His Yoke

A Meditation on Matthew 11: 25 - 30

25 At that time Jesus exclaimed, "I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little ones: 

"At that time" refers back to what Christ just recently experienced, namely his rejection by the towns that should have received him with open arms. It amazes me that along with the frustration and grief of unrequited love the Lord carries within, he also pours out real joy in his prayer to his Father, the Father he knows as Lord of heaven and earth. He exclaims, i.e. cries out in a loud voice, from his heart, praising God the Father, and expressing the gratitude he feels for the the little ones who have received him, in spite of those who have not. That heartfelt exclamation is heard by the disciples around him.

 

What they do not hear with their ears, (what we also do not hear with ours, nor see with our eyes)  is that he is always speaking within himself, without audible words, as well as with his physical voice. He is quietly expressing himself to the Father, whose self -expression he is as Son; the Father whose Living Word he is, and from whom receives the gift of his being; the Father whom he is one with; the Father without whom he could not exist, nor be the Son. In short, the Father to whom he is inseparably yoked because they share the same divine nature.

Who are the little ones?  The disciples and other followers. They are the merest children, infants really, even though they are adults. But they are newborn, since they have new life in them, thanks to the Father who has entered their minds and hearts and enabled them to believe in his Son. How grateful Christ feels to the Father for them, for revealing his identity to them, while hiding it from the wise and the learned! But we who consider ourselves his little ones have yet to realize how completely we are yoked to him.

Who are the wise and the learned?  In addition to the towns that have rejected him,  they would certainly be the power elite: the professional religious leaders of the day, the Scribes, Pharisees, Sanhedrin, temple priests,  and rabbis who controlled and directed public opinion. These men had everything to lose if the people went over to Jesus. Everything in the way of status, power, authority, popularity, wealth, etc. would be taken from them if the townsfolk embraced this false messiah who was trying to mesmerize the people. Naturally the wise and the learned experience Jesus as threat and not as fulfillment. 

 

Who are the wise and the learned today? Anyone who believes in his personal autonomy, but especially we clergy, of course. We who are the professional religious leaders can still experience Jesus as threat to our self fulfillment, when we make the perennial error of looking for our fulfillment outside of him.  No matter who we are, we most experience Christ as enemy when we fail to recognize the ego-centrism and sinfulness which make us our own worst enemies. 

The more my self-image matters to me, i.e. the more I seek absolute freedom to define or invent myself, then the more I see Christ as extraneous and invasive. The more I make my thoughts and feelings the definitive measure of everything and everyone, then the more I instinctively reject him to protect myself and hold onto what I already have. Sadly,  my desire to control, to impress,  and be autonomous, is precisely what prevents him from giving me what I really do need, and what I can receive only from him: the gift of himself that I have to receive as gift and live with as a little one, in faith, hope, and charity. 

Today, who are his little ones? Those of us who put our faith, hope and love in him, and not in ourselves, nor in some idol we create and serve. Little ones are any and everyone who is honest enough to face our common state as creatures, i.e. the basic neediness and powerlessness which constitutes our being. Christ's heart goes out to us because of our structural helplessness. Our very neediness as creatures is what irresistibly moves him to pour himself out in a gift of endless, sacrificial love for us.

But Christ's self-gift faces us all  with a crisis of identity. Isn't it ironic to think we can be a self-made creature? Something in the order of being a square circle or a fire that burns cold? Consciously or unconsciously, we decide if we want to be among the wise and the learned who are dumb enough to think they are fulfilled without Christ or the little ones who are smart enough to realize that fulfillment comes only from him. No matter what group we choose, we adults each remain as big a bundle of needs as is an infant. That humble status of need never ceases to exist, no matter how much autonomy we think we achieve. As creatures before God we are always and only receivers, receivers who are always in total need of all the gifts that comes from his  hands. 

 

26 Yes, Father, such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been given to me by my Father... 

Our Lord is thrilled with the gracious will of his Father He is overjoyed by the divine wisdom and goodness that revealed the mysteries of the Godhead to those who would receive them as a gift, and not as our mental construct or imaginative projection. And he, Christ, will continue his Father's work, relating to us in the same way the Father relates to him.  

For all things have been given to him by his Father. The Son who receives his being as gift can only communicate by giving himself as gift. The Father's gift is meant for all of us. All means not only the little ones, but also the wise and the learned, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, the sheep and the goats. All of us without differentiation are the Father's gift to the Son, which once again is why Christ loves us all to death and beyond. How could he not treasure all that is precious to the Father? How could he not love all that the Father has given him?  

No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to who the Son chooses to reveal him.

In revealing himself to us, he also reveals the Father. In revealing the Father to us, he cannot help but reveal himself. The one is the inner content of the other.

Thus Christ lead us to what comes next: the double yoke he simultaneously embraces: his union to the Father and us. 

Christ is united to us, whether we like it, know it, or hate it.  He is there, or if you prefer, here, present in the present, with a presence that is real, no matter how unaware of it we may be. My recognition of him is not what determines his presence and companionship throughout life, because his presence is gift. He is inescapable, inseparable from us,  even when we fancy that we walk and work by our own power, or feel alone and abandoned. He is Word-made-flesh. He shares our human nature, he is a human being.  He accompanies us even when we defy him, ignore him, or run from him. It is true to say he "pursues" us, but not by chasing after us as if we had gotten away. His pursuit is within. He pursues by illuminating our minds an enlivening our hearts to his presence.There is no getting away from him to whom we are yoked from our mother's womb.

Consider the image of a farmer's yoke that he  presents to us. The material, exterior yoke is meant to symbolize workings of the interior, deeper, meta-physical union. A yoke was a wooden frame with two openings, or a bar, usually of wood, to which a permanent, double harness was affixed. The yoke conjoined a pair of oxen together at the neck, so they had to work cooperatively, side by side, to plow a field. There was no way one of the pair could go off in a different direction and do his own thing, even if that animal felt tired or lazy. The smartest thing to do was plow on till the work was done. Anything less just prolonged the work and inevitably made it harder. When we resist Christ's presence, we only make matters more difficult for ourselves.

Christ is yoked  both to us and to the Father. As the man Jesus, a man united to all of us by his human nature, Christ acts from the core of his divine personhood, i.e. out of his eternal oneness with the Father. He, Jesus the God-man, carries his divine and human natures not as equal halves that he somehow fits together into a kind of artificial hybrid. Instead, with infinite humility he takes our created human neediness into the structure of his divine being. He makes his oneness with us part of his oneness with the Father. He takes us into the deeper unity he has/is as Son of the Father.

 28 Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. 

We usually find life burdensome, and expend a lot of energy simply in pressing on, because we consider ourselves the wise and the learned. Christ is not inviting us intelligent and autonomous persons to come to him for a breather, a temporary time of rest and relaxation, before we continue our separate struggle. He is calling us to be his little ones and receive rest from him by opening ourselves to his presence even as our burdens wear us down. This gives us a taste of the rest that is ours in eternity. It is akin to the resting the Creator does on the seventh day when he relaxes and enjoys the beauty of his creation, or the rest of the Sabbath when a man looks to where his labors are taking him, the life of Glory. As Paul urges in Hebrews 4: "Let us therefore strive to enter into that rest." This is a rest in the embrace of the Trinity and the glorious enjoyment of their divine life. Christ calls us to come to him for no less than that. But he gives it as a rest that begins here.

29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

 

How do we answer his call to come to him? By taking his yoke on our shoulders. Note, the yoke is not ours but his. We have to stop thinking that we walk alone and that he is there only when in desperation we call out to him for help. Because he is yoked to us from our beginning,  he is already there. He is never not there. We are present to him, he is conscious of us, even when we are blind to that fact. Again, he makes the point: when our mood or negativity makes us imagine ourselves alone and desolate, or our feelings tell us we are unloved and forsaken, our very unawareness of him calls forth his heartfelt compassion.

