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.

Mary's Hidden Words

Mary spoke very little.  The silence in which she concealed herself reveals the Son’s word all the better. She lets Him speak, and yet in His Word hers is also hidden.

Mary and her Son walk side by side in such a way that there is always room for both; there is never any need for one or the other to step aside.

Because the only thing I can do is love, I turn my eyes to you sinners, and all I can think of is the birth of my Son, for which I thank you. At the same time I do not see my path or suffering, but only His future path. If it were not for your sin, I would not have had to say my fiat, and so I would have been left without Him. For His sake, then I can look away from Him and look gratefully upon you. And by doing that I can give Him wholly to you, and so, to the Father, so that the Word might be fulfilled.

He came in order to forgive as savior and judge, to give the gift of His grace, to walk the path of suffering, and to take your sins upon Himself. But I can only love, dwell in Him; and because I have received the divine Son through you sinners, on your account, I can love you in God, even as the sinners you are.

Through you I love Him, and through Him I love you.

Lumina/New Lumina,  pp.50-51    Adrienne Von Speyr,  Ignatius Press

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. 

Giussani: On Friendship

...love creates reciprocity, generates reciprocity. This, in the Mystery, is nature. The nature of Being revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth as love in friendship, that is as love acknowledged. Thus the mirror of the Father is the Son, the infinite Word, and in the infinite mysterious perfection of this acknowledgement - in which vibrates for us the infinite mysterious beauty of the Origin of Being, of the Father (Splendor Patris) - proceeds the mysterious creative power of the Holy Spirit. Now, the "I", the human "I", made in the image and likeness of God, reflects originally the Mystery of the one and triune Being, proper to the dynamism of freedom, whose law will therefore be love, and the dynamism in which this love is lived can be nothing else but friendship. 

You or about Friendship, pp. 17-18  Luigi Giussani

Astounding. To think that friendship in its perfect from is the Trinity, and that our human friendships are a participation in the triune love!

Speyer: The Church

".....The Church does not function, after all, in the manner of a sieve,  which would sift the good from the bad, would effect a strict selection; but more like a melting pot into which everything is thrown together and makes an effort to live from God's grace. The Church is vested with grace. She lives from the grace of the living Lord, but no less from the grace of the Father, who gives her his sanction, and the grace of the Spirit, who blows through her. She is the locus of an encounter with eternity, indeed,  quite actually the locus of the beginning of life, the beginning of eternity in the midst of time. Man is drawn into this origin, shaken to the core in it and converted, enriched, and at the same time made poorer. Within it he gauges constantly anew what the Lord is, what distance separates him from sinners; he comes to feel his own powerlessness, sees also the consummate powerlessness of the Lord, which is the source of all grace, and understands that there can be no comparison between the two. And yet he knows that his existence in the Church is nothing but grace and love, and that even the feeling of his powerlessness is an instance of the Lord's grace, a gift in view of his poverty, and a sign by which the Father recognizes him."

The Countenance of the Father, Adrienne von Speyr, p.103 Ignatius Press

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For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S. Lewis (Part Two)

(Please read Part One, the previous posting,  to pick up the train of thought.)

M: Sorry to break off our dialogue so abruptly last week, but I ‘m grateful for the chance to continue the discussion.  We were talking about male friendship, and the theory that homosexuality is somehow the basis of every friendship among men.  As I recall, you definitely disagreed.

CSL: “The homosexual theory…seems to me not even plausible.”

M: Yet, historically, it is a fact that some soldiers, warriors, etc. were homosexuals and friends, or homosexual friends.

CSL:  “Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies, it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the relation of the mature Brave and his young armor-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the warpath had, no doubt, something to do with it.”

M:  So, you believe these instances of homosexual friendships are the exception and not the rule, even though the theory would hold otherwise? How can we be sure, either way?

CSL: “ In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by any a priori theory.”

M: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be evidence. What about physical gestures of affection? Are they sufficient evidence?

CSL: “Kisses, tears, and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell  (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up…all pansies? If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

M: Well, today, everything has become believable. Kisses, tears and embraces between men in America today are evidence of homosexuality. I know in some countries men can still hold hands or walk arm in arm, and no one would give it a thought.  But that’s not culturally acceptable between men in the USA, unless you want to be seen as gay. Times sure have changed!

CSL: “On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation.  We, not they, are out of step.

M:   “We not they are out of step?!!   I am surprised to read that. Can’t friendship lead into erotic love? And isn't the converse true as well: can’t Eros lead to friendship?”

CSL:  “But this, far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first in the deep and full sense your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as your lover, you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. "

M:  Hmm, share friendship but keep the erotic love to yourself….What do you see as the difference between friends and erotic lovers?

CSL:” Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends, hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are usually face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest…Friendship is the least biological of our loves…true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth. “

M: That makes a great deal of sense to me, but how do you explain the case of the person who is the clingy, possessive, controlling, possessive friend, or a friend who doesn’t really care about anything, or any cause,  except to collect more and more and more friends? The first case seems to contradict your premise that friendship is side by side, or, directed outward and open; the second, that moving towards a common interest greater than the friends themselves is the unifying factor.

