There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:28)

If this is to be true of believers, it is so only because it is already true in the resurrected Jesus Christ himself. We glimpse it in his earthly life, and it becomes literally fulfilled in the Resurrection.

What more then will there be with the Second Coming of Christ than with his Incarnation and his Resurrection?

Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him. (Revelation 1:7)

After the Resurrection of Jesus, only his disciples saw him—or at least only they knew who he was, and even they had some difficulty recognizing him. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener; and the couple on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus until he broke the bread at supper. But at the end, we read, “every eye will see him.”

Perhaps this means not only that geographical boundaries will no longer exist (for no matter where we happen to be, we shall see him); but neither will we be hindered by those interior boundaries of the human heart which may now prevent us from recognizing and receiving the divine goodness and beauty. Even those of us who have pierced his heart (for it is not only at the crucifixion that Christ is wounded)—by our rejection, our sins, our blindness, our turning away, our denial of him—all of us will see him.

Will this be the moment when we, like Christ, will transcend all our limitations? Is this the moment—though time no longer has meaning—when, as St. Paul foresees in the magnificent fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, God will be all in all?

Paul assures us in that chapter that “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor 15:22). What will it be like after all are made alive? What will we be like after there are no more powers working to thwart the loving purposes of God?

What does Paul mean, that God will be all in all?

Here we must bow humbly before the mystery and not pretend to know the answers. But we may still speculate, as Christians throughout the centuries have done.

From Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-395):

What, then, is the point the divine apostle is making in this text? That at some time evil will recede into nonbeing and then be completely eradicated and that God’s perfect goodness will enfold in itself every rational being, and nothing God has made will be cast out of his kingdom.

The Church’s Bible: 1 Corinthians, trans. by Judith L. Kovacs

Gregory of Nazianzus (330 – c. 389) reminds us of our human condition:

God will be “all in all” when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God, with room for God and God alone. This is the maturity toward which we speed.

Theological Oration 30.6, in On God and Christ:
The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. by Frederick J. Williams, Lionel R. Wickham

Is this glory only for the endtime?

Is it something we can forget about for now? How do we speed toward this maturity for which we are made, as Gregory of Nazianzus says?

We are not intended to sit by idly and wait for the fullness of history to come upon us. Here are a few suggestions as we wait for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ:

  Cultivate Mindfulness. Cultivate a stance of looking for God in all things, so that when the divine is revealed to us, we will be prepared to receive, and so that we may grow in the goodness and beauty God of throughout our life. We can practice gazing on God, as much as our present limitations and the abundant grace of God allow right now.

  Jesus has already prayed “that all may be one” (John 17). We can cooperate in that work of union by doing what we can to make divisions cease and by reminding ourselves of the beauty and goodness residing in ourselves and in each other.

  Pray to become the mercy, peace, and compassion of Christ in and for the world. We are created to be capable of God, capax dei. So we are also capable, through grace, of being Christ’s loving presence, Christ’s merciful presence, Christ’s peace-bringing presence.

  Pray that when people meet us, they will be meeting Christ. And if they forget who they meet, may it be ourselves they forget and not Christ.

The inner affinity with the Mystery in whom we are alive and move and have being—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—can grow on us only in the experience of God as ‘the All’: the God of each of us at the expense of none of us, the God who never comes alone but always with the entire cosmos and all of humanity.  This experience is the heart of common worship, with its cosmic and universalist dimensions, its significant silence and significant speech, its significant gesture and significant motionlessness, its interplay of the seen and the unseen—in sum, its doxology made tangible.

Franz Josef van Beeck, “Trinitarian Theology as Participation,” The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, SJ, Gerald O’Collins, SJ

Doxology—from the Greek word doxa (δόξα), meaning glory: Glory to “the God of each of us at the expense of none of us, the God who never comes alone but always with the entire cosmos and all of humanity.”

- – - – -

“Space fractal with stars” image by Rose Hoover, rc

The only thing to be done now,
now that the waves of our undoing have begun to strike on us,
is to contain ourselves.

To keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

Among all the smashed debris of myself,
Keep quiet, and wait.
For the word is Resurrection.
And even the sea of seas will have to give up its dead.

D. H. Lawrence, “Be Still!” D. H. Lawrence: Complete Poems,
Edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren F. Roberts

What are our own waves of undoing? What are the waves that feel as if they would smash us into oblivion?

• Exterior circumstances beyond our control?
• Profound loss, grief?
• Personal attitudes?
• Illness?
• Deep interior wounds?
• Discouragement or fear?
• Our own weakness or sinfulness?
• Aging or diminishment?

D. H. Lawrence says that the only thing to be done is to contain ourselves.  If this is so, how are we to contain ourselves?

Does this mean giving up on life?  No, not at all.  Does it mean adopting a fortress mentality – walling ourselves round about so that nothing can touch us?  No, just the contrary, I believe.

It means turning to what is most vital and most true to ourselves.

According to the poet, when we are feeling helpless against the waves of destiny, we must:

…keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

When the ship we are on is sinking, we do not weigh ourselves down with stacks of old magazines or a closetful of clothes and shoes. If the house is on fire, we do not dally long enough to carry out the rubbish or even to pile up our favorite books or retrieve the jewelry.  We hold to nothing but the essential.

This “tiny grain of something” can only be the essential core of ourselves, what we have named in a Cenacle assembly as the mystical dimension of our life – that part of ourselves both as individuals and as corporate body that knows God, that is never apart from God, that sees God face to face even when our conscious life perceives nothing and is overwhelmed by the waves, even as we tumble over and over helplessly on the dark shore. Here the Holy Spirit prays in us and intercedes for us (see Romans 8). It is in this tiny grain that we are who we truly are.

LIke the widow’s mite (Mark 12), this grain may seem of little account, but in reality it represents all we are and all we have.  So we must let the “wreckage of ourselves go,” be still, and claim nothing but this indestructible grain.

• It is in this quintessential kernel of being that we are able to “keep quiet and wait,” though there may appear to be nothing left to wait for;
• It is here that sighs and murmurs, creakings and groans, once fearful, do not foretell destruction, but Resurrection;
• It is from this core that the Spirit at times surprises us with glimpses of beauty or goodness.

It is this tiny grain:

• that whispers in us that in all things God works for good with those who love God (Romans 8:28);
• that reveals to us that while our own love for God and neighbor is insufficient, we may love rightly and serve well from that same central grain through which we love with the love of Christ.

In truth each of us is being undone in one way or another.  If nothing else manages to undo us, time and age most certainly will accomplish the task.  The only tragic outcome would be not to yield to our remaking through that “tiny grain of something,” through the mystical core of ourselves where God is known.

When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

Stanley Fish, “God Talk,” New York Times (May 3, 2009)

But if Christianity was never meant to explain anything, then what in the world is it for?

Its purpose is far more important than explaining the intricacies of the human body or how molecules and quarks behave.  Nor is Christianity a set of rules or a list of doctrines.

David Fagerburg, of the University of Notre Dame, quotes Blessed Dom Marmion:

Columba Marmion highlighted the fact that Christianity is not a creed or institution or cultic activity or doctrine (although it includes all of these); he says Christianity is Christ’s life lived by us.   “What in fact is a Christian? ‘Another Christ,’ all antiquity replies.”  And what is the life the Christian lives? “A list of observances? In no wise. It is the life of Christ within us … it is the Divine life overflowing from the bosom of the Father into Christ Jesus and, through Him, into our soul.”

David Fagerburg, “A Theology of Liturgy,” Liturgical Ministry, Vol. 14 (Fall 2005)

“Christianity is Christ’s life lived by us.”  Fagerburg goes on to say that the theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – “understood in this mystical sense, are supernatural participation in the life Christ lived.”