30 For my yoke is easy and my burden light."

 What exactly is his yoke, or as he calls it, his burden?  We are. That is why it is such a surprise for me to hear him say his yoke is easy. To me it seems hard and heavy. He is yoked to us in our sinfulness, our individual and collective evil, with all the quasi-infinite suffering that comes from it. On Calvary the yoke grows into the cross. There our sinfulness hangs and and is crucified in the Innocent One, as the endless ocean of our evil down through the ages sweeps through him, and hurls him into the abyss of death itself. How can he call that yoke easy and and that burden light, especially when what he suffers is a horror beyond our comprehension? 

I don't think any one person can fully answer to that question. It is almost a cliche to say "Love does such things". Only an insane, infinitely incomprehensible love does such things. Still, Christ actions and words give us dull creatures partial insights into the mystery of his sacrificial love. On the cross, as he cries out in desolation and forsakeness, he trusts in his Father, and offers his life to redeem us. His whole life was destined for that hour. What was his "raison d'etre",  why did he enter our world and become a man? To be forgiveness. That is why he was born. To be divine love poured out as endless love upon humanity. To catch that instant and make it eternal. To make the Father's mercy present in his own suffering flesh and blood, and make it ever present to us as a continuing gift in the host and chalice. His act of forgiveness constitutes us as a people, his people, his little ones. Without that act of loving mercy, all human life would forever remain incomplete and unfulfilled. With it, we are continually launched and relaunched forward on our journey to the Father. Receiving the gift of him who is forgiveness of my sins is the concrete act that catches me up in him as he is raised by his Father. 

"Giussani" Questions

I thank my father for having taught me to ask for the reason behind all things. Every night before tucking me in bed, he would tell me, "You must ask why. Remember to always ask why..."

Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education, p.10

 Matt. 8:18 "When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other shore."

So, why?  Why that order?Usually the dynamic between Our Lord and the crowd is very different. Even when he is tired, the sight of the crowd awakens his compassion. He sits and talks to them, preaches and teaches,  reaches out and heals the sick who have been brought to him, even feeds everyone on more than one occasion. Why in this situation does the Lord who sees the crowd as his sheep, seemingly act out of character and tell his disciples to get the boat because they are going to cross over to the other shore? Why not attend to the crowd since they are curious enough or interested enough to be there? What was the disciples reaction when they heard his command? Were they too stunned to react?

 

The problem with asking these things is that they are "Giussani questions", i.e. questions of a special category, and not the simple, natural whys we automatically ask. We can never fully know why another person acts as he does, much less can we fully know the why of acts of the One who is An Other. To ask why of Mystery is fruitful and frustrating at the same time. The answer(s) we receive illuminate us by opening up to yet more Mysteries, and leave us in a more deeply illuminated darkness.

Since Christ is Teacher par excellence, his deeds are as instructive as his words. What is he teaching us and the crowd by withdrawing from them? Perhaps that our curiosity and or/interest are not enough. In order to follow him, one has to make the effort to get to the other shore, and our own resources are never sufficient to get us there. Only a Faith that is lived out in Love and Hope on an ever deeper level is able to reach the other side.

  

Verse 19: A scribe approached and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."

As his disciples go get a boat, two men who already consider themselves disciples speak up. The first is a scribe who boldly asserts that he will follow Christ anywhere and everywhere, no matter the difficulty. For the scribe to say such a thing presupposes a great conversion has taken place in the man. Scribes lived, ate and breathed the words of Scripture. Their very lives centered on pondering the sacred texts; studying the various interpretations offered by individual rabbis, rabbinic schools and different branches of Jewish tradition; Scribal lifetime consisted of studying, discussing and arguing about the opinions each personally favored. For a scribe to give up his professional status as an expert theologian and state publicly his willingness to become a disciple of a penniless, travelling rabbi was stunning. This scribe sees Jesus as the Living Word, as He who is the fulfillment and the surpassing of all the sacred words of which his scribal life had consisted. I wish Matthew, the Gospel writer, had noted the crowd's reaction for us, instead of leaving it to our imagination. Still, the crowd's reaction would have been nothing compared with Christ's terse response.

Verse 20:  "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." 

As the Son of Man, as one of us humans, Christ doesn't even have the limited comfort and security that the animals enjoy. An incredible statement! But that's what it means to be the Word made flesh, or Son of Man. Jesus the human being , is dispossessed of everything except his relationship to the Father. True, that relationship is everything. True, all creation has been made in him and through him. True,  he is Lord of everything since everything has been given him by His Father. But as one of us, he is as limited as we are: he is wayfarer, wanderer,  an exile, as much as we are.  Would it be fair to say "even more so" since all of the human limitations he experiences as a man, he experiences out of his divine capacity and not merely to the finite extent we do? How else could he experience the total desolation of forsakenness? As Son of God, he comes as gift to us, as the Father's love made man. As Son of Man he continues to pour himself out at every moment in everything he says and does. That is his way back to the Father, the way that takes us with him.

  

Does this not mean that the only way we can receive him in faith, hope and love,  and truly reverence him for who he is, is by making a gift of our lives to him, thus joining him in his insecure state of homeless wayfarer?  Make that state of being ours? Is that the cost of discipleship? The security of living with him is the tension and insecurity  of self-surrender? This is why I love/hate Giussani questions. The answers take me beyond my comfort zone, where my desire to measure, grasp, understand, and control does not want to go.

 

In addressing the second man,  Christ states the challenge more extremely: 

Verse 21: Another of his disciples said to him, "Lord let me go first and bury my father." But Jesus answered him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead."

It seems like such a cold response. So unfeeling, so lacking in compassion. Just an absolute no, without any explanation. Why? Is it because the man is already a disciple, has already said yes to a relationship that trumps all human bonds? Is the conflict the man goes through,  his love for his father,  his felt need to bury him, the guilt and pain he experiences in not burying him,  -  is all that part of following the Lord? Was it all implicit included in the first yes? It certainly seems to be.

But it seems extreme, no? Elijah let Elisha go and say his good-byes, break with his past, his family and friends, and then follow him. Why doesn't Mystery explain itself?  Perhaps because we could never fully understand or completely accept the answer. That explanation seems appropriate, especially since the yes to Christ is one of Faith, Hope, and Love, which makes our yes as total as his call. Perhaps Fr. Giussani's human father was saying more than he realizes when he told his son to "ask for the reason behind all things."  He didn't know he was setting his son on the way to Christ.

The Joy of the Gospel

3. I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this message is not meant for him, since "no one is excluded form the joy brought by the Lord." The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting  for us with open arms.....

7.   ....I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: "Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and  decisive direction."  

(So why do so many of us Christians still presume our religion is basically a matter of adhering to free-floating moral standards and doctrinal truths disconnected from the person of Christ?)

 

The Joy of the Gospel,  Pope Francis,      pp. 1, 4

Jesus the Way, the Truth, and the Life: a meditation on John 14: 1- 5

This meditation comes from reading Adrienne von Speyr, and Dom Luigi Giussani. In my opinion, these two spiritual giants compliment and bring out the depth of each other's gifts. As you go through Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, I hope you will take off in the direction the Spirit moves you, and feel inspired to add your own personal reflections. The text is long and wordy, but, I hope, worth reading slowly and responding to, not in one prolonged sitting, but in bits and pieces.

I believe all of us experience the tensions of living the human adventure and journeying towards God. The tension of being finite and hungering insatiably for the Infinite; of being limited and  yet wanting to be the measure of the Unlimited One; of feeling the urge to surrender to God and yet remain independent of him; to have his Divine Life in us, but have it on our own terms and under our own control; to possess God without giving ourselves to Him; to follow Christ, yet be in charge of the way we go. This tension comes from living in the Spirit, under the influence of Grace, in virtue of faith, hope, and charity instead living by our natural inclinations to see, feel, taste, figure out,  understand, enjoy, and digest everything we experience according to our human capacities and limits. How could we not experience this tension, when we inevitably reduce the Christ to what little we are open to receive from Him who wants to take us over completely? How could we not perceive his generous offering of self as an invasion of our freedom and autonomy. But we can't have it both ways: we can't belong to ourselves and belong to him.

(Where Christ says “you” in the singular or plural, personalize his message by speaking out your name. His revelations are to all of us, as the different, unique persons we are, and as a common family, who share all his gifts with one another.)

