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It is an heretic that makes
the fire,
not she which burns in't
W. Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, II, 3, 115-116
Préface by Timothy Radcliffe op. |
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Timothy Radcliffe is the former Master of the Order of Preachers.
This is a passionate, tender, joyful book that it is impossible to read without a smile. It is not a book about God, as if God were an invisible person about whom we might discuss, like Napoleon or Julius Caesar. This is because the central thesis of the book is that God is relationship: God is "The" relation. "And the invitation is extended to us to enter into a relationship as one enters into a dance; to enter into that relation which He is". We discover God by being in this relationship, which transforms who we are and how we are. In the Temple, God revealed Himself in the empty space between the wings of the Cherubim. Now God is discovered present in the space between the words "liberty" and "fidelity". And so God is made visible in our own transformed liberty, lived in true fidelity to each other, and to the gospel invitation.
The book is a series of reflections, which one may either read all the way through in one go or else take as a daily glass of champagne. It is a book that is profoundly refreshing, and that renews old and used words, such as love, freedom and forgiveness, with the vigour of new youth. It is filled with phrases and insights that make one pause with their unexpectedness "Man cannot live nor breathe but by emptiness, by the hollow part of his lungs."(n°8); the Holy Spirit is "the gift of self-giving." (23); "the saint is one who knows that God does not wish to be happy on His own."(39) And I will not tell you why in paradise "it is necessary to be on one's guard against pickpockets."
This is a book written by a man who is passionate and filled with unquenchable desire. He lives this desire by deepening it rather than by suppressing it. "...I place my affections, my passions, my power of loving into this gigantic frame which embraces history and humanity. A love the dimensions of which are space and time, the dimensions of creation itself, a love whose measure is to love without measure!" (35)
These words can only be truly written by the contemplative which frère Michel is. The genesis of this book is the prolonged, gentle attentiveness to the transforming word that is addressed to him and to us. One of the mottoes of the Order of Preachers is "Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere". That discribes this book.
For all its passion, this work is marked by a deep sense of God's "sovereign discretion". God is so respectful for those whom he loves, that he tiptoes into our lives, without blowing trumpets. Even his resurrection from the dead does not disturb the sleep of the great of this world, who notice nothing. "Let the one who so wishes, receive by silent contagion." (6)
The final words of the book will remain with me for a long time: "A burning question remains in my mind as I conclude: why then is it so difficult to throw oneself totally into the fire of the living God?" Yes, why is it so hard? But having read this book we may find it a little easier, knowing that we do not do so alone.
After the midday meal, I usually allow myself fifteen minutes siesta as is the custom in southern countries. Strangely enough, this short period of rest is a fertile one for the imagination, furnishing intuitions which appear to run counter to evidence: periods of reawakened dreams, freedom from conscious control, criss crossing of images, a more poetic though no less valid approach to truth. These mental epiphanies serve as material for my homelies, and in this book, I have chosen some of them, while attempting to link them together in a somewhat coherent manner. Discussion is not my objective here. What I have to say, addresses itself to the reader's intuition. It invites him or her into an unknown land, a land of surprises, in short, into contemplation.
In this work, truth is to be found by allusion, in symbol, through the heart, so it is an expression of personal witness emanating from a lived experience. The one subject which underlies the ensemble, is the question of Relation: relationship to the other, relationship to God, relationship in God.
Each chapter has its unique message and its unique meaning. The same musical theme is played on different instruments, as is the Good News itself, each section saying everything and inviting the reader to resonate accordingly.
By way of introduction, here is an outline of the themes treated.
Relationship presupposes the spoken word together with respect for that word given. Chapter I thus sets out the framework: liberty and fidelity. The relationship however is perverted once the other is perceived primarily as a rival. The question then is how to arrive at confidence in reciprocity? This seeking leads to the Paschal Mystery. We discover that sin is not so much an act as bad theology, a mask covering the Face of God. When the basic relationship breaks down, then everything becomes degraded and eventually is destroyed. But a turning round is effected when we discover in opposition to our perceptions, the God whom Jesus revealed: a God who is vulnerable, respectful and discreet.