In that case, faith is not our belief in God, it is a share of Christ’s trust in the father; hope is not our optimism, is is Christ’s confidence in the Father made ours; love is not our affection for the deity, it is Christ’s filial intimacy with the Father spilled over to include us through the Holy Spirit.

How consoling this is! We hear Paul say:

…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:20)

Note that an alternate translation of this verse reads, “I live by the faith of the Son of God…”

Is our faith weak? We draw on the very faith and trust of Christ himself.

Does our hope falter? We live through the powerful hope of Jesus Christ who, in giving himself, relied totally on the promises of God.

Is our love inadequate to the task of life? Our own love is always inadequate to the Christian life which calls us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, love our neighbor as ourselves, forgive those who sin against us, and love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But the love of God is always sufficient.

Get away from yourself.
Come to church.

“Why would I want to get away from myself?” I think. “I’m the only self I have.”

Then I remember what Huston Smith says about the early Christians. He reflects that in spite of the danger they often found themselves in, they seemed happy. They had about them a radiance that was puzzling to others. The explanation, he says, lies in the fact that “three intolerable burdens had suddenly and dramatically been lifted from believers’ shoulders”:

1. “The first of these was fear, including the fear of death…”
2. “The second burden they had been released from was guilt…”
3. “The third release the early Christians experienced was from the cramping confines of the ego.” *

The “cramping confines of the ego”

The ego can not only cramp us, it can also be a tyrant. We may find ourselves trapped in a false self that is hungry for more of everything—more power, more esteem, more money, more diversion, more accomplishments, a more beautiful body, more, more, more… We can be deceived into thinking these are the things that give us joy. And no matter how much we acquire or accomplish, the tyrant is never satisfied.

Any of these “mores” can usurp the place of God in our lives. Or we can yield to the “more” of trying to make of ourselves little gods — which in reality is a twisted temptation, because as it turns out, our Christian call is already to be “participants in the divine nature” (see 2 Peter 1:3-4).

Participants in the divine nature

What an amazing thought! The false self, however, is not crazy about the idea of our being participants in the divine nature, for this wondrous gift must be accepted in a way that is alien to societal norms.

The seductive and absurd premise of the wildly popular book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, is one that flatters the false self. There we are told, “You are the master of the Universe… You are the perfection of Life… your whole life and everything in it has been created by You.” (Notice the capital Y.)

Unlike The Secret, the Bible calls us to take on the mind of Jesus, who “did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7). Jesus, who would have had reason, we might think, to cling to equality with God, was free from the “cramping confines of the ego.”

The paradox is that the false self tries to be God, while our true self, found in God and participating in the divine nature, is the very soul of humility.

Continually turned toward God

In 1864, Saint Therese Couderc, the co-founder of the Cenacle, pondered the key to peace and joy, which she saw as surrendering oneself totally to God, as Jesus did. “In a word,” she wrote, “to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God.”

Of course being “no longer concerned with self” does not mean neglecting either our bodies or our spirits, both so precious to God. We are to nourish our bodies with wholesome food and nourish our minds and our souls with knowledge and prayer. But even as we care for ourselves, we are to be “continually turned toward God,” allowing God to transform us, so that our whole being, growing in the divine compassion and mercy, reflects our union with God. This is the only way to be happy and to be free of the domination of that perfidious false self.

For freedom Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
(Galatians 5:1)

__________

* Huston Smith, The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 79-81.

“Enoch choices.”

I immediately woke up.

“Enoch choices?” I repeated. “What on earth does that mean?”

So, remembering that Enoch was mentioned in the Bible, I decided to look him up, and what I found was not one, but two Enochs. The first was the son of Cain (that child of Adam and Eve who committed the first murder), and the second was the descendant of Abel (the son who was murdered).

Concerning the first Enoch Genesis says that his father “built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch” (4:17).

So Enoch had a city named after him, a sure way, you would think, to have your name remembered. The possibilities boggle the mind. There could be an Enoch City Hall, Enoch Theater, Enoch Public Library, Enoch Post Office, and on and on.