Jesus said to his disciples:(including all us who follow him today)  Let not your hearts be troubled.

Do not let all your worries, fears, anxieties and insecurities overcome you, nor your ideas and feelings. None of that is the measure of who you are. The measure of who you are is your relationship with me in faith, hope and love.  I am the measure of who you are. Get yourself out of the bio-dome, or ego-bubble inside which you live, that ego-bubble where you need to stay in order to feel secure, safe, and in control, that bio-dome where you imagine yourself autonomous and free. Get yourself outside of that artificial environment, that comfort zone, and into the supernatural life that flows from me to you. Live in that ever-deeper, always developing, ongoing relationship with me.)

Believe in God; believe also in me.

Put the same faith in me that you have in my Father. That is going to be difficult for you, because soon I am not going to look like my Father’s Son to you. When I am hanging on the cross, helpless, dying, and forsaken, I will look like anything but the divine Son of my Father in your eyes. Yet that will be when I am most perfectly the Son He eternally calls me to be, for I will be giving myself to Him for all of you. I will be pouring out on you all of the Life and Love the Father eternally pours into me. I will be absorbing the sin and evil of all mankind, and cleansing you of your sins. That is my mission, my purpose in life, my destiny: to give myself away, give myself in sacrifice to you, for you, in order to bring you back to the Father.

You can trust that gift I am making of myself, even though you cannot comprehend it.  You can trust me and my Father. We know what we are doing, even though you are not capable of understanding it.

In my Father’s house there are many rooms.

So many rooms, many places. As many places as there are persons, and there are so, so many of you. Here on earth, you have no place that is really yours. Whatever home you have is temporary. Your real home, the place where you finally settle down, is with me and my Father. On earth your whole life is a journey home. As long as you are here you are a person-the-way; to be a wayfarer is who you are; it is your identity on earth.  You don’t become your full self until you arrive home and are in my Father’s embrace. Here you cannot be your full self, your definitive self, because you are not with Him.  What you are on earth, who you are on earth, is a continual growing towards him, an on-going movement towards Him. That’s why wayfarer is your identity in this world. This identity gives your life meaning and purpose. Here as you journey you start discovering who you are, you develop self-awareness, in your relationship to me and my Father. How could you know yourself any other way, since you belong to us?

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

Who you are, your personal characteristics, would get lost in the immensity of the Kingdom, if there were not a special place in my Father’s house for the unique person that each one of you is. If there were only one huge dwelling place, I would have to reduce you all to one common denominator, and level you all down to single manageable mass. But no, this is not the case. Here on earth, I have a specific purpose for each person, including you, a calling, a mission, a vocation that no one else can fulfill.  I guide you principally by my grace in the sacraments. What you do on earth is not a matter of indifference or unimportance. I call no one to exist, no one to follow me, without a purpose. Each one has a different part in my divine plan for the Kingdom.  What makes you all different on earth will continue to make you all different in heaven. Hereafter, all the differences will all fit together  into the beautiful, harmonious, glorious Kingdom of my Father, where He  is all in all. Then you will be fully yourself and finally be his child forever. This is why I have told you over and over I am going back to my Father.  I came from him by myself. But I will return to him with all of you. And my Father will accept you, because he will recognize me in all of you. You have already been sealed as mine in Baptism. In the Kingdom, you will be stamped with the final form my grace gives you. You, in all the richness of your differences, will mirror me to my Father and give him glory. I do not go back to him empty-handed.

And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may also be.

My going to the Father is part of my mission, as is my coming from the Father. This commission from him is my path, the Way that I have received from my Father. It starts and ends with Him. You see my going to him begin with the Cross, and continue in my Resurrection.  From you I go in suffering and to him I return in glory. And I take with me all who believe in me. I will be beyond your eyes with the Father, and carry you who love me to him. As the Risen Son, I am no longer limited to one place.  I am with, and in, whoever believes in me and loves me, in every place, at all times. So you do not have to be afraid because your eyes do not see me as before. When I am with the Father I am also with you in the world. I, the Unlimited One, am with you who are limited.  You are everywhere I am, because I am everywhere you are, whether you see me, or feel me, or not. I am not reducible to your senses, your emotions, or your ideas.  Always remember: I want you with me and my Father once and for all.

When the Father and I are One forever, beyond my mission, beyond any more possibility of separation caused by sin and suffering, then the final stage of your redemption will be achieved. My coming again in glory at the end of time will not be because the Father has sent me to sow the seeds of the Kingdom, but to bring you whom I have redeemed into the fullness of His Kingdom. I will come as the One who lives with the Father and dwells in him.  You will have eternal life in us. You will live in our reciprocal love. And that love will fill you with the intense, divine life of the Spirit. Your very self will be the dwelling place of our glory.

 And you know the way where I am going.

I am going to the Father. Since you know I am going there, now you know how you will get there. You know the path that leads you there because you know me. And you know there is no other Way to the Father.  So you know enough, even though you have not seen the Father for yourself. You know where I am going, you know the Father is love, you know He sent me to show you what the way of love is by walking it ahead of you. Now you know how to follow in my footsteps. My Father infinitely surpasses what your eyes can see and what your minds can imagine. So you cannot get to him without me, without the way I give you, without the Way that I am.

True, the way of love is the way of suffering. That is the path I walk, the Way I am. True also, that you will only know this way when you travel it, when you experience it. Suffering will persuade you to hesitate on the path, to refuse to go on, to stop and then go in the wrong direction. All that happens because of the pain involved in loving others and suffering for them.  Even though Baptism has set you on the right path, even though Penance and Communion will bring you back to the path again and again,  you will never reach the point where you  walk the path steadily and unhesitatingly without failure. Just because one day you are ninety does not mean you have made more progress than someone who is forty. My grace will be working in you, molding you and conforming you to me all the time, but you will not be able to measure it. Nor will you ever stop being somewhat reluctant to receive it, no matter how old you are. Your progress, growth, lies in my hands, not yours. I am impatient for you to grow and progress. But mine is the impatience of divine love which will seem like endless patience to you, endless opportunities which you fail to respond to, opportunities you perceive as challenges too surprising and unexpected to recognize and accept. In my divine impatience I will patiently keep on teaching you that you must let my love, my sacrificial self-giving, find a place in your heart now, instead of later, today instead of tomorrow!

Thomas said to him: Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

You are like Thomas. Every person is. You want clarity. With your limited heart and mind you want to comprehend me completely. You want to know the whole way even before you start out. You can’t help trying to grasp and measure me with your human senses and abilities. That is impossible.  Even if you had physical contact with me in the flesh as the Twelve had, even if you had been in the upper room with them and could both see and touch me as Thomas did! You would never be the measure of me, just as they could not.  Like the Twelve, you have to stop being so small-minded; stop making the mistake they did.

The only path you know is one that your feet walk on.  My path is greater than that. You cannot understand my plans, my destiny, even though I have told you everything. The reason why I came into the world, the only purpose that I have, is to bring all of you back to my Father. Doing his will, giving myself away for you in love, pouring myself out in sacrificial love, that is my path back to the Father.  All that is my will; all that is my way of love.

Of course you can’t picture and grasp this path, no matter how you try. You hear what I say about the Kingdom, and you learn the truths about eternal life, but it is abstract theory to you, because all you can see is that human life always ends in the disaster of death.  In one sense, that perception is right. The life of my Father, the place where he is, the way to him, all remain totally incomprehensible to you, for they are beyond human reaching.  You need, you want, a concrete goal you can see, perhaps a marker that is a mile away. That’s the way you are. But there is no way to take the infinite, and make it quantifiable, clear, and certain. Everything you humanly know and do during your whole lifetime is only a passing moment of your already unending life in me.  That’s why you have to put your faith in me and realize I am the way to the Father, the only way, your way, and everyone else’s. Only by believing in me and following me can you become part of the Always More and Ever Greater Way that I am.

Jesus said to him: I am the way, the truth and the life.