CSL:  “…those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else beside Friends.  Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend’,  no Friendship can arise – though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

M: I agree with your reasoning, although many people today would not. I’m not sure what kind of “Affection” would arise out of a Friendship that isn’t about anything but itself, however.

CSL: “Friendship is utterly free from Affection’s need to be needed. We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary, - and no, for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it, and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love. The stereotyped ‘Don’t mention it’ here perfectly expresses what we really feel.”

 

M: What about the old maxim which says, “A friend in need is a friend indeed?” how does that apply?

CSL: “The mark of a perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.“

M: I have to thank you for these insights. I don'think I ever came across anyone who explained what a beautiful and noble blessing true friendship is as clearly as you did. 

CSL: Don't mention it.

John The Beloved Disciple

John the beloved disciple, when speaking of himself in his Gospel, never calls himself by name, but always identifies himself as “the one whom Jesus loved.”  Usually a name is what gives us some identity as a person. Our first name, and last, points out to others who we are. Of course we are more than those two names put together. An infinite number of other factors could be mentioned to identify us, such as gender, family, nationality, culture, work, friendships, education, etc. Yet no matter how many identifying facts are mentioned, the person I am is never adequately or fully described. We are more than their sum total. Why? It is because at root, and also in the last analysis, our name, who-we-are, is a relationship with the Infinite.

The Ever More (than I am) gave me the gift of life and called me into being. He sustains and maintains me as I journey through this life. He is the goal and destiny of my existence. He is my future right now and will be when there is no longer any such thing as created time. That is why John’s identifying himself as the-one-whom-Jesus-loved fits him as a God-given name, for it is a perfectly complete and full description of all John ever was historically and is now eternally. He is called into being by Love, sustained by Love and inspired by Love as he lives on earth, and taken up into the fullness of Love’s life and light in the Resurrection.

Safe to say, we are defined by our relationships, and especially by our relationship with Christ, the Son of God, in whom for whom and through whom all things are made.He gives consistency to everything. Somehow, our relationships with everyone else are relationships in Him. Ultimately, when all is said and done, how He identifies us, or, our identity in Him, is the only thing that matters.

So John is not emotionally overwrought, nor a sloppy sentimentalist, nor some awestruck hero-worshipper, when he uses his relationship with Christ to explain who he, John, truly is. Relationship with the God-man is the only precisely accurate measure and definition of John, and of each and everyone one of us.

The Twelve are called to be, and to be with one another because they are loved. That is what breaks them out of their self absorption and shapes them into a band of brothers. But it took Pentecost for them to finally understand this. Even after the Resurrection  they were locked into their fears, worries, and anxieties. They wouldn't have hid behind closed doors otherwise. It takes an explosion of the Spirit to make us see that God's love  for us cannot be reduced to an ego possession.

 Obviously Christ's love is is not exclusive nor closed. We are to live our relationship with the Lord in communion with others who have been called and made a decision to follow. Liberation come from the communion.The  very call to exist is a call to relate to others in love. Our existence is meant to be friendship, companionship, and fellowship in the Church as a priestly people. Intellectual knowledge of that wondrous truth is never enough. It has to be Biblical knowing, verification by lived experience. Only the Spirit of Love  can make us capable of that. 

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

Christ's Conception of Life.

"Jesus Christ did not come into the world as a substitute for human effort, for human freedom, or to eliminate human trial - the existential condition of freedom. He came into the world to call man back to the depths of all questions, to his own fundamental structure, and to his own real situation. If certain human values are not safeguarded, all the problems man is called to resolve in the trial of life do not dissolve, but rather become more complicated. Jesus Christ came to call man back to true religiosity, without which every claim to a solution of those problems is a lie. The problem of the knowledge of the meaning of things (truth), making use of things (work), human awareness (love), human co-existence (society and politics), lack a proper formulation, and so, to the extent that religiosity is not at the foundation of the search for their solution, they generate ever greater confusion in the history of the individual and humanity as a whole."

At the Origin of the Christian Claim, Luigi Giussani, p. 97

Three Sisterly Virtues! Three Virtuous Sisters?

         I think most of us have no problem using words to describe what Faith and Love are. Perhaps our descriptions aren’t as complete as they should be, but at least we are able to say what we think about these two virtues. Hope, however, is more difficult for us to talk about, or capture in words. Why? To answer that question, first let’s picture three daughters in a family. I think we will discover that Hope is the middle child, the sister who gets lost between the other two and ends up treated like an orphan.