However, there is a second Enoch who appears briefly in the next chapter of Genesis. This Enoch figures in the genealogy beginning with Adam and ending with the sons of Noah. He was the father of Methuselah, known for longevity. But what is most remarkable about this Enoch is stated in one verse:

“Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him” (5:24).

What happened to Enoch? The verse is very mysterious. Unlike the first Enoch, whose name would today have been emblazoned in neon throughout his city, this Enoch seems to have disappeared. It is about this Enoch that the book of Hebrews says, “By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death; and ‘he was not found, because God had taken him.’” (11:5).

The first Enoch had a city named after him. The second disappeared into God. Here were the choices. Was I going to build a city for myself, construct a monument to my own name, focus on my own glory? Or was I going to walk with God and fade from view, so that the glory and the name were God’s not mine? As John the Baptist said when his disciples complained that people now were turning to Jesus instead of to John: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

The 20th century mystic Raïssa Maritain wrote, “…we have, under the action of grace and through the travail of the soul, to leave our bounded heart for the boundless heart of God. This is truly dying to ourselves” (Raïssa’s Journal). Isn’t this what the second Enoch did, when he walked with God and was found no more?

From time to time over the years, those two words, “Enoch choices,” come back to me, to remind me, to challenge me, and sometimes to convict me.

So don’t think you can avoid anything by falling asleep during your prayer.

Not to us, O Lord, not to us,
but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.
(Psalm 115:1)

“Boundless Heart” image created from NASA’s Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-556, courtesy of NASA and STScI

Right after D-Day, our Sister Elizabeth — not yet Sister, but Lieutenant Hillmann — was stationed at a hospital in Bristol. Among her patients was a horribly burned soldier, barely out of childhood when he went off to war. He was burned every place on his body except for his face and the palms of his hands (suggesting that he had covered his face with his hands when the tank burst into flames). Not only that, but his burns were infested with maggots.

He kept getting worse, and he knew he was going to die. One day he asked Lieutenant Hillmann if she would write to his mother when he died.

“Tell her not to worry. It’s all right. I know I’ll be in heaven, because I’ve been a good boy.”

Very much at peace, he died soon after.

As Advent begins, we look not just toward the birth of Christ, but toward the Second Coming of Christ in glory. Jesus tells us that we know neither the day nor the hour, but urges us to be always ready. Perhaps he will return tonight or during lunch tomorrow. On the other hand, perhaps we will meet Christ in glory at the moment of our physical death, when time will be no more and all our words and concepts of God will be revealed in their inadequacy.

The young soldier was ready for glory. But what about those of us whose hearts are less simple — those of us who cannot claim with confidence that we have been “good boys” or “good girls”? Should we fear that day? Should we fear the Second Coming Christ in glory — or, if he seems to tarry, the day of our death?

The gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent has words of encouragement for that time when the cosmic events related to the Second Coming occur:

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21:28)

What are we to do besides standing up and raising our heads? After all, we do not have the purest of hearts. Our thoughts and actions are far from blameless.

First, we can throw ourselves on the mercy of God.
Jesus manifested this mercy in his earthly life; he showed us the same abundant mercy in his resurrection appearances; and we can be sure that in spite of whatever unsettling events may come to pass, his Second Coming will be charged with the power and tenderness of God’s mercy.

Second, we can offer for ourselves and for others the prayer of the second reading from the first Sunday of Advent:

May the Lord make you increase
and abound in love
for one another and for all,…
so as to strengthen your hearts,
to be blameless in holiness
before our God and Father
at the coming of our Lord Jesus
with all his holy ones. Amen.
(1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 NAB)

And we can view the moment of his coming with joyful anticipation, for — wonder beyond all wonders — the highest ambition of the Christian life will be fulfilled: we shall be like Jesus; and this means that we shall be like God.