I understand how discouraged you feel at times and how blind you usually are. I know you crave security. That’s why I am revealing my deepest secrets to you and all the others.  Even though I reveal my secrets to you, they remain mysteries, however. They can only be grasped in the dark light of faith. You cannot yet see my mysteries in all their light and clarity. Nor can you help reaching out and trying to measure to what I say by means of your limited capacity to receive. Your very lack, your neediness, is why I will infuse in you the gift of the Holy Spirit. That will enable you to get beyond yourself and operate out of the gifts of faith, hope, and love, which unite you to me. The Spirit who come from the Father, he will receive my call in you, the call to follow me back to the Father. The Spirit will get you beyond your human limitations and enable you to enter into the mystery of who, and what, I am. The Spirit will teach you what it means to believe. Then you will hold to the mystery without trying to measure it.

You will begin to understand that I am the Way:  the-way-to-the-Father. I am the only Way, and the whole Way. The whole Way is everything I am – my conception, birth, growth, manhood, work, suffering, and death. All of that is the Way that I am. So it is the way you have to travel. You do not have to see the whole way; you do not have to survey the entire journey to know you are on the right path. I give you the grace to go step by step, then more grace for the next step you are to take. That’s what it means to walk with me in the light of faith.

I am the Truth. I cannot be anything but truth, because I am always witnessing to my Father, the whole truth of who he is. I am that Truth, his Truth, the Truth that comes from him.  I only speak of what I have seen in Him. I am no empty word, no meaningless verbiage; I am the fullness of his Truth. I am not some changeable or temporary message. I am his eternal, living, always new Truth.  All other truths you know are only partial, and therefore deceptive.  Nothing else you know can exhaust nor grasp the all-embracing Truth I am.

 I am the Life. His life, I am the Life that comes from him. All the divine life he is, he pours into me. I am his Son, his very substance. His is movement-to-me, and I am movement-back –to-him. That movement-from-and-to the-Father is who I am on earth. That life is what I pour out unceasingly on the Cross; that is what I give you in every Eucharist – the self-gift of the Father to me and of me to him,  the donation we endlessly make of ourselves in the perfect communion of the Trinity. In every Eucharist I am bringing you back to the Father in the one reciprocal movement of life and love that the Three of us is.

No one comes to the Father but by me.

How do you go to the Father?  The way the Father has prepared for you: The Way that I am. By following me, by living in union with me in this life through faith, hope and love, you are on the way back to my Father. You have to walk the way that I did, by receiving from me the grace to make an offering of yourself to my Father.  When you do that, my whole life will envelop you. That is how you live in me, and at the same time go beyond me to him.  I will go with you all the Way, and I will hold you out before me to present you to the Father. You need not be afraid. He will see my life in you. So he will take you in his arms, just as he takes me.  He will love you as totally, freely, joyously as he loves me.

That is what my Mother did when she and Joseph joyfully held me up and first presented me in the temple.  She was unaware then of all that was ahead of her at the presentation. She was innocent of what she would suffer. At the end, when they took me down from the cross and placed me in her arms, she offered me to the Father again, this time in the joy of faith and yet the agony of presenting me to him as the sacrificial victim of your sins.

 I carry you the way my mother first carried me: not at all naively, but knowing fully the cost of all sin and every evil, having borne it joyously. My Mother went beyond her pain and agony at my death and offered me to the Father for you. In the same way I forget my pain, because of the joy of redeeming you and bringing you to him. You need not to be afraid to be in my arms, or in hers. You need not fear even death. Let me give you over to the Father as my Mother did with me, so that I can fill you with his life.

The Mystery of Christ reflected in the Sacrament of Confession

...Divinity and humanity are not separate spheres within the Son. Everywhere we try to penetrate into his humanity, we encounter the mystery of his being more than a man, that is, his divine sonship. He is not beyond all understanding, and yet precisely in our understanding, the incomprehensible overwhelms us; rather than being able to see him in his entirety, it is we who find ourselves seen by him and drawn into his ever greater dimensions. Because we are incorporated in this way, we lose any overview of our own situation. It is he who contains us in his perfect openness both to the Father and to the world.

    Whenever we confess according to his will, we must consider his double attitude so that we, too, may learn the correct attitude. He shows us who he is by opening himself to us: he is the one open to the Father, who in disclosing himself to us, also shows us the Father, also glorifies the Father.

...confession is the fruit of the divine human life. The Lord's turning to us, the form bequeathed to the Church, would be the...legacy that in some way is comprehensible in itself, and the turning to the Father would be the unsurveyable sphere of inspiration. We can understand a great deal about confession, just as we could about miracles. We know, for example, that before, the woman was hemorrhaging, and now, she is healthy. Only the nexus between these two facts remains incomprehensible. Or we understand that our Lord was dead and now lives, but we do not understand how that is possible. We do understand, however, that the things extending into the sphere of understanding are related in the sphere of the incomprehensible and are its manifestation. We understand a great deal about confession in the same way: for example, that there must be penance, that it is advisable for a person to admit his errors, and that there must also be an an authority and  a judgment upon good and evil on earth. We also more or less understand many things about faith: that the God-man did penance for our sins on the cross and for that reason the penance we accept for our guilt acquires somehow a symbolic character. Yet all the comprehensible elements are integrated into a whole which as such remains beyond our vision. In the course of the centuries the Church may acquire an increased understanding both of many individual elements and of the incomprehensibility of the whole, and with both of these an understanding of the mystery of Christ, the way he wished to remain alive for us in the vitality of the Father.

  Confession    Adrienne von Speyr   pp 148, 149

Christ:God and Man

Colossians 2:9 "For in him the whole fulness of the deity dwells bodily."

...Christ is God and man, but in such a way that this meeting of the divine and the human in him does not impose the slightest limitation anywhere. God is not in the least restricted by the Incarnation; it neither hinders nor weakens him; it does not put him in a state of unconsciousness; nothing is lacking to him of his divinity, his eternal life and omniscience. But nothing is lacking to Christ the man, either, as a result of his being God; he does not run up against his divinity as though encountering an obstacle to his genuine, full humanity; it is not as though he skipped right over finite human feelings, knowledge and experience and rushed like a stream into his divinity, finding therein a support for his existence that is unavailable as such to any other man. Rather, he is God and man in a union that leaves both natures intact and binds them together in their perfection, not making them merely run side by side. Only such a union can bring it about that in him the whole fulness of the deity dwells bodily, that deity actually accompanies this human life and has a share in this genuine human experience...Divinity and humanity are so intimately bound together in his being that they interpenetrate, with the exception of only those places where the fulness of one would constrain the fulness of the other and would cause harm to it. Aside from that, the two live in one another in a perfect vitality; God takes on perfectly the man united with him, and he who was made man is permitted to live in God.  

Letter to the Colossians,  commentary by Adrienne von Speyr   pp 77. 78

Dialogue on Charity, Part Two

This is the second part of my dialogue with Fr. Giussani's thoughts on charity, love, friendship, and Christ. Although each part can stand alone, it may be helpful to read this in conjunction with Part One, written on Jan 4th of this year. The Bold print is his text, the Italic print is my reflection.

b. Friendship

 Using friendship as one's point of departure and as the final goal, with all the ambiguity that this encompasses, is also incomplete. 

Ambiguity...What ambiguity? The ambiguity of making too much out of friendship? I never thought about it, but it seems true that making friendship the be all and end all of one's life ("one's point of departure and...final goal") warps friendship. It goes from beautiful to ugly, though it may keep the same name. The beauty of friendship is the love that takes friends out of themselves towards their common passion. Friendship implies an acceptance of the other as the other is, and the sharing of yourself as you are, while each goes beyond the individual self towards that which entrances them both.  But if  friendship is narcissistic, if I have to buy into your lies and delusions in order to be accepted by you, or you have to swallow mine to be my friend, then at best our so-called friendship is just an arrangement of convenience, convenient complicity, not a mutually enriching sharing of selves. Somehow, love for the true, good and beautiful, love for what is greater than we are, is integral to friendship.

Friendship is a correspondence that one may or may not find: it becomes the road to our destiny, but not the end itself. 