      The firstborn of the sisters is Faith. Faith never felt neglected, because she was the first (and only) child for a couple of years. Next the second daughter, Hope, arrived. Of course mom and dad loved Hope too, but Hope didn’t get all the attention she needed because a third daughter followed her very soon. Hope’s problem was the third born, Love, (or Charity as her Birth Certificate officially designated her). She got the most care because she was the newest on the scene, the smallest, cutest and the weakest.  Everyone wanted to pick up and cuddle Charity. She was everyone’s focus. Love also was smart enough to see that she had to cover a lot of ground to catch up with her two sisters, so she quickly became aggressive and competitive. Faith was developed enough to stand up to her, but Hope, unfortunately, was not.

      I think this is a good example of the way we believers act towards the virtue of Hope in relation to Faith and Love. Hope becomes “what’s-her-name”, the neglected little girl in comparison to her two sisters. We are apt to express our faith by saying “Yes, I have faith in Jesus Christ. I believe in him; he is true God and true Man. He is my Savior and Redeemer”.  We might also express our love for him by saying “He died for us to pay for our sins, and I am grateful for what he did, so I try to love him, and express my love by serving him.” While not bad, these two declarations sound better than they are.  What’s wrong with them? They lack the depth of a Christ-centered, life commitment. Both declarations are quite feeble; as feeble any newborn whose needs are so great that receiving is its only capability. Our situation would not be bad if our Faith in Christ, and our Love for him, were based on an accurate understanding of our neediness. Since our need is absolute, so should our Faith in Christ and our Love for him be. But we operate under some erroneous assumptions: 1) that we are mature adults, 2) that maturity means self-sufficiency, and 3) therefore  total neediness is not the wellspring of Faith and Love, much less as the source of Hope as well. We could not be more mistaken. Self sufficiency is not the basis for the theological virtues in mature adults. Our total need for Christ is.

       Unless Hope is very alive in our minds and hearts, it is impossible for us to be firmly grounded in Faith and Charity. Hope is not an accidental link between the other two, but is their connection, expression, and continuation. Hope is part of the dance the Spirit is doing in us with all three virtues.  A Faith that doesn’t reach out Hoping for what it believes is dead. Hope that isn’t eagerly seeking, Loving and desiring what it hopes for doesn’t really love it. A Love that doesn’t rejoice in possessing and being possessed by its beloved isn’t worthy of its name. Individually each of the three virtues is a snapshot that catches the Spirit’s movement in us at a different moment. Faith’s outreach, Faith’s spark of self expression, is Hope. Hope’s eager longing fuels Love’s eager longing.  Love possessing and enjoying of what it has believed in and hoped for is the fruition of Faith and Hope.

      Perhaps a more helpful image than the three sisters would be a single child, one little girl, whose natural faith, hope, and love towards her father express the overflow of all she feels in her heart for daddy. Picture, if you will, just one girl in three poses. Imagine the little girl looking at the daddy. Make this, her childlike faith in daddy, snapshot number one. He is the man she believes in. He is no less than godlike in her eyes. He can do everything! He is the strongest, smartest, the most handsome, and the best father there is. She really believes that! (Any father who receives such adulation knows 1) it is unrealistic, 2) he doesn’t deserve it, and 3) that it certainly will not last long, but 4) he cannot help enjoy it while it is there.)

      Next, picture the little girl extending both arms to daddy and saying “Daddy, pick me up, pick me up.” The child’s trusting, demanding, hope in him is snapshot number two. She has no doubt that he will respond to her eager reaching out, because he is so good and she is so irresistible! 

     Snapshot number three is easy to figure out: the love the child enjoys snuggling in his arms.  It is the only place in the whole world she wants to be! Of course, in five minutes she will get restless, start squirming and want to get down, but the contentment she feels in his embrace is real even if short lived.

      On a natural level, the example works. But on a supernatural level, matters are not so simple. Imagine daddy and the girl 1,000 miles apart, for example. She can no longer see him, or stretch out her arm and speak to him, but she still believes in him, trusts him, and longs for him to pick her up and hold her. Her faith and hope and love are real, but they are not easily satisfied as before. Scype and the Internet enable her to speak and see him just as if she was standing next to him, but he cannot bend over and lift her into his arms. Her hope of being picked up goes unsatisfied. Now make the distance not only a matter of time and space, add eternity as well, and have Creator-God replace the created father.  Complexities multiply themselves.  Finally, replace the child with a Christian adult trying to enter into a relationship with God. How does a creature have faith, hope, and love in the Creator?  How does a finite being relate to the Infinite More Than?

       Faith is the door to the Kingdom. Hope is reaching out to open the door and step across the threshold; Love means to step across the threshold and live inside the kingdom. In the Kingdom, Love is Faith and Hope fully satisfied.

      If Faith is the branch on the Tree, then Hope is a nubby bud of wood that starts to grow on that branch.  And Love produces another full grown branch which the budding twig itself becomes.In Spanish, hope has the double meaning of waiting and desiring. Esperar, the verb, and esperanza, the noun, both have that sense, although sometimes one is emphasized at the cost of the other. But one without the other does not seem like hope to me.  When I ask the auto mechanic if he can repair my engine, and he says “I hope so. But wait and see,” well, I go look for another mechanic because this one does not seem up to the task at hand. On the other hand, if he tells me, “This looks complicated because of the wiring, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of tackling the job,” I am inclined to believe he has high hopes of accomplishing the task. Of course, I have to wait and see, but at least I have some reason to hope in him. With the first mechanic, waiting would be a waste of time.

