Halloween is past, and Thanksgiving is upon us. With the return of Standard Time and the increasing tilt of the northern hemisphere away from the sun, darkness falls early. In some parts of the country, trees are bare, and the days are chilly.
Here in North Central Florida, too, we see signs of approaching winter, but these tend to be subtle. If you pay attention, you will notice a thinning-out of the jungle: vines are dying, spaces opening up to reveal neighbors’ houses across the way. More sky is visible through our heavy tree cover. It is as if nature were undergoing a sort of emptying, abandoning herself to the new season.
The Kenosis of God
The last Sunday of the liturgical year (November 21 in 2004) is the Feast of Christ the King — not a king like other kings, as the gospel reading (Luke 23:35-43 this year) makes apparent. We see the rulers and soldiers sneering at Jesus on the cross, while above him a sign proclaims, “This is the King of the Jews.” We hear one of the criminals crucified alongside Jesus saying to him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Pope John Paul II, in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, writes that “the prime commitment of theology is seen to be the understanding of God’s kenosis” (93). Kenosis comes from the Greek word meaning “to make empty.” The reference, of course, is to the Incarnation of Christ, who “emptied himself.”
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)
If an understanding of the mystery of God’s kenosis is “the prime commitment of theology,” could we not also say that an expression of the prime commitment of the Christian is to enter into that kenosis of God? “Let the same mind be in you…,” as Paul says. The society in which we live, on the other hand, incites us to fill up:
- to fill up CDs, DVDs, compact flash cards (remember floppy disks, which seemed to hold so much just a years ago?)
- to fill up the house and rent a self-storage room for the surplus
- to fill myself up with fast food or with a constant barrage of information
- to fill up the earth with trash, toxic waste, and greenhouse gases
- to fill up my spirit with fear — fear that I am not acceptable, not forgivable, or in constant danger from my own inadequacies, or from people not like me.
Making space
Indeed we are filled with much that is not God. I pray to allow God to clear out my interior vines, to thin the tangles of my psychic jungle, so that I may see my neighbors and be more and more one with the love of Christ.
What does this emptying entail in practice? I suspect that the living-out will look somewhat different for each one of us. A certain discipline and a simplification may be required, but not a gritting of the teeth and taking on a super-asceticism in the mistaken belief that this will unite us with the kenosis of Jesus. Instead, our own emptying means saying yes to the Holy Spirit at work in us, creating space in us, moving us into peace.
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(When I think of a holy emptying, I am reminded of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature.)
Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.
You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.
I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.
Take, oh take—has now become my cry.
Shatter all from this beggar’s bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.
Fruit-Gathering, XXVIII (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916).