Correspondence...again, a word that I did not associate with friendship, but yes, it describes the way two or more genuine friends fit one another. There is a correspondence, a mutuality, a trusting, open communication that cannot be foreseen or planned. They share what they see and in doing so, each sees opens the eyes of the other a bit more. When friendship happens, it is a surprise, a mysterious, beautiful gift.  Another provocative idea: "friendship"becomes the road to our destiny".What does that mean?  I can say Christ is the "Way", or road to our destiny. So, somehow friendship means we are involved not just with each other, but with a Love and Truth that are greater than we are? In that sense, we who are friends are pulled toward a Love that is our final end. Is that what Giussani means?

2   To freely go out to others, to share a little of their life and to put in common a little of ours, enables us to discover a sublime and mysterious thing (one understands in doing it). 

Exactly what "sublime and mysterious thing" is it that we come to understand "in doing it? Maybe this is the response to what I was just asking about the "road to our destiny". It seems to be going beyond ourselves,  the freely willed, freely given, gift of ourselves in friendship, that is "sublime and mysterious", because there is nothing artificial about it, nothing coercive, or manipulative. It is given unconditionally, and it is sublimely beautiful in the reciprocation.  I think that is what Giussani means.

It is the discovery of the fact that precisely because we love them, it is not we who make them happy. Who is the reason for everything? Who made everything? God.

 

We find happiness in the gift of friendship, in the entering into it. But we didn't make it happen. God did, when we went beyond ourselves.Or perhaps more accurately: his Spirit opened us to one another so we could receive his love in our sharing, even though we thought we were in charge of the process.

So Jesus is not only He who announces to me the truest word, who explains the law of reality, He is no longer only the light of my mind: I discover that Christ is the meaning of my life. 

Again words that have so much packed into them. How does Christ explain "the law of reality"? What is "the law of reality"?  The law of the gift. I am gift. My life is gift. At every moment I am receiving the gift of my being. To enter into the reality that I am, I have to give myself away. Christ does more than illuminate and inspire me with his truth. Self gift is what I am meant to be, and the more I give myself I will find that I have more to give. Not because I am inexhaustible, but because the Divine Giver who made me replenishes what little I give of my weak limited self, and makes me capable of more giving. 

The witness of those who have experienced this value is very beautiful: "I will continue to do charitable work because of all my sufferings and all of theirs have meaning."

The value is in the giving, whether it is reciprocated or not, whether it brings immediate joy or not, whether it makes me feel fulfilled or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. The result is beyond our control.

Hoping in Christ, everything has meaning: Christ. 

What matters is that our going beyond ourselves, our self gift, is what conforms us to him. This means that whatever suffering we go through in loving and giving of ourselves will bring us to the fullness of joy in Christ. 

I discover this, finally, in the place where I do charitable work, precisely by means of  the final powerlessness of my love; it is the experience in which the intelligence discovers wisdom, true culture. 

The charitable work done in powerless self-gift helps us see how an environment of goodness and love is created. This "culture" isn't programmable or technologically induced, it is the fruit of love. This seems to be what the apostles did, what missionaries do, what disciple of Christ do everyday. Their self gift proclaims the One who is greater than they, and plants the seed of his presence in the world among different people. In his time, it grows into a sub-culture, then perhaps a culture, an even a civilization of love. 

Dialogue on Charity - Part One

(In reading different reflections Fr. Giussani wrote,  I sometimes dialogue with his text, as a way of getting at the truth his thoughts contain. Often this process illuminates his meaning for me, and awakens more questions. No matter what,  it always gets me thinking in a fresh, new way. The Italic print is my musing and questioning, the bold print is Fr. Giussani's reflection.)

Fr. Giussani, what is the root meaning of charity? I know Christ commands us to love God above all, and neighbors as ourselves, but what does that mean for me concretely? 

 

I am able to understand the word "charity" when I remember that the Son of God, loving us did not send us His riches (as He was able to do), and revolutionize our situation: instead He became poor like one of us. He "shared" our nothingness. We do charitable work in order to live like Christ. 

Your last sentence  makes me sit up and take notice: "We do charitable work in order to live like Christ". I know that Christ "shares our nothingness", as you put it. But I am used to thinking of charity as caring about another, or doing good to another, or fixing situations and making them better. I would never have come up with the conclusion you did, namely that in order to live like Christ we have to do charitable work. I would have concluded we have to go out and start caring for people. 

What about all the needs people have,  what about the obvious need to fix society, to make things better, to eliminate poverty and injustice? Why not start addressing all those needs, instead of living like Christ?

Consequences 1.Charity is the law of being and comes before  natural likes and dislikes, and feelings. Therefore we can "do for others" while lacking any enthusiasm. There may very well be no so-called concrete result. For us the only "concrete" attitude is attention to the person, that is, love for him. All the rest can come as a consequence: like Jesus who only after He manifested his love, performed miracles and fed the hungry. 

Again, you surprise me. I always thought of charity as the "law of doing", not as the "law of being", as you put it.  I probably think that way because we can "be" but not "love". In us humans, being and loving are not one and the same thing. But yes, in Christ being and loving are one and the same. In Him, the act of being, the act of being with us as a man, the act of being present with us in the Eucharist,  - is all an act of love. By being present with us he is loving us, even before He reaches out and does something.

 The rest of your sentence also jolts me:  " 'charity' comes before natural likes, dislikes, and feelings". That's a statement I would never have been able to formulate, and yet it makes so much sense to me once I see it written there. God's charity comes to us, and is with us and in us, even before our natural likes and dislikes, because our existence is a gift of his love, just as our sustenance is. Our lives are tangible, visible, manifestations of his love, even if we are not always capable of "feeling" that way.

 I can operate on the basis of my "natural likes and dislikes",   or my "feelings" of the moment. They are usually what move me to do, or not do, something for others. But you are saying that these natural inclinations don't matter,  my moods don't matter, because these things are not the starting point. Christ is our starting point. I am faithful to Him when I love no matter how I feel.

We must note two initial points which are not usually clear regarding our openness to others:  

          a. Meeting the needs of others: 

This is an insufficient starting point and motive. What is the real need of another? This way of viewing things is unclear, because it depends on what we believe to be others' needs. But what if that which I bring is not truly what the other needs? I do not know what the other truly needs, nor can I measure or possess it. It is a measure I do not possess,  measure that is in God. Therefore laws and systems of justice can be oppressive, if they forget or attempt to substitute for the only concrete reality that exists: the person, and love for that person.

Again, the way you formulate your thought is fresh and new: The real need of the other is something I cannot measure, because the measure is not in me but in God. What I have to do is be open and present to the person instead of imposing my ideology or system on him as a solution to his problems.

          b. Friendship 

Using friendship as one's point of departure and as the final goal of one's action, with all the ambiguity this encompasses, is also incomplete. Friendship is a correspondence that one may or may not find: it becomes the road to our destiny, but not the end in itself.

Again, a startling formulation. Friendship is not the origin of my charity, nor its goal, living like Christ is.  Being open to and present to others may or may not result in friendship. That doesn't matter, because my "success", if that is the word I should use, is not in getting others to be my friend, but live with them as Christ did.

Giussani: Christ, fount of living water

If to clean a course of water full of debris, we decide to isolate the debris, piece by piece, extracting one twig at a time, we will get a stiff neck and a good case of lumbago, and will never manage to get he job done. We should instead allow the river to flow to its mouth. If we aim for the mouth, the debris will gradually be deposited along the banks. The apostles followed Christ for who He was. They were attracted to Him. They did not rid themselves of their faults before following Him. They went after Him just as they were, and as they did so, their debris gradually settled along the banks. 

Luigi Giussani

Zaccheus encounters Christ

          In our second reading today, St. Paul talks about people who are overly concerned about the Second Coming of Christ as well as the end of the world. Both events certainly will happen someday but, as the second reading says, there are always people always think the end is just around the corner. Paul tells them (and us) not to believe every exciting tidbit that they hear. Paul tells them not to over-react to everything that is allegedly from him and other authorities of the faith. Be careful of what you get second  or third hand.