      The point of this example, is that a human hope, a hope in humans, needs a solid basis, a reasonable confidence of being realized, otherwise it has no grounding. On a supernatural level, this is also true; our hope has to have a solid grounding. And it does, the most solid, because it is grounded in God. But for that very reason, it feels ungrounded to us, floundering, and free-floating. This is because hope in God has no immediate realization, no fulfillment in the next few minutes. This does not take away from hope’s solidity and strength, however, but is a testimony to it. Our hope is in the new creation that God is making us into, the new creation we are moving towards in faith and love, the new creation that is anchored and prefigured in Christ Event, the unity of our human flesh with the Risen One who sits at the Father’s right hand.

 

Virtual-itis Part Two: Spectator Mentality

V. Good evening my friend. I am here to continue our conversation.
MC. Hmmmm,  I can see that.  Tell me, why do you come when I am asleep?  
 V. Because your defenses are down, and it is easier to get through to you. During your dreams I have a chance to help you see things a different way and grow in self -knowledge.
MC. Really? I think I am a sensitive, open-minded person. I'm not closed or defensive.
V.True enough in your dreams, perhaps!  But awake? No. When awake you are open, only so long as nothing pulls you out of your Comfort Zone. Take, for example, how much  you embody a spectator mentality. It has become your way of life.
MC. What do you mean by that? What's a 'spectator mentality'?
 V. Your attitude of looking, checking something out, being entertained or amused or turned off by it, but not getting personally involved.  For example, a man says he want to go out and “scope” some girls.  Or, a woman wants to “scope” some guys.  Scoping is done with mild interest or curiosity, but personal detachment.  Even sexual activity does not mean involvement or commitment. That's the spectator mentality you have. You see relationships as useful and convenient, or as useless and therefore inconvenient.  It's a utilitarian approach to life . Love does not come into the picture.  Nor does friendship. 
MC. That seems like common sense to me. It's safer to make acquaintances, not friends. You save yourself a lot of grief. 
V. That's one way a person who has a spectator mentality justifies it to himself. But he actually doesn't save himself grief. By confining yourself to  the immediate false comfort a spectator mentality gives you, you only insure yourself the loneliness, emptiness and grief that you are trying to avoid! In the long run a distant or detached life ends up being a superficial and empty. 
MC. Tell me, this Comfort Zone and spectator mentality you talk about,  are they one and the same thing? 
V. No. Comfort Zone is a general category. Spectator mentality is a specific application. Comfort Zone refers to the parameters within which you operate without getting stressed or strung out. Your personal parameters begin broad but get narrow in.
 MC. How can parameters be broad but narrow too? 
V.Broad in the sense of covering everything superficially, narrow in the sense that any relationship which demands depth gets excluded. In your case,  you look to see what you can get, or what's in it for you, instead of really being open to all a personal relationship can offer.  And you check yourself out as you are doing that.You pride yourself on being superior and knowledgeable in relating to others in order to hide that you are actually afraid. So you end up being controlling, utilitarian and self indulgent You're trying to get without giving. That's your spectator mentality.
MC. That's a serious charge! Got any proof of what you're saying? 
V. Sure. You were at the gym today, remember? After you left the exercise bike and were walking to the weight room, do you recall the young woman walking in front of you? 
MC. Of course!  I had a nice flirtation going. It was fun.
V. Think back to what happened: you were a few steps behind the woman, staring at her buttocks and her walk, when suddenly she turned around and said to you, 'Like what you see?'  Do you remember that?
MC. Yes I do. That's how our conversation got started. I was surprised that she spoke up like that, and I started laughing. 
V. Do you remember why she turned around? Why didn't she keep walking forward in the direction she was going ?
 MC. She had forgotten something, her keys, and had suddenly remembered she left them at the exercise machine. 
V. Right. That's what she told you as you laughed and started to walk back with her. But, more important than the keys was her question if you 'liked what you saw'.
MC.  Why is that important? She  just wanted to know if I found her figure attractive.
V. No. She could already see that by the way she caught you staring at her backside. She  asked her question to see if you would  be embarrassed to admit it
MC. Oh. I didn't catch that. 
V. No you didn't, because you weren't embarrassed, just a little bit surprised because you hadn't expected her to turn around like that.
MC. So what? What does it matter? Don't guys stare at women's bodies all the time? 
V. Yes, but some men see more than a body.They see a person. How you stare is what makes the difference. A look can be based on attraction or calculation. Attraction is a spark of interest that opens doors.  Cold calculation keeps doors firmly shut. Think of a man at the deli counter in a supermarket looking at pork chops and chicken breasts. He's deciding which piece of meat he will take home to eat. That's calculation aiming to satisfy its hunger. Attraction  goes beyond physical hunger and thinks "I would like to get to know this person." 
MC. I know all that stuff! It is the difference between love and lust. Attraction can grow into love but lust doesn't  grow into anything except a self consuming appetite.
V. Of course you know that. You know it theoretically, but not existentially. The distinction is in your head as a concept, but in real life your look is that of a hungry wolf. That's why the woman in the gym chatted with you but declined to go and have a cup of coffee. She sensed what you were interested in. 
MC. That's nonsense. A glance doesn't reveal that much!
V. The glance, the laugh, the charming chit chat about nothing,  all that told her you are not able to be yourself, to let other people into your mind and heart, and that you have no interest in getting into their minds and hearts. All that gave her the message that you were playing her, playing with her, not engaging  in a conversation at a genuine human level. That's why she walked away from you after she picked up her keys.
 MC.I don't agree with you. You're making too much of a casual encounter. 
V.  You're waking up.That's enough conversation for now. I can see I'm hitting a tender spot. Don't worry, when you awaken, you'll be able to brush all this away. 