But where does human desire come from, and what is it aiming at? In what direction and towards whom does it lean? Can it be satisfied? And supposing God's promise went ahead of and perhaps beyond that desire? To "proof by the absurd" might there be a proof "exceeding reason's calculations"? Likewise in the affectivity domain, by "proof of desire's suprasatisfaction", it becomes clear that the promise is not the result of auto suggestion. True, desire is frequently thwarted, it meets with obstacles: suffering and ultimately with death. What about the creature's relationship to God when suffering and death come upon him and what about that same creature after death?
Death marks a limit which has repercussions on one's entire life. What could a superman hope to be? What kind of absolute is humanity aiming at? Christ has transfigured the human condition, not by abolishing its limitations, but because he began by accepting these limitations in a relationship with his Father in perfect reciprocity: He received and He gave. In receiving himself from his Father, he assumed himself. Finally, He lives, risen from the dead!
God's wisdom then, is at the antipodes of our ways of thinking. It is so new, young and surpising, that it appears nonsensical. Everything is turned upside down, an invitation to allow oneself likewise to do a somersault! Human life is then transfigured! Pentecost takes hold of the nations and breathes its Spirit through the world's civilisation. That in turn brings us on to envisage the end of the entire universe and to pose the question of human history and of its accomplishment.
How can one be a disciple and live this contagious dynamic? There is the first experience, that of the Resurrection which Mary Magdalen lived in her very flesh because of her love for Jesus. We must be reborn, pass from darkness to light, open our eyes and meet Christ, and so undergo a personal experience which will present itself as a way of initiation. For Jesus' teaching is an invitation to experience, in order to love in a relationship that is vulnerable.
The apostles were forewarned of the trials that awaited them, the price of their credibility in the eyes of others, and for themselves a means of verification. Their followers will live out their baptism either in Religious Life or in marriage, two extreme modes of relationship. They will perhaps experience failure, but this is henceforth shot through with something different. As to forgiveness, it is reserved to God, and that is the reason why we are invited to practise it constantly, in order to live by Him... and finally the book, in which we recognise the author, comes to an end!
Present day urban society allows each one to live as they wish or as they can, without being too worried about what others think. The victory of liberty over social constraints, at the same time reveals the difficulty of normal continuity. Liberty is not just the possibility of perpetual choice in frantic options. It is structured in personal consistence which leads to what is traditionally known as fidelity. By contrast with a generation which dreamed of free love, today's youth dreams of fidelity as an impossible ideal. "Fidelity is a fantasy" a student told me: a wonderful fairy tale! The example of those men and women who have remained true to the promises of their youth is consoling, for it shows that it is possible and that it is good.
To persevere in the midst of changes and inevitable deceptions, leads one to a reassessment of life's meaning and to a re interpretation of one's personal history. The archetype of this approach is for me that of the disciples of Emmaus. Disappointed, and on the brink of despair, they are returning home sad and downcast. But the Risen Lord joins them incognito, and bit by bit, unfolds to them the meaning of the trial they have undergone without understanding its significance. This he does in the light of the Scriptures, that is to say, in the light of the human and spiritual experience of believing humanity, synthesised in the Bible. In this book I would like in my turn, to meditate on the present difficulties we encounter in living, hoping and persevering, by allowing myself to be led by the contagious enthusiasm of the Gospel.
I try to follow Christ. I also lose him sometimes. He appears to me under a certain aspect and then escapes me until I find him again the same yet different. My fidelity then cannot be due to some passing thrill, still less to a monotony of repetitions. Rather is it the progressive discovery of the mystery of Life and of the true face of God, ever more beautiful and always beyond our imaginings. In the Temple of Jerusalem once a year and at the call of the high priest pronouncing on this one occasion the forbidden Name, God manifested himself between the wings of the Cherubim spread out on the Ark of the Covenant. Today I have a deep sense of his presence between these two apparently contradictory words: liberty and fidelity, in order that he may reconcile them.
