• the blind see (Isaiah 29:18)
• the desert blooms and rejoices (Isaiah 35)
• the barren bear many children (Isaiah 54:1)
• the wolf shall dwell with the lamb [along with other unlikely companions] (Isaiah 11)
• the meek inherit the land (Psalm 37:11)

The primary example of the unexpected way in which God works is the cross.

How ridiculous it must have looked — that sign, “King of the Jews” above someone who was stripped, naked, and helpless on the cross!  The one who had claimed to be the bread of life, but now can’t even scratch his own nose, much less feed anyone!  Surely the invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus is the height of folly.

This wasn’t even a noble death.  Crucifixion was the most shameful method of execution.  If Jesus had been a war hero dying in battle, it might have been considered an honorable death.  Even if he had been a great Greek or Roman philosopher who made a dramatic speech in his defense — that might have been less shameful.  But Jesus didn’t say much at all — a few words, a cry of anguish.  Even as a death, it was disappointing in human eyes.

But as Paul says:

The message of the cross is folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God.

(1 Corinthians 1:18 NJB)

Who would have guessed that out of this weakness — when Jesus couldn’t use his hands, for they were nailed to the wood; couldn’t walk, for his feet were nailed; had wounds on his head from the thorns that were part of the clown costume that the soldiers had made him wear, and his chest wounded by the spear — who would guess that out of this weakness would come new life for the world, new life for each of us?

Who would guess that a public execution would show us the power of God?

Who would guess that God’s power would be made perfect in weakness?  (See 2 Cor 12:9.)

So I was in the yard, wielding the pitchfork, hefting piles of leaves into a bin, when a nice-looking young man called out from the sidewalk, “I could help you!”

“Thank you, but no,” I replied. “I’m getting my exercise.”

He walked over and persisted, “I could do that, and you could give me a couple of dollars. I need a beer real bad.”

I tried to explain that since the city no longer accepts leaves in plastic bags, and we have only two plastic cans, there wasn’t a lot that could be done in one day.

“I’ll do two bins, and you can give me three dollars!”

“No,” I said again. “The doctor wants me to exercise.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, looking sympathetic, evidently commiserating with whatever grave medical condition would inspire doctor-ordered exercise. “But I need beer,” he added pleasantly. “I drink a lot.”

“Why do you drink a lot?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m an alcoholic.”

“That’s not so good,” I said.

“Yeah, man. The stuff’ll kill you.”

“Yes, it can. It killed an uncle of mine.”

“For real, man?” (He sounded surprised, as if he had not seriously believed the danger up until now.)

“Yes, he got cirrhosis of the liver and died.”

After a few more moments of conversation, we shook hands, and he headed off toward downtown.

“Have a nice day. God bless you,” he called out.

“You have a nice evening,” I said. “And don’t drink too much beer!”

When I recounted the conversation to Sister Betty, she pointed out that he needs some lessons in marketing, if he really wants to be paid for yard work. I agreed that his sales pitch left something to be desired, but at least he didn’t claim that he needed the money to bury his dear grandma.

All of us are broken in one way or another. Most of us are just better at hiding it – or at least we think we are better at hiding it. And we are all helpless to mend ourselves.

Fertile powerlessness

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are very spiritually sound. Here are the first three:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or substitute here another addiction]—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

(For the rest of the Twelve Steps, click here.)

Some of us not in AA or other Twelve-Step programs still suffer under the illusion that we can manage our lives by ourselves. Saint Paul, though, knew that he could not.  He heard God telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

My power is made perfect, God says, not in your strength, but in your weakness.

Whether we are raking leaves or longing for beer or managing a Fortune 500 corporation, we stand in need of the powerful and tender mercies of the God who loves us.

The fallen spring leaves witness to the new life already emerging on the oaks, which will look scraggly and unkempt for a few weeks. Our own unkempt, ragged hearts, stripped of what we thought was our strength, offer the fertile weakness through which God’s grace brings new life — both for us and for the blessing of the world.

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.

The voice I overheard was talking about me.

“…but she couldn’t even find St. John’s Mercy Hospital.”

I recognized the speaker, as I had given her an ill-fated ride the day before. And yes, it’s true, I have what seems to be a genetic propensity for getting lost. At least I call it genetic. (Anne Tyler, in The Accidental Tourist, called the condition “geographical dyslexia.”) On the other hand, some people think that if I just concentrated, I wouldn’t have the problem at all. And others, like the owner of the voice speaking above, simply take my inability to navigate as a sign of mental deficiency.

Symptoms:

• I have been known to drive for a half hour on the interstate in the wrong direction.

• The words, “You can’t miss it,” send me into quivers.

• After giving up searching and telephoning for directions, I have had to admit that I had no idea where I was calling from (seriously hindering the direction-giver).

• I find highway signs woefully inadequate, disappearing just when I need then.

On the spiritual journey, however, there is a sense in which most of us, left to our own devices, are directionally challenged. The way is fraught with puzzling intersections and foggy back roads and trackless wastelands where we long for a GPS or a printout from Mapquest.