          To me, this seems incredibly appropriate for our own day. People hear something that allegedly our Pope has said, but it has been twisted like a pretzel by whomever they are hearing it from. Yet people are likely to take it as gospel more than the actual Gospel. In our culture, we are often getting a second or third hand account from some organization whose purpose it is to constantly attack our Church. The organization claims to be conveying a brand new message from our pope, and this misinformation is believed more readily than the truth the pope said, because his whole message in context is not accurately quoted. People get excited over misinformation all the time.

          This is what happens to me practically after every news report about the pope: I get a phone call or an email saying, “Hey I heard the pope is changing what the Church teaches on A, B, or C. As soon as I hear someone say that phrase, “changing the Church’s teaching” without giving an explanation how the change fits with everything that came before, I know something got mis-communicated. When you read (or hear somewhere) just a few sentences without context claiming to be some new church teaching or policy, and your inner alarm system goes off, because this new message is completely out of character with the Church, what do you do, what should I do, - check it out!

          This is exactly what Zaccheus does in the gospel today. Zaccheus had heard of Jesus. We don’t know exactly what he had heard about Christ, but whatever it was, Zaccheus know he had to check it out for himself, and not believe the interesting but contradictory stories. To his joy and surprise, Zaccheus discovered that Jesus was new and different. Jesus saw through him at a glance! Not only that, Jesus did not turn away from him in disgust, but looked on him with love! Incredible! That had never happened to Zaccheus before!

       Everyone in town who knew Zaccheus looked at him with hate, because he was gouging their money out of them, sending the legislated tribute to Rome, and living most comfortably off the surplus he, Zaccheus, had milked them out of. People would spit on the ground and turn away in scorn rather than exchange cordial greetings and engage him in small talk, never mind visit him or invite him to their homes! As a tax collector Zaccheus was a pariah, and he knew it.

      What was it that moved him to make a fool of himself in front of everyone by climbing a tree to see Jesus?  Maybe it was curiosity, or perhaps Grace stirring his soul, but experienced by him as curiosity? Whatever moved him, what Zaccheus did was surprising and inexplicable to the rest of the crowd around him. He sought a personal encounter with Christ, He wanted to see the face of this Jesus, see him as close up as he could. He had no idea what the results would be.

      He didn’t know beforehand that Christ’s glance would penetrate him, make him feel naked, yet not naked and ashamed,  but not just naked and exposed in all his sinfulness, but loved and forgiven, called and pardoned! It was unbelievable, but it was real. This was a look of love that cleansed him and accepted him even as it exposed him to himself. Christ also put that cleansing look of love into words and called him by name: “Zaccheus, come down! I must stay at your house tonight. I want to pay you a visit. Will you put me up? Will you let me in? Can I come and dwell with you?”

The crowd was stunned. So much so that they voiced their shock: “Birds of a feather flock together. If he is going to the house of that scumbag, well, just what does that tell you about him?!" They didn’t know what had taken place in the encounter between Christ and Zaccheus. But Zaccheus knew. He had been made new. That’s why he unashamedly speaks with a changed heart and promises to give his ill gotten gains away. He has to witness to the merciful love he has just received.

So do I; so do you. So do all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ. We need to take a page from the book of Pope Francis, and speak out of the love Christ has poured into us. Perhaps it would be a good thing for us to take the necessary step to have an in-your-face, personal encounter first?

Memory, Identity, and Eucharist

Memory is the faculty which models the identity of human beings at both a personal and collective level. In fact it is through memory that our sense of identity forms and defines itself in the personal psyche.... Christ was acquainted with this law of memory and he invoked it at the key moment of his mission. When he was instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper, he said: "Do this in memory of me" (Hoc facite in mean commemorationem: Luke 22:19). Memory evokes recollections. The Church is, in a certain sense, the "living memory" of Christ: of the mystery of Christ, of his Passion, death, and resurrection, of his Body and Blood. This "memory' is accomplished through the Eucharist. It follows that Christians, as they celebrate the Eucharist in memory of their Master, continually discover their own identity. The Eucharist highlights something more profound and at the same time more universal - it highlights the divinization of man and the new creation in Christ...It allows man to understand himself deeply, within the definitive perspective of his humanity...it allows him to understand the history of language and culture, the history of all that is true, good and beautiful".

Memory and Identity, Pope John Paul II, pp. 144, 145

John Paul II: priest, poet, philosopher and *prophet*

How may ways can you see the following prophetic statements by John Paul II coming true in the USA, never mind globally? The first part is from an address made in 1976 at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. The second part was said in answer to a question about the Third Secret of Fatima in Fulda Germany in 1980.

1.We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of American Society, nor the wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up and face courageously....

2.We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your prayers and my prayers, it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed. How many times has the Church sprung from the shedding of blood? This time too, it will not be otherwise....

Blessed John Paul  II, Magnificat Magazine,  pp 308, 9

Liberal State (professed) neutrality on Religion ends up as State-imposed Secularism.

.....At the core of Dignitatis Humanae, translated as "The Dignity of Man", is the crucial observation that "the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person" (DH 2). In other words, man's ultimate search for meaning belongs to his very nature. Religious freedom is not a right that is given, or one right among many, but one that is essential to his humanity. Fr. Antonio Lopez...defined culture as "embodied religion". Fr. Lopez explained that  "the horizon of meaning that gives form to social life is rooted in that search for the ultimate, unifying meaning of existence whose full expression we call religion." Referring to Fr. Luigi Giussani, Fr. Lopez emphasized that religion, or man's innnate "religiosity", is not simply "one activity among many, [but] a permanent dimension through which man full expresses his own nature."

     For the Christian, the constitutive experience of religiosity is even more radical because "the event of Christ incarnates the ultimate truth that man's religiosity constantly seeks, Fr. Lopez continued, and demands a free relationship with Christ who is the answer to his ultimate meeting. The Christian belongs to Christ, and understands himself only in relation to Him. Without Christ, the Christian loses himself. To be free, for the Christian, is to be in relationship with Christ. ......As pointed out by Cardinal Scola...through a pre- recorded video, this is the very dimension of man which the modern democratic liberal State is now determined to suppress, even in America.  

TRACES Magazine pp 42, 43 Free to be Ourselves

The Christ Witness of the Priest

......What is the first condition for bringing Christ to others? Bringing a real man or a real woman. Bringing Christ to others implies bearing witness to them that, in my experience, he responds to my humanity: Christ is the response to the needs of our humanity.

     For the priest, a lived belonging to Christ as the one Sent by the Father (John 20:21) is the exhaustive definition of his own personality (Galatians 2:20). "[The priest's ] life and ministry" - I said in a communique of the 1995 international symposium of the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome - "are thus a response to a real, historical, and existential Event: he is consumed  by the love of Christ, crucified and risen (2 Cor 5:41 ff.)." This consuming love makes us participate in the mission for which he came, died and rose again: that everyone who lives no longer lives for himself, but for him who died and was raised for them. This urgency of Christ's love, that ensures the memory of God's love for human persons, is the goal toward which all our desire and all our activity tend. 

   quoted from the "Afterword", by Luigi Giussani, in Together on the Road, by Massimo Camisasca,  pp. 118,9

Christ Receives Himself in the Eucharist?!

Aquinas makes an observation in his commentary on Hebrews which made me sit up and take notice, (probably because I tend to not notice what he, Thomas Aquinas, notices!)  He is speaking of Christ as a partaker of the same flesh and blood we are, and exploring what that means. 

He says: It included the possibility of suffering, because he assumed our nature capable of suffering. Because we are persons, then, we suffer. Suffering is built into our human nature as part of what we in substance are.  It is built into the flesh and blood of Christ too, since he shares our human nature. 

 So far so good, I found all of that logical and consistent. Christ, in his person, is the Word made flesh. So suffering is built into his nature. Fine. But then Thomas goes a step further. He says there is another way to understand how Christ is flesh and blood:

“By flesh and blood can also be understood the flesh and blood of Christ according to the statement:  he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood (John6:55)…of which the apostles partook at the Last Supper, and of which Christ partook, as Chrysostom expressly says about Matthew 26: he drank his own blood. Hence, with desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer." (Luke 22: 15) There is is. Chrysostom saw it, Matthew saw it. Luke saw it. Aquinas saw it. John saw it. How come I had read it a thousand times and I had never seen it? He  drank his own blood ! How can Aquinas toss off a gem like that so casually?