First of all, Liberty, the ability to make choices, to fulfil engagements. What I want to underline is: the freedom to choose, not to abstain from choosing, nor to remain on the sidelines without ever making any commitments. These latter are like Stricter's ass who dies of hunger because he delays too long over two bales of hay! Freedom to choose! To give one's word, to engage oneself!
Then Fidelity, for without habit formation which makes for consistency, without the coherence of actions resulting from the promised word, liberty is a mere weathercock blowing with the wind and bespeaking irresponsibility or instability. Liberty and Fidelity: liberty leading to fidelity, fidelity giving a body to liberty.
Indeed, millions have given their lives to become free, but what is the point of risking my life in bitter combat in order to be able to do my own choosing, if my choices lead to nowhere, if in fact I choose nothing, if I am unable to persevere? What good is liberty without fidelity? Fidelity is the triumph of liberty!
I'll go further: it is only against a background of fidelity that the Word can be spoken. if the promised Word is not respected, every undertaking, every "Yes" is fraught with relativity; they are merely "uttered noises", vain promises and hollow discourse.
This is why our gratitude mounts towards the One who is pure fidelity, the One who keeps his word, the One whose word is given to the point of dying in order to respect it, and who triumphs over the suffering by rising from the dead. He dies in order to prove that his philosophy of love is credible: He is "the" faithful One, source of life and of liberty that knows no bounds! He is my God, the One who inspires me and upholds me, and without whom my life would be unthinkable.
But who is he and how can I envisage him?
2. Omnipotence and limits. |
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I remember one day, while getting some children to mime EXODUS, one of them climbed up on the table saying "I'll be God!" The God of the heights, of the divinised chiefs, of the Caesars, Incas and other emperors in Peru, Rome or Japan. God the dictator, 'But the Christian's God is different. He is not above but below. He is on the ground, washing our feet. The Revelation of Jesus Christ turns everything upside down. The identification of God in Jesus Christ, obliges us to rid ourselves of every representation we had of God prior to this Revelation.
The myth of Adam and Eve is a good example. It brings a perpetual experience back to its origins. The worm is in the fruit, as the saying goes; the serpent is in the tree, proclaims the Bible. From the beginning, that is to say, at the origin of all his actions, man is assailed by a fatal doubt: is God after all holding on jealously to His privileges? He imagines a God at the centre of everything, a tyrant, one of those childish representations so criticised by Freud: all powerful, insensitive and self sufficient, a bugbear God, a rival and castrator.
You will be as gods". The first idol is the "ego" which divinises itself by transgressing the symbolic limits where the space of the "other" begins. On one side we find respect and confidence, beyond the limit, conflict and the death of one or the other.
The serpent's treachery stems from the doubt which he instils. "God knows what will happen if you eat the forbidden fruit, if you exceed the limits of the taboo. You will become like him. Then you will be God and He will be nothing. That is why he forbids it."
The taboo limits my desire to be all powerful. It can be an irritant, as it is the line of demarcation beyond which the other's space begins. If I go beyond this line, I deny the other who is symbolically killed. The majority of violent acts have their origin in this transgression: the invasion of one nation by another, a shooting to kill, rape, the abusive authority of some parents, the want of respect for nature, leading to ruin and degradation.
"You will be as gods". This promise by the serpent means that man desires to rule without limit. But by so doing, he enters into a kind of madness which can only lead to disillusionment. A return to reality, and in particular to the status of the human condition is a painful process.
As the Bible indicates, relationship with the other is lived out in the wake of the Fall: conflict between man and woman; painful childbirth, work on the land by the sweat of one's brow.
The perverse thing, and the essence of the serpent's deceit is that he proposes to become God. He uses the same word, but is not speaking about the same God. "You will be as gods" but what gods? He is talking about a phantom god, not about the living God, for in Jesus Christ, the living God reveals Himself as servant and not as a domineering lord; at the feet of his followers and not lording it over them; vulnerable and at their mercy; in no way insensitive nor inaccessible.