Karl Stern on Jesus Christ

        1.)   "Someone once remarked that you should try experimentally to live for one day as if the Gospel were true, even if you do not believe it. In the same way I invite you to think of the nature of Man if Christ had been God-Man and died for your and my salvation.The whole study of anthropology as conceived by philosophers and psychologists is at once deepened in a very peculiar way. It is as if a great, but albeit two-dimensional, picture received a third dimension and came to life. If, as Auden once remarked, it is the function of the poet to introduce order into chaos, then God is our poet."

        2.)   "Christianity teaches that the climax of human perfection is to love infinitely and to be able to be hated infinitely. This degree of maturity has been reached perhaps only once in human history, in the person of Jesus Christ."

The Pillar of Fire, Karl Stern, pp. 207- 8;  p. 249

Love: Human and Divine, Created and Creating

 Christian Smith: Love is relating to persons and things beyond the self in a way that involves the purposive action of extending and expending of oneself for the genuine good of others whether in friendship, families, communities, among strangers, or otherwise.

Mars Hill Audio Journal, vol 112, disc 1 track 2


David Schindler: Love is the basic act and order of things. Love is that which first brings each thing into existence, and that in, through, and for which, each thing continues in existence.

Mars Hill Audio Journal. vol 112 disc 1 track 3

 1.  Read both statements, not just for the idea or concept expressed, but asking that the truth they both express may grasp your heart. This means you, or I, as reader, is asking God for the grace to let what is being said penetrate us to the center of our being, our core, or heart of hearts. We are asking that our reading take place at the level of a prayer.
       
 2.The first statement sees love as a human act, something I or you do, our choice, an exercise of our free will. We are the source of the activity, the loving. We are in charge, so to speak. Love depends on our decision. To some degree, that's true. But none of us would be able to love if love were not done to us first.

3.  The first quotation would not be possible for us to enact without the second already being in place.
The second quotation sees love as what God is, or who God is, the Source and Origin of all that is. It calls to mind the Paul's words where he says in Acts "In him we live and move and have our being" (17:28). We have our being in him. We are rooted, or grounded in him. Not just that we are in his grasp like a child is in a parent's arms, but more than that, we we live and move in him, which means he lives and moves in us, much as branches live attached to a vine, or as the sap in a tree flows throughout the whole tree through all the branches. This is more than the soul, the breath of life, the soul God breathes into man.  It is grace,  the movement of the Spirit which energizes us. In him we live and move, because we have our being in him. He sustains us with or without our awareness of him, with or without our cooperation. Unlike a child who can squirm out of his parent's arms and run about, we cannot separate from him even when we deny we are in his arms.

4.The God who is the ground of our being, in whom we live and move, is present in us and through us whether we are aware of Him or not. He is closer to us than our pulse, our breath. He is much closer to us than we are to ourselves.

He, being Creative Love, is the stage on which the drama of our lives is acted out by us. We are somewhat like dancers who perform on the stage floor. We are concerned with our movements, appearance, performance and the applause we hope for, but take for granted the floor which make our dance possible.
Better yet,  God is the context, from which, and in which, we are making the choices that determine our destiny.
The second quotation brings the idea of order into love, which is something we usually do not associate with love. In God, I see love as self-giving: the Father generating the Son from all eternity by giving his own divine nature to the Son. The idea of order usually springs into my mind with the Son, the Logos. the intelligent/intelligible Mystery in whom and through whom all things are made. Surely the self gift of the Father includes the Infinite Wisdom that is in him, otherwise order would not be in the Logos. But my little pea-brain can only manage to handle one concept at a time.

Merton: The Christ of the Burnt Men

           I hear You saying to me:

           "I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way.

          "Therefore all things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you to solitude.

           "Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone. Everything that touches you will burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone.

            "Everything that can be desired will sear you., and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy, and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations.

           "You will be praised and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert. 

             "You will have gifts and they will break you with their burden. you will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them.