The two Scriptural quotations from Matthew and Luke amazed me. I had never thought about it that way. Christ went to communion along with his disciples at the Last Supper!  When he did that, he was eating his own flesh and blood, his humanity and divinity, in the sacrament of the Eucharist. But what did that mean? Why did he do that? What was the significance of the act for him?

(Questions suggest themselves once Thomas makes me sit up and take note. But answers never come as easily as questions. Even when they do come, they are not always right.)

I always thought the quote from Luke 22:15 cited by Thomas (with desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer) simply meant that Christ was eager to get into his suffering and death, perhaps eager to get it over with, or simply anxious to start things moving, for the sake of our redemption. Now it seemed to mean more.

How do Luke’s words help us understand why Christ would receive his own flesh and blood in Holy Communion? Our Lord does nothing without a purpose, we know that. The complete depths of his actions are beyond our limited understanding; we know that too.  He, the person, as well as his words and his acts, measure us: we don’t measure them. But we try to dig into them for all we can get, and beg that his grace stretch our minds and hearts so we can begin to receive what he is offering us.

What is he doing when he goes to communion with the disciples? We are what we eat, the truism says.  It looks like he is taking his sacrificial act, his outpouring of his life on the cross, and by eating it,  is accepting it, embracing it,  and surrendering to it. By consuming it, he makes it part of who he is, part of his human nature.  He is embedding it in his human nature so that when we and the disciples receive him in the Eucharistic Bread, he can embed his capacity of loving self sacrifice in us. Our Lord knows that being self-gift may come to him naturally because it is who he is supernaturally,  but self-giving is not something I am inclined to do by  my nature! 

Divine/human self-gift is how he is embodied in the Bread of Life. Certainly, he could not be giving himself in sacrifice without pouring out all that he is as the Father’s gift to us. But it is new for me to think of him receiving communion so he can embed that self giving act into his human flesh/bread, as a way of communicating it to us, and make us capable of living his sacrifice in our flesh. Yet it makes sense to me, because that is the only way I could ever even consider obeying his next, outrageously  impossible command at the Last Supper: ” Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Giussani on Mystery

I came across the following quotation  in Magnificat magazine. There, it is presented as a meditation on Holy Saturday. As I was getting into it, a seminarian entered the chapel to water the plants, and I said to him, "Listen to this", and began to read aloud to him what had delighted me. He smiled as he listened, and nodded agreement. It was a fragile moment of communion, connection,  that brought home even more the truth and beauty of what I was reading. Giussani amazes me because he is able to put into words, better than a theologian, or a poet, the spark of the Mystery Present that gives life and joy to human friendship, marriage, community, and  Church.

If we stifle the Mystery as a dimension of our relationship with people and things, all reality becomes like a game: it falls to pieces - looks and hands split it into parts that have no connection to each other....

    The alternative in life is between the response to the Mystery which we are called to give, and living according to the rule of "whatever I like." The task that has been given to us is for us and, as an example, for the world; this task is for the world. Christ, alone, died to call the world back to the fact of the Father; thus, no matter how few we are, we are called to this task to call the world back.  There is no middle ground between the task and "whatever I please."

     During the night of Holy Saturday, the fact occurred that saves human existence from the confused tremble to which it could seem destined and lifts it up towards a festive task....

      Reality is already in the hands of the one who conquered it, who won it back to himself. All of reality is his creation, to the point that the meaning of reality is his person. In him everything consists. To us falls the task to show it to everyone, to declare it, because it is something that is.

      We are not meaningless pieces. Our life is not a game! What has begun in our life is a construction....It is the relationship with the Mystery, the relationship with destiny, the relationship with happiness that makes us radically original, like a totally different world, in this world. That everything should come together in a unity without confusion, in a harmony, in a song, in a symphony - this is truly another world.....

     Everything is ordered towards a purpose, a beauty, so in our lives what gives meaning and purpose to everything, what recreates a harmony, has entered in. 

It is a companionship that, above all,  opens up this perspective. It is a companionship for the world, a companionship that opens up, adopting the same perspectives as Christ's, that is to say, the redemption of the world, to shout the happiness the world is waiting for; to shout what the world is made of and to shout the world's destiny, ....that little by little invades everything.

The meaning of life for all peoples, indeed for all of reality, is borne in this people.

Magnificat, Holy Week 2013,  pp.197, 198

Peter and John's love for Christ.

John 13:8 Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet!"

In this posting,  we are going to bounce back and forth from John to Peter, from Peter to John, seeing them both through the eyes of Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on St. John's Gospel. There Thomas meditates on their relationship to Christ, and Christ's relationship to them. Feel free to add your own responses to Aquinas', just as I do , in italics, with mine. See what the reading tells you about Peter and John, about Aquinas, and about you and me.

Peter

1753 If you ask why Peter was the first to object, Origen replies that this was due to the intense love Peter had for Christ.The other disciples had a certain respectful awe and fear of Christ, and so complied without question to everything he did. But Peter, more aflame with love... and taking confidence from this love, refuses to comply and asks to know why: "A true friend will act as your equal and assume authority in your household." [Sirach 6:11] This is why in Scripture Peter often asks for explanations and does not hesitate to say what he thinks best. He thinks his friendship gives him a right to speak up!

1758 Peter says, You shall never wash my feet! He is saying in effect: By no means will I submit to this from my Teacher, my Lord and my God!  And although Peter said this out of zeal, it was an imprudent and disordered  zeal...His zeal was disordered for three reasons. He refused something that was beneficial and necessary...it seemed to indicate a certain disrespect for Christ by wanting to go against his plans. Finally it seemed to disparage his companions in that the others, according to Origen, yielded to Christ without an argument...Peter thinks he knows better than everybody else, even Christ! Sure, I can identify with that!

1761 Peter's words indicate his intense love for Christ. as well as an intense thick head. Before, when our Lord said to him, What I am doing you do not know now, he had intimated that it would be useful; yet Peter paid no attention to this, He doesn't listen, or he listens to the words, but doesn't let their meaning sink in  and could not be persuaded to have his feet washed. But when Our Lord warned him it would mean they would no longer be together, saying, you have no part in me, Peter offered more than just his feet, saying, Lord not my feet only, but also my hands and my head! For Peter was frightened by this answer and affected by love and fear, he offered all of himself for washing. Clement tells us in his Itinerary that Peter was so touched by the physical presence of Christ, whom he loved so intensely, that after the Ascension, when he recalled the sweetness of Christ's presence, he wept so much that his cheeks appeared to be furrowed. Nah, Clement is stretching too far to reach that conclusion. Maybe after Pentecost Peter would have felt that way, but not after the Ascension.

John

1804 John here mentions three things about himself. First, the love he had for Christ as he rested on him...Secondly he intimates his knowledge of mysteries, which were made known to him by Christ, and especially for the writing of this Gospel...Thirdly he mentions the special love Christ had for him, saying, whom Jesus loved, not exclusively but in a way above the others...I bet some of the other guys were jealous, even envious, of John's relationship. Oddly, Peter isn't.

For the present it is enough to say that John was more loved by Christ for three reasons.  First, because of the cleanliness of his purity: for he was a virgin when chose by he Lord, and always remained so: "He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as a friend." Secondly because of the depths of his wisdom, for he saw further into the secrets of God than others; and so he is compared to an eagle...Thirdly because of the great intensity of his love for Christ:"I love those who love me"( Prv 8:17) 

Peter

1805  Then when he says, so Simon Peter beckoned to him John mentions what led him to question Christ. ...

1806 Since everywhere in the Gospels, Peter is always presented as bold and as the first to speak out because of his fervent love, why is he now keeping silent? It does seem out of character. All of a sudden he is being discreet? Chrysostom gives three reasons for this. One is that Peter had just been reprimanded by our Lord for not allowing him to was his feet...As a result, he preferred not to bother our Lord just now. After getting slapped down, he figured he should keep his mouth shut. Another reason is that Peter did not want our Lord to reveal this openly so that others could hear it. I doubt it. Peter wouldn't give a damn about who heard what. Peter's just smart enough to recognize John's special relationship to Christ and figures he can take advantage of it. Wonder if he realizes that Christ knows what he is doing? The third reason is mystical. John signifies the contemplative life, and Peter the active life. Yes! Bingo! Beautiful! John is mysticism, contemplative knowledge through co-natural love. Peter is action, a working knowledge that lives out the knowing in active doing. This fits in perfect with Von Speyr's vision of Peter and John, Peter representing hierarchy and John representing love.