The God we imagine and whose place we dream of occupying, the God we can never aspire to be, has become our idol! The Greeks gave us the myth of Prometheus who was placed in chains by the gods for stealing the fire to give to men. The Greek gods were jealous. The God of the Bible is said to be jealous, but He is not. He is sad at the ravages brought about by error or Original Sin. There is nothing wrong with humanity's desire to stretch scientifically or technologically the limits of its knowledge or of its power. On the other hand, the desire to escape from its creature status is the cause of its self destruction, of its mortal ruin, of its more or less collective suicide. It bumps its head against the walls, and dispairing of an exit, creates its own hell.
In Christ's perspective, would it be inconceivable to aim at being "God"? On the contrary! The Bible is constantly referring to this. For example, Psalm 94 mentions the repose of God into which we are invited. Jesus Christ expressly wishes that we should share His life: "That they may be one in us". Jesus invites us to share in the divine condition. When he is reproached "for making himself God", He cites the Scripture and shows that those who listen to the Word, are children of God. On these lines, all orthodox theology expresses itself in terms of the creature's divinisation, both by prayer and by the sacraments. "God became Man so that man might become God" wrote St. Ireneus, adding, "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is to see God"
But let's get back to the sense of the myth. When I place myself in a central and superior position, in the position of God so to speak, l am straightway into a conflict situation. It begins with the man woman conflict. A single centre presupposes that one of the two, either the man or the woman, must serve the other. Theology has repercussions straightway in the social, political and even in the ecological order. If there is only one absolute person, we are in opposition to a Triune God, to community. We are tyrants, not communion people.
If in opposition to a Trinity living the one love, unity in diversity, where the relationship calls for and constitutes the person, if I represent God as an old man seated on his throne, lording it over all, exacting obedience and punishing accordingly, I am allying myself with masochistic brute violence.
As long as this perverse representation is maintained, there is no solution to the conflict that opposes man to woman, parents to children, man to his work. If "I" am alone at the centre, my wife is obliged to serve me, my children must be like me and conform to my desires in their regard. They must not escape me by introducing difference or otherness which could wound my narcissism. It is understandable that childbirth in the literal, but also in the figurative sense is a painful experience. Thus, just as man affirms himself by setting himself by force in the place of this imagined Deity, and by transgressing the symbolical taboo, likewise the children generate themselves by the various transgressions they allow themselves, following the example of the "paterfamilias"
Subsequently, brothers pursue this conflict for, in order that there be one centre only, one absolute, the other must give in. Cain killed Abel through jealousy, because he was not like him. Eventually, nature itself becomes a limit to the desire for self domination. It resists in face to face confrontation, imposing constraints. It is met with stubborn resistance and matters become difficult. Adam earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.
Thus the problem is not so much one of words, but of the meaning behind the words. What kind of beer is underneath the froth? When I say "God", when the serpent says "God", when Caesar calls himself "God", when Christ says "God", what God are we talking about? The word "God" then, encompasses all kinds of different realities! Would excluding the word "God" from our dictionaries eliminate the ambiguities? Our present civilisation banishes questions of its cultural references, but will the question of God automatically go away? Can we really pose the question of God's existence without pronouncing the word God? The "drama of atheistic humanism" proves convincingly that we cannot. By risking to use the word "God", we risk also using its opposite, its caricature, namely "idol" another word to which it might be useful to accord its rightful meaning.
The word is hardly ever used now, but that does not mean that modem idols do not exist. In the thick jungle of modem representations of God; in the New Age cacophony, the sects, the gnosis, in the confrontation of different religions, small or great, secular or not... who is "my" God? "In whom have I put my faith"? "How can I render an account of the hope that is in me"? "Who is the One whom my heart loves"? He for whom I am ready to lay down my life? He whom I adore, He whom I serve, He on whom I count fundamentally, He who I know will never let me down, at least never definitively, who I know will raise me up...? Who is he, "my" God, "your" God?
