beginning, and man finds himself all alone, naked and with an empty heart.
He must find his way again. Now this way begins everywhere. The source is there, nearer to us than our hearts, but we must rid it of all that encumbers it, so that it can once again flow freely. We must rediscover the origin of all good, of all life, of every form of gift, of all forgiveness. The One who has called us from "the world" so that he can return us to it refreshed, who receives our life so that he can give it back to us more abundantly.
It means remembering what we have received, but above all, from Whom we have received it over and over again and for ever. It means once more becoming sons in the Spirit of the Son who has given us everything; who has created and re-created us. Forgiveness reveals the meaning of creation. In the light of the Creator's vulnerability, the fundamental debt is recognised, assumed and transfigured.
To refuse to forgive then, would be to exclude ourselves from life and to condemn ourselves to the mortal hell of a world closed in on itself. What we ask for is the mercy of God and of others, those who have gone before us and from whom we have received so much; those who support us day after day, and who, when we have departed, will receive the good and perhaps not-so-good heritage which we leave after us.
48. Truth and Creation (Ps 84 (85), 12) |
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"It is time that I spoke the truth at last", the words of Jean-Paul Sartre at the end of his life! As I look for words to preach the Word in a language that will be understood by people today, I am very struck by such a beautiful statement. "I could only say it in a work of fiction. In this novel, the fictional element would be minimal; I would have created a character of whom the reader would have been forced to say: 'that man there is Sartre!' That is what I would like to have written: a fiction that would not have been a novel ( ), but fiction none-the-less, because we don't know each other very well, and because we cannot yet give ourselves right to the end. A man must exist entirely for his neighbour, who in turn must live entirely for him, so that true social harmony can be established."
I am fundamentally of this opinion: we patiently wait for men who will live and speak the truth. It is high time that we see planted almost everywhere, the seeds of genuine truth, truth sincerely spoken and with nothing held back.
Perhaps we have to begin saying this in fictional form, suggesting it imaginatively, and that this fiction, this teleological poem, approach progressively nearer and nearer to the truth, until it eventually becomes one with it, as do the parables.
"The sower went out to sow..." He was a rather unusual sower, throwing seeds around everywhere, on the tarmacadam, on ciment, on barbed wire, even in children's pockets. He was indeed a curious sower, very attentive to how the grain evolved. He was astonished at the wonderful results on the good land. Instead of ten for one, the crop yielded sometimes thirty, sixty or even a hundred for one little seed. Our sower then was a poet and for a long time. He was a literary figure and wrote copiously. Even when few read him and failed to understand him, he did not become discouraged. He had said centuries beforehand, and a long time ago: "the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel, I shall sow her in the country, I will love Unloved; I will say to No-People-of -Mine, "You are my people" and he will answer: "You are my God".
He had thus his dream moments, but also some very serious ones. Once he announced himself through a delegate named Zechariah; this is what he said: "Here is a man whose name is Branch ( cf Zechariah 3, 8 and 6, 12); where he is there will be a branching out; it is he who is going to rebuild the sanctuary of Yaweh, it is he who is going to wear the royal insignia". And one day, fiction joined reality. He came in disguise, always speaking in parables, but this time the one who was speaking, was he himself in person. Some began to recognise him. He had come and had told the story of the sower who causes truth to flower. He had recounted the story of the doctor who ridiculed the "wise ones"; who passed by those who were in good health to look after those who were sick and infirm. He had come and spoken with lepers and those who were unloved. His friends were sinners and the rejects of society. A woman caught in the act of giving her body, faced death by stoning with the accompanying insults, but he defended her. Having established calm, he said to her: "Go, you are my people, sin no more!" And he succeeded in reintegrating her, even though at this stage everyone knew his truth!
He came incognito, but he was known by the fact that he did good everywhere. He quickened the seeds of faith and hope in a life that seemed to be already realised when he was around. Inevitably, he also caused truths to surface which certain people would prefer to have remained hidden...