We recall that the snake in Genesis promised Eve that she and Adam would be like God if they ate the forbidden fruit. The serpent, however, had no authority to make that promise. He couldn’t deliver.

But God does have the authority to make the promise. This time, the desire to become like God is no longer a power grab, but a holy longing. It is the desire to be who we are created to be.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
(1 John 3:2)

The dying soldier was blessed with a childlike and trusting spirit. But we too, whether trusting or doubting, steadfast or faltering, are God’s children, even now. And so we pray with assurance, Come, Lord Jesus!

I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing.

Our Cenacle foundress Saint Therese Couderc also knew that radiance. For her too, the word “good” was profoundly affirmed in her soul. She had a vision in which she saw the goodness of everything around her, and learned that God has communicated to all creation “something of his infinite goodness, so that we may meet it in everything and everywhere.”

I believe that one thing the Ascension of Jesus shows us is the goodness of earthly existence, indeed the radiance of human life.

As Karl Rahner points out, Jesus has not only ascended to heaven, but he has taken us with him! In this Rahner is following Paul who writes in Ephesians:

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (2:4-7)

Because Jesus has taken us with him, all that is proper to our human existence has become radiant. Nothing in the humanity which we share with Jesus is left to languish: neither our loves, nor the delight we have in the things of creation, nor our diminishment as we age, nor our disappointments, nor our pain. Nothing is wasted.

The radiance is often hidden, but occasionally we are vouchsafed a glimpse of what is really there, sometimes through simple occurrences and very small encounters. While ordinarily everything may seem solid and stolid to us, revealing nothing more than a surface reality, in those privileged moments events and people appear as if translucent, letting the glory that is theirs in Christ shine through.

If we are not paying, attention, however, we may not notice the beauty spread out before us:

• - A neglected plant in a pot abandoned outside the kitchen blooms through hurricanes and drought.

• - A student is returning to her homeland this summer to work for the destitude, in spite of the dangers of the political situation there.

• - The homeless woman who comes by our house expresses her longing for a real lodging, then prays, “But more of Jesus and less of me.”

Truly we should be amazed, like the narrator in Gilead, that we are allowed to witness such things.

During one of those empty drives back from the Jacksonville airport, I realized (an insight breaking into the emptiness?) that this minor nothingness could be reminding me of a profound truth of the spiritual life, which is that joy resides in loving God more than we love God’s gifts.

Saint Therese Couderc, for example, the co-founder of the Cenacle, was a mystic whose whole life was given over to God. Even those among us who are most holy, however, have places deep in their hearts where God continues to call them closer, so that they may not cling to anything less than God. According to Abbé André Combes (“The Four Offerings of Blessed Therese Couderc”), this is what happened to St. Therese:

One day, finally given over without reserve to God, Mother Therese became aware that there was something abnormal in the fact that she continued to be filled with divine consolations. Immediately she said to Our Lord: “I would follow you just as well without that!”

Whether or not this is literally the way it happened, we do know that Mother Therese had reached the point where she loved God more than she loved the spiritual experiences God had given her. It was not that she was refusing God’s gifts – far from that, for to refuse what God wants to share with us would be the height of ingratitude – on the contrary, she accepted to move into a new stage in her life with God. This stage was marked by fewer consolations, but also by a deeper union in the Paschal Mystery with the One who was All in All for her.

Boring Prayer?
Our own prayer time may seem like an ordinary road revealing nothing beyond the hard pavement, the passing cars, and the swampy vegetation. We may find ourselves bored to tears and longing to come to the end. But brilliant insights and tangible spiritual experiences are not the confirmation of our prayer. It is rather the transformation in love that God is working in us, to bring us into union with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for our own sanctification and for that of the world in which we live.

The more we draw near to God, the more we desire to draw near; the more we are united with God, the more we desire this union, because we understand more and more that God is the center of our hearts and that God alone can fill them and make them happy.

Saint Therese Couderc, Letter to Mother de Larochenégly, August 7, 1867