But happily, and often in spite of ourselves, we are being led, even when the haze appears so dense or the night so obscure that we can’t see our hands before our faces. And amazingly enough, we are being guided not just to where we ought to be, but to where we want to be.

The beautiful Latin verses of St. Thomas Aquinas, which we know as “Panis Angelicus,” end with this prayer:

Per tuas semitas
Duc nos quo tendimus,
Ad lucem quam inhabitas.

“Lead us,” we pray, “along your paths…” —

Lead us through everything:

• through interior struggles, through joy and pain, through knowledge and unknowing…

• through prayer, in the body and blood of Christ (panis angelicus: bread of angels), to the divine life of Christ that we receive and are called to live…

• from indifference to love, from judging to compassion, from violence to peace…

Lead us along your paths, because our own roads tend to get us lost.

“Lead us where we want to go,” continues the prayer, in the direction we are already leaning, if we are paying attention to our heart’s longing.

Lead us “to the light wherein you dwell.”

Where we are being led is indeed where we want to be. The goodness of God leads us, not to some desolate wasteland where we will still be wandering around hunting for a highway marker, nor even to a faraway or foreign land, but to the very place for which we were made and for which our hearts long: to the Light that is God’s dwelling and our home.

You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.
(Psalm 16:11)

__________

P.S. There are many renditions of Cesar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus” on YouTube, performed by the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price, and Placido Domingo. Unfortunately, Franck’s version uses only one verse of Aquinas’ hymn, omitting the words cited above.

I believe that God accepts our feeble efforts to love (and to forgive, which is the companion of loving), and I take courage from these verses taken from W. H. Auden’s poem, “As I Walked Out One Evening”:

O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.

We love as we can, and we pray to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, so that we may love, no longer with our “crooked heart,” but with the heart of God.

What does it mean to be thankful even for our sins? Does it mean that we should languish in wrongdoing so that God may bring good from it? After all, sin does hurt people. Paul himself asks, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (Romans 6:1-2)

It may sound strange to hear that we have died to sin — we who know so well our own faults. But it is true that we have already begun to share in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are already being transformed into the image of Christ.

Yes, grace does abound and our loving God does work to bring good out of everything in our lives, including our faults and failures (Romans 8:28). So we praise God, who gives us “this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery” — that marvelous mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection which shows us the love and the life to which we are called.

I learned that over the centuries bees have been used as images of industriousness and of purity. I found that for the Latin poet Ovid, bees symbolized metamorphosis. But what really stayed with me was a passage from a poem by Antonio Machado:

Last night, as I lay sleeping,
I dreamed — blessèd illusion! —
that I had a beehive inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

(Anoche cuando dormía
soñé, ¡bendita ilusión!,
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.)

Isn’t that what God does in us? The Spirit of Jesus, in the darkness of our hearts and the messiness of our lives, transforms our failures into sweet honey.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

When the light turned green and I followed the flow of traffic around the corner, I saw that the person in question was a woman of 40 years or so, wearing blue jeans, and looking as if she might drive home after her stint on the corner and change clothes for an evening PTA meeting. The sign she held read — not “Will work for food” — but “I NEED ANGELS.”

What was the meaning of this curious sign? Was it simply a more poetic way of saying “Will work for food”? Or had the woman’s life reached such a state of fierce desperation that she felt only divine intervention could help? For my part, all I knew to do was to pray that God would send whatever angels she needed.

Most of us find ourselves at a point of wretchedness of one sort or another, sometime in our lives, but how many of us proclaim it so directly or so publicly? For that matter, how many of us ask for help at all? What would it be like it if we cried out to all who could hear, “I need angels!” Or on the other hand, if we simply whispered over and over in our hearts, “Help, Lord Jesus!”

For all who need angels, O God,
send them quickly.
For those who need to ask for help,
give them courage and guidance.
For persons whom God would send as messengers,*
may they hasten to respond.

[* messenger: Gk., angelos]

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.
(Psalm 34:18)

Before he ascends into heaven, Jesus promises power to his apostles.

To judge from a broad internet seach of the term, power is something human beings are very fond of. Besides our preoccupation with the various power sources needed to fuel our vehicles and computers, we seem to be fascinated with powerful people.

I found web pages listing the most powerful people in sports, the most powerful people in politics, the most powerful people in networking, the most powerful people in corporate America, and on and on and on. (Incidentally, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, made two of these lists. At 36 years old, he was named first on Forbes Magazine’s list of “Top CEOs: Corporate America’s Most Powerful People,” and was also considered one of the most powerful in networking.)

Is this what Jesus promises his followers?

First, the power given by the Holy Spirit is power with and in God, shared with the people of God, and inseparable from love. This is not a power which gives us control over others or which makes us privileged in the eyes of society. There is no list of the 100 people most empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Second, the Spirit, paradoxically, gives us the power to be weak. It is the power to give ourselves totally to God, as Jesus did — to be emptied of what we think of as our own strength in order to receive the power of God. In the long run, this is the only power that endures and the only power that brings any kind of lasting joy.

“. . . but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (1 Corinthians 12:9-10)