My God... I may as well state it right away... my God is above all else relation. He is relational, He is the relation: "a" relation in the sense that I can say of a friend that he is someone to whom I am related, but more fundamentally still, God is "The" relation. And we are invited to enter into that relationship which God is.
How can the odd creature that I am, find his truth, his image and resemblance to God, without a restoration of the fundamental relationship with the One who is at once his first beginning and his last end? What road brings him there if not the narrow road of suffering the road of vulnerability? The way of the Cross alone leads to true exchange, in a reciprocal relationship.
Whose vulnerability? Certainly not man's: losing the battle, he would only wallow still further in resentment. In the spiritual battle, it is God who emerges as Victor. We see this in the case of Jacob at the ford of Yabbok. "You will be called Israel because you fought against God". It is God's vulnerability, truly an intellectual and existential scandal, which explodes the alienating idea of a false divinity, at the same time freeing the person from a perverse and deadly theology. For according to the admirable saying of Saint Maxime the Confessor: "Man will only submit under the weight of God's extreme humiliation." Submerged in God's vulnerability, that of man ceases to be a fault. In the measure in which God assumes the human condition, man comes to term with his limitations and enters into relationship, a relationship which is the very life of God. God is not a proud and distrustful solitary. He is not hemmed in to a violent madness. He is community. God has refused to be the idol. Jesus, the true image of the Father, manifests this in his very person: he does not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, an inalienable right!
For having put himself in the place of God, man becomes inhuman. And in order that this failed superman might discover the true God, God had to show him what a man really is. God had to become man and assume the human condition with all its limitations - even the most difficult - that of suffering and death. In order that man might recover his humanity, someone had to show him what a man really is and how man can become authentically divine. Not only become "as" God, but radically become God!
"Those who count the stars", said Giono, "will always find the same number", which is to say that where it is a question of stars, no one - apart from some rare astronomers - ever tries to count them. If I contemplate those luminous bodies which twinkle in the night sky, it is above all to experience an emotion, something corresponding to the fundamental question: "What am I doing here below?"
"The only opportunity for the ant to see the sky, is if he gets turned over by accident!" Chance, fatigue or accident, there are moments when this little bit of nothingness that I am, comes in contact with the infinite. Some want to close the window. The cold air causes shivers down the spine. Fundamental questions are suffocating. These people want "to live the good life", simply that! No more self- examinings, but "take life as it comes" is their philosophy. They are overwhelmed by these questions which cause a kind of schizophrenia: reflection. The solution for such persons is to smash the mirror, and allow the consciousness of the self to evaporate like a perfume, dissolve itself like a cloud in a vast expanse of sky, and lose its too limited ego, to find itself once more in a vast Cosmos. But in what sort of Cosmos do I realise my potential? In a feeling of lofty mysticism? In transcendental ideas? Or in a frantic search for knowledge so as to merge into a kind of pantheism of people and things?
Here we are confronted with those famous limitations which irritate us, and which as we have already said, place obstacles in our way and in our desire to be the centre of everything, to be "as" God.
The ambiguity of the spiritual experience revolves around this point. Mystical experience is a myth, a snare, a prison, if it is not the meeting with another, hence, the recognition of my own limitations, an opening up and a welcoming of what is not me. Otherwise, the great All into which I am assimilated is no other than myself perhaps even nothingness I must die to my individualistic claims, in order to be born by another in a relationship of love, which will render me completely human. My limitations are not a drawback still less are they sinfulbut take on a positive role permitting me to reach the goal of my possibilities and to take hold of myself completely, in order to become wholly gift.
Ideas have to be turned upside down: the absolute does not reside in quantity, but in density and in totality. What does it matter how big the spark is, if its objective is to ignite the powder? One day I was born and began to exist, a tiny living creature making its way into history. To get rid of my limitations would have been to kill me, but I assume those limitations, and this acceptance, It gives birth to my prayer, the prayer of an unpretentious one, the prayer of a child.