1817  A question arises here. Since Our Lord had indicated to John who the traitor was, saying it is he to whom I shall give this bread when I have dipped it, and then gave it to Judas, the disciples seem to have been exceedingly dull yeah, huhuhuhuh, ya think?! not to have understood what he just said. I answer that Our Lord said this privately to John in order not to reveal the betrayer. The reason for this being that Peter loved Christ so fiercely that had he been certain that Judas was about to betray him, he would have quickly killed him.

1818 Since John himself was one of those at the dinner, why did he say: no one at the table knew why he said this to him? Yes.., true...everyone else there would have heard. Maybe Christ whispered this to him, or said it sotto voce, so no one else could hear? Jesus tells at least John what is happening, but why tell even him? Why not say it is none of his business? I answer that it is usual for one who is good and without evil to believe that others also are without evil. Geez, Aquinas must be pretty good and without evil to think that way. I would never have come up with that conclusion. Now John was extremely good and never consider becoming a betrayer.  Thus he never suspected that another disciple would commit such a great crime. Hah! I would have started suspecting everybody, maybe  even accusing them, to divert attention away from myself.

Commentary on the Gospel of John, Thomas Aquinas

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/John 13.htm

The Masculine Love of John for Christ

John 13: 23 One of his disciples lay on Jesus' breast, the one whom Jesus loved.

John "places himself in a completely different relationship to the Lord from that of the other disciples. The others are still wholly caught up in themselves, enclosed in their own spheres...John, on the contrary,  rests on Jesus' breast....He knows only one thing and it fills his whole soul: the Lord loves him, and he lets himself be loved by the Lord. That is the single content of his life; that is his office.

...the hierarchical Church, for which the sacraments were instituted, and which is their steward, does not exclude the Church of love. with its immediate contact between loving souls and the Lord. 

    Why does the Lord permit this uttermost sign of  love: resting on his breast? Is it because he himself is man? Or is it because John is a lover? Both reasons are valid.  The Lord is a human, and every human being needs tangible love.

...But neither the Lord's love nor John's love has a purpose at this moment. although the purposes of love are fulfilled, love rests entirely in itself, having its own meaning in itself. John symbolizes love  as Peter does office. Both were called from the very beginning. Since then, Peter has been singled out in many respects. but here John is clearly given preference. It shows that such love for the Lord really exists, and that it takes this form. This is made evident to all, without the others feeling set aside. For John embodies the love of all. He is love becoming visible. One sees in him what love is. The Lord condescends to this form of loves' expression so that the others will recognize love in it.

Here John is at the same time the first priest, and as such an incitement to love. He shows that the priestly office, far from excluding the office of love, rather has love as its center. As long as a priest does not venture to lay his head on the Lord's breast, his love is not yet completely given. What John, the model, does, is perfect self-giving in love, resting in love, in a love that is not continually doing and demanding, but ultimately simply love, and rests in love.

John also represents masculine love without the slightest trace of disorder; the love between men who share the same orientation in their work and tasks, looking in the same direction, but then turning at times to each other and resting with each other, beyond office and work. The Lord wants us to seek and see not only restless intensification in love; he wants us to find the fulfillment of love as well. We should allow ourselves this time of fulfillment and not distort the growth and the always-more of Christian life into a kind of athletic achievement.  This generosity, which gives itself time and takes a break, is likewise masculine.

John: The Farewell Discourses Adrienne Von Speyr Vol. III pp. 47, 48    Ignatius Press

Prayer to Mary, by de Grandmaison

Holy Mary,  Mother of God, 

preserve in me the the heart of a child, 

pure and clean like spring water; 

a simple heart that does not remain absorbed in its own sadness;

a loving heart that freely gives with compassion;

a faithful and generous heart that neither forgets good nor feels bitterness  for any evil. 

Give me a sweet and humble heart that loves without asking to be loved in return,

happy to lose itself in the heart of others,

sacrificing itself in front of your Divine Son;

a great and unconquerable heart, which no ingratitude can close and no indifference can tire;

by a heart tormented  by the glory of Christ,

pierced by his love with a wound that will not heal until heaven.

Life Promises Life, by Vincent Nagle, p.26

Christ Happens to Me Now!

      The following is a running reflection on two paragraphs from an address by Fr. Julian Carron entitled "Christ Is Something That Is Happening To Me Now". It was published in TRACES  magazine, and first delivered at the presentation Fr. Luigi Giussani's book At The Origin of The Christian Claim in Milan on Jan. 25, 2012. The address in its entirety can be found  on the Communion and Liberation website, in English and Spanish. I read the whole article twice, slowly, before it began to sink in, and the two short paragraphs below several times more before their depths started to unfold. You might benefit from reading the bold print only,  before reading my thoughts on the text, which are in italics. How does Christ happen to you?


     "In order for man to be able to grasp fully what Jesus Christ means, he has to stand before Him with all his humanity. That means me, of course, and you. I have to stand before Him with "all of my humanity". How in the world do I do that when I scarcely know myself and am far from fully aware of myself? 

Without this humanity, without this attentive, tender, and impassioned awareness of myself, I will not be able to recognize Christ. Why? Why won't I be able to recognize Him? Why must I have this "attentive, tender. and impassioned awareness of myself"? Why isn't my normal, distracted, strung out, rough, unfeeling self enough for recognizing Him?

The reason is simple - because Christ presents Himself as an answer to what I am. I like that. He is the answer to what I am. I am a human being. But as a human being I am not fully alive. Nor can I say that I am totally  fulfilled, in spite of all the help psychology and technology give me. I  am a puzzle to myself,  a question that I cannot answer, an unknown. So my temptation naturally is to think there is no answer, instead of thinking that He is the answer.

Without this awareness, even the name of Jesus Christ ends up becoming merely being a name. I end up reducing Him when I  approach Him as if  my humanity were the measure of Him, instead of acknowledging Him as the full measure of me.
     
        It's hard to find a higher estimation of the person than that offered by Christianity. Hard? That word isn't strong enough. 'Impossible' would be better. I defy you to find a 'estimation of the person' anywhere that is 'higher' than Christ's.

Christ does not mean to secretly enter into a person's life, as if taking advantage of a distraction. He is not going to slip in on me when I'm not looking, or take me over in a moment of weakness when I let my guard down.

He wants to enter a man's life through the main door, passing through his humanity, a fully conscious humanity, made of reason and freedom. Wow! a humanity, a human being, (me, you) that doesn't use reason and freedom to become as conscious as it can is less than human, is subhuman!

Christ submits Himself to scrutiny by man's inborn criterion, his heart. Okay, now think I see where he is going: to the heart of the matter, the human heart, my core, what is deepest in me, where my reason, freedom, and His Grace meet in my yes and become one, or where I say no and we separate. Coming into me any other way would be an invasion, an intrusion, or a takeover.

Without this scrutiny, there is no Christian experience, and Christianity would have no chance of succeeding. If I do not scrutinize Him, examine, question, and explore, ask and seek and knock, ponder and wonder, with all that is in me, I am doing Him and me and injustice, treating both of us as less than we are, and giving Him less than his due.

The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out the reason clearly:'Nothing is more unbelievable than the answer to a question that is not asked'. Proposing Him as the answer to humanity makes Him an irrelevant, preposterous, transcendental cliche, if He is not happening to me now. If  I am  not reaching out to Him with all the reason and freedom of my head and heart, then He is only a historical footnote from the past, an abstract value I try to live by, but not really my Lord. I show his irrelevancy to me when the empty way I mouth His name reveals He has no place in my life.