              "And when you  have been praised a little and loved a little I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing. a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth.

            "Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be.. On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or at Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not ask me because I am not going to tell you.  You will not know until you are in it. 

            "But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you for this end  and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Cristi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani:

           "That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men."

                                  SIT FINIS LIBRI, NON FINIS QUAERENDI

Thomas Merton:  The Seven Storey Mountain,  pp  422, 3

         

Part Six: Priesthood of the Future

   Beyond Clericalism

 What is the proper sense of self a priest should have in relating to other priests and to people? He should be a disciple focused on, and lost in, Jesus Christ. The priest “creates” himself, he forms his character, and he develops his personality in response to the Christ event. This response is what it means to live as a disciple. Clericalism made and makes it easier for priests to be churchmen only, rather than disciples, easier to be official functionaries than to follow the Master, easier to go through the motions, rituals, and activities, than to go through the continuing conversion required of us as “clay vessels” in Christ’s hands.   Clericalism makes it possible to reduce the Christ event to moralism, ritualism, legalism,  dogmatism, or to an ideology like any other, instead of a lived relationship to Christ in Faith, Hope, and Love. Clericalism promotes a codependent system whereby empty forms could become a substitute for the adventure of a real spiritual life.

Since every human being is a mystery, no one can ever claim to perfectly know or understand another. The” you” I know is the result of my perceptions of you, and my perceptions of you are largely dependent upon my perceptions of myself as well as how you impact me. Inevitably I will project onto you what is not there, but simply baggage I carry because of who I am. You will do the same in your perceptions of me. Neither of us is ever in full touch with ourselves or the real human person the other is. Complicating this truth is the changing Culture we live in. At any given point of time, America has a somewhat established and yet somewhat fluid way of seeing and treating men of the cloth. Also, men of the cloth, clerics, have come to expect a certain level of treatment based on past experience and have difficulty dealing with shifts in their social standing. This fixed-fluid social reality of Clericalism is as unstable as the greater Culture it fits into, so it is highly volatile!  In addition, because American Culture is increasingly secular, Grace is a constant challenge and surprise as it brings the unforeseeable action of God into the picture. (Clericalism, of course, makes Grace unnecessary, because it enables the priest to operate out of his own ego.)

Take the situation of any priest ordained, in 1977, or in 2007. He is part of a church system and social structure that is in place but also in flux because of the influences both natural and supernatural. The Culture of the Day, the influence of Grace, all interpenetrate priest and people to varying degrees. The priest daily has to decide if Grace will shape him.  If he makes no decision, he will be a product of the Culture. Culture’s power is to cultivate, perpetuate itself and its hold on society. Culture is an ecosystem that fosters and rewards the organisms in it to take on and incarnate its values. It is never a neutral grocery store in which one can freely pick and choose from assorted options. God’s Grace, however, creates its own culture built on man’s free response to it, which flies in the face of the predominating social culture. It will always be easier for a priest or any Christian to act out of the influences of the culture around him than out of the graces that come from above.

The most any priest can do is live up to his call to be a disciple and define himself by his relationship to the Christ event. If he functions only as a churchman, he works without grace, with only his personal charm, intelligence, will power, character, etc.  In short he becomes like any professional who functions on an ego level without God. If he lives as a disciple, he puts his skills and talents as a churchman in the service of Christ.

The priest has to live from grace to grace, inspired, sustained and led by the promptings of the Spirit. The Law of the gift is the operative principle of his priestly existence. No matter what natural gifts he has, they can never accomplish what he achieves by faithful discipleship. How can a priest take himself seriously when he says “I absolve your sins?” How can he do anything but laugh at himself when he says “This is my body”? Nothing he does as a priest is the result of his natural, human capabilities. His communion with Christ, his discipleship, consists in realizing that his ‘nothingness’ is precisely what makes him Christ’s instrument. Ordination makes him the property of Jesus Christ. That is the beauty of the Sacrament. Clericalism, on the other hand, encourages the self deception that he can somehow belong to Christ and still be his own man.

  The surprise is not to find forms of Clericalism and codependency in the Church.  The surprise would be if church were free of it. That will not happen till the kingdom has come in its fullness. Grace builds on nature but cannot be superimposed on it. Clericalism prevents authentic human relationships . The infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity cannot plant themselves in a human nature that is not open receptive to them.  Their purpose is to open us human beings to the Christ Event. An ungraced humanity ends up being inhuman.  I am incapable of recognizing who I really am as a human being or who another is, without the help of grace. I have to be living as a fallen-but-graced self in order to relate to another in a manner that is not codependent.  To live unaware of my fallen state, or to live unaware of my need for God’s grace, is already to be in a state of wrong relationship to others, and therefore codependent.