He became a liability. Everyone came to him, and began to know him and to attach themselves to him. The people were relieved; they were so liberated from their constraints that the authorities began to worry. They said to themselves that the invader would be jealous, and that he would most certainly come and avenge himself; without doubt he would avenge himself on the Temple of Jerusalem, a most precious and sensitive point.
As for him, he continued in fiction and in parables, but this caused anxiety in peoples' minds. He said for example, that if one destroyed this temple, he would rebuild it in three days. It was a crazy notion, but in certain minds began to germinate ideas which had never been there before. They began to dream nearer and nearer to reality. He thought, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, of "a world where everybody would be honest", where everyone would be frank about his own life, able to confess everything absolutely. Where "mutual self-giving would be the order of the day". Everybody understood that for this to be possible, "every privilege and every inequality would have to be renounced."
So one day, the civic authorities, who were not going to allow themselves to be regarded as simple public "services", decided to put an end to the proceedings. From his side, there was no surprise; he had long foreseen this crisis. He knew that politicians could never write into their programme that they are going to launch out on an adventure, which means that "experience" was never on their agenda. They ambushed him one evening in the public gardens armed with swords and clubs. But when he said to them: "This man whom you are seeking, Jesus of Nazareth, it is I here present!" they fell backwards dumbfounded. They had just stumbled on the key to the novel, the character and the author were one and the same. Fiction had become reality! On that night and at that hour, the Son of God gave himself wholly and entirely. In fiction, he had revealed to them his word and his ideas; here he abandons to them his body. In him, it was the opening up to a world where privileges and inequalities are no more...in short, to the world of truth!
The others wanted to be the winners, to persuade themselves that it was their story, their own particular project which would become reality. The fruit of absolute truth, which the world in its long history had finally made manifest, they placed on a tree. As botanists are accustomed to do, they put an inscription above it in several languages. In this way, and unknown to themselves, they accorded to him the royal insignia prophesied by Zechariah. To prove that they were the strongest, and after everyone had seen him, they took him down, buried him in the earth and placed a large stone overhead so that no one would speak about him any more.
But three days afterwards, the authorities were left with only their fiction: the essential reality escaped them. In fact, what they never really wished to receive, had passed them by. Their claims toppled like a pack of cards. All that remained to them was an empty tomb, a dead and perfumed letter which the author had left them. In fact, the Temple was standing; it was his body, sacrificed but risen. His disciples had seen him. As for you and for me, since it has been given us to know: happy are our eyes because they see; happy our ears because they hear what many people have only guessed at, for example Jean-Paul Sartre by his intuition.
When God is there where I am waiting for Him, it is not God but an idol: God is the One who surprises us. Abraham sets out not knowing where his journey is going to end. Moses is disorientated by a bush which burns without being consumed.
Must we believe then, that God is so completely Other, that He is always elsewhere? That would be too easy! He is also in our heart, in its most intimate recesses. Above all He is relation, a relation which changes and effects changes, suscitates and resuscitates. He is Love, that is to say, communion. Community of persons, unity which is not fusion. The gift of self, and the gift of being able to offer oneself. Perfect reciprocity.
He retains nothing for Himself, not even His divinity " he does not claim for Himself the rank which makes Him equal to God.." (Phil. 2.6.) Hence, the real God is for man, from the time of Adam until today, the very opposite to a rival: He is his friend.
The roles are reversed as in a round of dance: the first are last and the last are first! The one who loses wins, and those who see become blind. For God becomes a child, teaching us to live like men and then dies as an outcast. In the hand to hand fight of God with man, it is God who is conquered. He is weak and vulnerable: In truth, He is mad about us!
In conclusion, I have a burning question to ask: why then is it so difficult to throw oneself into the fire of the living God?
"God alone suffices, but a solitary God will not suffice"
"God alone is sufficient, but it is not enough that God be
on His own"
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