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Filled with the Knowledge of God

Dec 7th, 2011 by


They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full
of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

(Isaiah 11:9)

 

Wisdom from Rabbi Abraham Heschel:

What is history?  Wars, victories, and wars.  So many dead.  So many tears.  So little regret.  So many fears… The world is drenched in blood, and the guilt is endless…

This is what the prophets discovered.  History is a nightmare.  There are more scandals, more acts of corruption, than are dreamed of in philosophy.  It would be blasphemous to believe that what we witness is the end of God’s creation.  It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.  Others may be satisfied with improvement, the prophets insist upon redemption.  The way [humanity] acts is a disgrace, and it must not go on forever.  Together with condemnation, the prophets offer a promise.  The heart of stone will be taken away, a heart of flesh will be given instead (Ezek. 11:19).  Even the nature of the beasts will change to match the glory of the age.  The end of days will be the end of fear, the end of war; idolatry will disappear, knowledge of God will prevail.

(The Prophets)

And again from the prophet Isaiah:

On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.’  (19:23-25)

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Every Eye Shall See Him

Dec 2nd, 2011 by

When the divine Logos became human, he necessarily took on human limitations—gender, time, place, ethnicity, nationality. The resurrected Christ, on the other hand, while remaining human, transcends the limitations that he accepted in his Incarnation.

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.


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Jesus Coming Soon! Have a Blessed Day!

Nov 21st, 2011 by

It was almost a week after Hurricane Frances in 2004, and Sister Elizabeth and I were coming out of the grocery store, where some of the shelves were still bare.  A woman entering just as we walked out greeted us with a broad smile.

“Jesus coming soon!” she said.  “Have a blessed day!”

With two hurricanes already having hit the state, and a third seeming to be on the way, one’s thoughts might indeed turn toward the Endtime.   Was the Second Coming imminent?  Should we put on white garments and go up to the mountain? Or since we have no mountains in Florida, should we at least repent in sackcloth and ashes? What about the various threats that may be facing us today?  Shouldn’t we be asking the same questions?

Jesus is indeed coming soon, but perhaps not yet as the Second Coming, of which we are told that we know neither the day nor the hour.

Our call, therefore, is not to go up on the mountain, but to be attentive. “Watch therefore,” Jesus tells us (Matthew 25:13). And we are to watch not only for the Second Coming, but for the coming of Christ in each moment of our lives.

We are to pay attention to how he draws near to us in the storms of life, in the moments of calm, in the people we meet, in the depths of our heart. He comes to us as Presence, and sometimes he comes in what we perceive as Absence. While Christ is always there whether or not we cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we may not notice unless we are alert.

Should we repent in sackcloth and ashes?

We can be assured that God does not take revenge on us by sending hurricanes (or earthquakes or disease or any other sorrow).  Nevertheless it is always appropriate to pray with the tax collector in the Gospel of Luke, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” We are continually being called to repentance — to metanoia — to that complete turning of our whole lives to God.

And here again, we are to be attentive, both to our constant need for mercy and to God’s free gift of the mercy we need. We walk through the day bathed in mercy.  We sleep wrapped in the tender mercy of God.  God’s mercy is there when the tree comes crashing through the roof and when the electricity goes out and when it comes back on.

God is not wreaking vengeance on us by the bad things that happen in our lives, but God does work in them – as in everything else – to draw us to the divine and, if we are willing, to make us more like the Christ for whom we wait.

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
…

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

(Revelation 22:17, 20b)

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Paying Attention to the Presence

Nov 5th, 2011 by

Fall is appearing here in North Florida, but you have to look closely to see the signs. Some of the evergreens, like the live oaks, have taken on a slightly more muted green. Others, such as the dogwoods and swamp maples are or will be changing color, their reds, however, almost submerged by the predominant green around them.  And climbing among those dense greens of oaks, palms, pines, camphor, and fern, the neon red Virginia Creeper no longer manages to conceal itself as it did last summer.

Our own spiritual seasons can be as subtle as a Florida autumn. Granted, in our spiritual journey we may indeed experience glorious autumns, radiant springtimes, interior snowstorms, and major heat waves; but often the seasons are subdued and may be overlooked if we are not paying attention.

  • Perhaps we sense a dryness where spiritual fruit used to grow—or on the other hand we may find sweet nourishment in places where we would ordinarily not be likely to look.
  • Perhaps there is a delicate shift in our image of God or in the type of prayer to which we feel called.
  • It may be that God is present to us in a way that is simply less obvious than before, so that it seems for a while as if God were not there at all.
  • Or God may be speaking to us in silence…
  • …or through small events in our lives—outwardly unremarkable occurrences or encounters that we might tend to ignore.

One kind of prayer which can help us notice God’s presence in our everyday lives, as well as our own response to God’s love for us, is the daily Consciousness Examen. It doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes. Two forms of it are found at the sites below:

The Daily Examen

Prayer of Examen (from Creighton University)

 

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Two Holy Sisters: Community and Solitude

Oct 22nd, 2011 by

I live in community and know first hand the value of communal life. My religious sisters have taught me much about the love of God. Even Christians who are not called to religious life, however, learn the importance of community in one form or another (though this may not be community under one roof), since we are not made for isolation.

Besides the need we have for each other in daily life, as well as in navigating the obstacles on our spiritual path, community and communion are witnesses to our oneness in Christ.  Community proclaims that in a world fraught with hatred and division, it is truly possible to love one another.

Solitude, on the other hand, reflects the reality that we are not only one with each other, we are also unique in all of creation. And very practically speaking, solitude recognizes our boundaries as human beings. We cannot be available to others twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Physically and mentally, we cannot sustain an intensity of presence to other people all the time.

Solitude also honors our need to be alone with God, just as in the human context of relationship, we need to be alone at times with people we love. And solitude bows before the fact that there is a deep place inside us which is accessible to God alone.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;
you put an end to those who are false to you.
But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
to tell of all your works. (Psalm 73:25-28)

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