 Are there more serious matters than Clericalism for the priest to concern himself with?  Not really. Poverty, world hunger, drugs, racism, injustice, trafficking in human beings, genocide, abortion, etc. – all  obviously destroy countless people on a daily basis. That is the real world the priest is called to bring Christ’s love to. He cannot communicate Christ’s love to anyone unless he is first living in it. Clericalism prevents him from doing what he is called to do in Christ’s plan. Remember Christ’ words about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who “…. preach but do not practice” (Matt. 23:33).  “They bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their finger. (vs.34)” Certainly the point is that false piety should not be imitated.  But Our Lord is saying that it should not be winked at either. The collusion in Clericalism is the winking, the unspoken agreement that neither priest nor laity has to live the stuff that is preached, only pretend that they do. Priests are called to lead by example, not by word, and not by posturing. Artificial niceness reduces the faith to good manners and a pleasant demeanor. Courtesy and politeness can be no more than protecting one's personal space from interference and preserving one's individualism.

Once pretence is portrayed as the norm for people to live by, it becomes the “heavy burden” Christ speaks of, the one that cannot be borne.  What is so unbearable about it? The split it causes inside us who try to carry the burden by living one way and believing another. The longer the split is lived, the more ingrained and deformative it becomes.  In the short term such a psychic split prevents spiritual growth in priest and people.  In the long term, it leads to spiritual death, the “second death” that lasts forever.  (Rev.2:11 and 2O:14)  It is inevitable that either we end up living the way we believe, or we end up believing the way we live.

 Clericalism is based on the priest’s covenant with his false self: “I will pretend to be better than I am, I will project that image before all, I will lay on them my expectation that they will deal with me as if my idealized image were my real self, I will resist with all my might any attempt on the part of God or man to break through my façade, and I will build my life on this lie. To this I pledge myself.” That is a narcissist’s vow, a “Baptismal Promise” to his false self, which ultimately leads to his self destruction.  If a priest continues to shape himself on the basis of what he is not, he is acting as if what he is did not really exist. Thus he grows further and further away from his real identity as well as more and more incapable of recognizing that he is doing so. He becomes so blinded and so bound by his behavior that he falls in love with his false self and never sees that he is his own worst enemy.

      As with every human being, it is the priest’s real self that is called to be holy.  His calling is to put his humanity in the service of Christ, as Christ put his humanity in the service of all. How is the priest to do this? The way Christ calls him to do so at the Last Supper, by drinking from the cup of suffering that will result in his transformation and salvation. By eating the bread that will enable him to give himself up for the people he serves.  He is called to make of himself the victim and sacrifice he offers in the Eucharist. The priest has to become what he offers, live the sacrament he celebrates, that is what his vocation calls him to.

Why not just say that his calling is “to grow in holiness”? Certainly that is true, but it is also vague and vacuous. In our culture, holiness is the impossible dream of Don Quixote, and only possible by denying, repressing, or falsely “transcending” one’s humanity. The priest has to witness to Christ by being a man whose real human self is immersed in Christ’s gift of his divine-human self to His people.  This is the way he is to grow in holiness and lead his flock to Christ.  Any other life style makes his call to Orders a hoax.   

The priest may live his sacrifice by serving his people in many ways: by working in a poor, or rich, or ethnic parish with the various ministries that entails; by specializing as a priest teacher, high school principal/chaplain/guidance counselor, hospital chaplain, chancery official, etc... No matter what the ministry, the element of self sacrifice is an essential part. Even in retirement, the component of self sacrifice is never absent. Today it is an ironic fact of priestly life that forced retirement is imposed on some priests because they have been wrongly accused of sexual abuse of minors.  What greater sacrifice than to suffer this kind of victimization precisely because of one’s configuration to Christ by the Sacrament of Orders? It is reminiscent of John the Baptist’s plight as he awaits death in Herod’s dungeon instead of being allowed to work in the marketplace for the Messiah. What could be more sacrificial than the slow martyrdom of forsakenness and abandonment?

Brotherhood 

What should facilitate and strengthen the priest today are: 1) the brotherhood of the priesthood and the communal  nature of church life.  At present,  the individualism of American Culture as well as the anticlerical attitudes among priests and people make ministry more difficult than it has to be.

                How do we priests get beyond Clericalism?  First, recognize that it is real, it exists, and its hold is firmest when it is not recognized. One of the surest signs of addiction is denial, and Clericalism is an addictive life-style. Since addiction is complex, the cure is multifaceted.  Look at some of the main ingredients in the stew that create the climate of Clericalism in the USA: individualism, priestly formation, low morale and mutual mistrust among clergy, a lone ranger style of ministry, ignorance of one’s human nature with its innate needs for communication, and shifting social expectations. With a stew like that, how could any priest or person be so stupid as to think he could deal with the dilemma by himself?  Brotherhood is the basic, ongoing need that has to be part of priestly lives in the future in order for the present system not to perpetuate itself.

                In American culture a sense of community is no longer the foundation of society; autonomous individualism has replaced it. Our society may be communal in some places more than others, but it is so only superficially, and as a whole, a spirit of individualism predominates. In underdeveloped countries, such as the African Continent, where the individual is seen as an extension of the people, a sense of community is as natural, and tribal brotherhood is as normal as breathing. In America neither community nor a sense of brotherhood can be assumed. Education into both has to begin in the seminary with young men who are already on the road to being largely individualistic. Their formation in community and brotherhood cannot be left to their personal initiative because American males would see individualism as a positive part of their personality and be unaware of their need for brotherhood in the priesthood.

                If formation is to involve the whole person and make him capable of communion with God and man, it has to start with the actual human nature of the seminarians. As students they need to absorb the truth of Monsignor Giussani’s words, “To be good priests, you first of all, have to be men, to feel what men feel. Live the relationship with everything that becomes present. Live the truth of your humanity. Cry because you need to cry - or you are afraid, because the problem is difficult and you feel the inadequacy of your strength. Be human; live your humanity as an aspiration, as a sensitivity to problems, as a risk to face, as a faithfulness to what God makes urgent in your soul. In this way, reality will appear to your eyes in a new way.” When seminarians and priests live those words with one another, Clericalism will fade away. Living that humanely will open them to the Christ who calls them to be brothers in his priesthood.

                The seminary has available to it the firm foundation of Christian Anthropology established by John Paul the II from his writings both as a bishop in Poland and later as Pope in Rome, in which he bases the dignity of the human person on Scripture, Philosophy, and Theology.  But this treasure is largely left buried, like gold that has not yet been taken from a mine. Seminaries in this country need to build their formation programs on the riches left to the Church for the formation of generations of priests to come. ALL candidates for ordination, whether recruited from abroad or native born need to benefit from John Paul II’s teachings in order to form the brotherhood that will enable them to be priests after Christ’s own heart. A seminary or diocese that does not base their priestly formation on a well developed Christian anthropology will only continue to codependent clerical system that now exists.

Clericalism Part Five: Terror of the Holy

  I do not know how to prove there is an unconscious terror of the Holy in the core of humanity as a whole.  But I am convinced it is there. Since this terror is unconscious, it moves and motivates us without our awareness. This is a primal condition begun in the soul of mankind with the sin of Adam and Eve. Before the fall, we felt comfortable in God’s presence. After the fall, we had to run and hide because we could not stand to let Him look at us. To hide an awareness of Him became the way block Him out and live as if He did not exist.  We could not experience Him as anything but Threat because of our guilt. Before the fall, His Majesty inspired awe and wonder, even though it also made us quake and tremble.  But the quaking and trembling was not terror. It was a realization of our nothingness in comparison to His greatness.  After, we could not even entertain the thought of Him without cringing in fear. His greatness was Threat to us since we were now experiencing ourselves as His enemies and not as His image. The fact that He did not experience us as we experienced ourselves was not something our minds could grasp.

I think this terror of the Holy is still common to primitive peoples and cultures. In such a “progressive” civilization as ours, the enlightenment achieved by Psychology and Progress has anesthetized this terror into sophisticated numbness. Unlike more primitive societies which are still somewhat capable of awe and wonder, for us “moderns” boredom is new starting point where our conversion into Christian life begins.  In the past, surrender to Christ as He who saves us from our sins removed our terror of the Sacred and set us at peace with God. In the present, we first have to be made open to the Sacred, become aware that the Sacred is Goodness and Love we can trust, and let this new consciousness enkindle its love in us. The complications are our own fault because of the great lengths we have gone to insulate ourselves from the Sacred.

The wrong way to avoid the terror of the Holy is to hide from Him by denial. (We have yet to find a “right” way to hide from God because there is none.)  Denial once begun becomes easier and easier in its expansion. Denial of guilt becomes denial of sin. Denial of sin becomes denial of God, of obligation, and of responsibility. Denial also ego-inflates into an assertion of freedom, independence, and autonomy. The need for consistence and coherence in our lives either  moves us to open our selves more and more to God, or close ourselves off from Him more completely.

 In our Culture we believers go back and forth, forth and back, between conversion and denial.  This movement in us affects the way we view the relation of the natural to the Supernatural.  The more converted (holy) the person, the more awareness there will be of the presence of the Supernatural in the natural. The more into denial the person, the more absent the Supernatural will be from the natural. The person who takes one step forward and two backwards (most of us) will probably imagine the Supernatural on top of the natural, as a kind of layer that blankets it in a heavy invisible fog. There will be no awareness of the immanence of the Holy. The person who lives in Faith, Hope, and Love will “sense” the Supernatural present within the natural. The mystic will “see” the natural shimmer with Glory.

What has all of this to do with Clericalism? Clericalism is obviously more than abuse of power and/or enjoyment of perks that go with the priestly profession. It is a defense mechanism: our human attempt to “protect” ourselves from the intrusion of the Holy into our lives. Since the clergyman is a sign of the Holy, two perpetually easy ways to avoid what he stands for are to idolize him or despise him.  From apostolic time to today, it is easier to stop at the sign than to face what it signifies.Thus an encounter with the Holy Itself is avoided.