For a Christian then, the absolute becomes real in a relationship with someone, somebody who sees, who knows, a witness with whom one can converse, with whom one can enter into a relationship.... Source of my being, God upholds my life. Jeremiah puts it well: what would be the point of making cisterns into which I might hope to conserve life? No, life cannot be put into a freezer, nor can it be preserved. It is not held on to by the accumulation of diplomas, titles, decorations or properties. A person who suffers from a cardiac problem, cannot store up heart beats for future need.
The absolute is not found in what Hegel rightly terms "false infinity". It is not attained by climbing up the social ladder, by aiming at being the greatest, the strongest, the one who makes most noise! The absolute is found in our relationship to the particular, and even to detail. For example, the desire to find fulfilment M a multitude of amorous relationships and to collect sexual partners as one might collect butterflies, can only lead to disappointment. Contrariwise, the absolute is attained m a unique relationship, when the love of a man and a woman becomes so strong and so authentic, that it is recognised as a sign of Christ's union with His Church, a witness to the love of God and of humanity.
It is in the relation to the particular that the absolute is found, which explains why one sheep that is lost and is found again, is worth more than ninety nine which do not go astray. One sinner repents, and there is a feast, for he associates all the others with love's victory. A little bread, a little wine, represent the life we offer, and our energies as gift, so that we may become members of Christ's Body, His presence in the world. The absolute is to be found in less than nothing; it causes us to reach the essential at the heart of our limitations and of our human condition.
Prayer is not the monopoly of Christians. But can one be a Christian and not pray?
Writing from Senegal where they were engaged in co operation work, friends expressed their surprise at seeing all around them, people who prayed. The shock of another civilisation helped them discover prayer as a reality. Sometimes it takes the unusual in another culture or in another religion, for certain people to question their own tradition.
Prayer is an experience to which all have not access. There are people who pray and others who never pray. For those who do not know how to pray, the prayer of those who do, is a provocation which is at times upsetting for them, in the sense in which they feel excluded. Prayer is off putting in their eyes, for it falls into none of the familiar categories. The one who prays belongs to no distinct classification. He brims over and most often overflows. He is in contact with a stranger who upsets the status quo, with the transcendent who plays havoc with signposts and with what seems secure. He bears witness to the inaccessible which dooms to failure the desire to be in total command. The one who prays has access to the completely Other, to the Immensurable, to the Infinite. He causes a lack of continuity like the window in the wall, the oasis in the desert or the flame in the night. Whether he desires it or not, he inspires fear as do all extreme experiences, like madness. And whether he is simple or pretentious, noisy or discreet, he inevitably does violence to the categories of a closed world.
While following a session in a Cistercian Abbey, a certain agricultural student felt obliged to discontinue. He was unable to support a too close to the bone confrontation. Before him were men experiencing something quite ordinary, but which completely escaped him. Yet it is a fact that from the very beginnings, the one who buries his dead is a religious being. His loftiest activities may be disfigured, but in spite of all the caricatures, it is an established fact that there are men and women who pray, and who can speak out of their experience, linked as they are to the Completely Other, to the Absolute.
This has come about in various different ways, by a sudden event breaking into the psyche or by intuition. A barely escaped accident, the birth of a child, a sudden pain, an unsuspected love, the sun on the hills or the calm on the sea, and behold something snaps, opens, weeps or wells up somewhere: and I find myself praying I don't know why, or who has overwhelmed me, but that "something" is praying within me! God has ceased to be merely pure principle, hypothesis or abstraction. Here is someone to whom I can speak. Meeting Him bowls me over! I shall never be the same again. I am "changed" by this new relationship and "refreshed" by this presence bestowed on me. But there is more than the desire and the satisfaction. I discover new obligations. God is not a feeling of ocean vastness nor is he a mere life force. He is not nostalgia for a Golden Age, nor a pantheistic communion with Nature, similar to the maternal fusion of a few months old embryo. He is not a concept either, but someone, another, a person towards whom I have certain obligations. Meeting with Him is for me a rebirth, engendering a new kind of knowledge My prayer responds to a very deep desire, but it also acts as a signpost within me, that I am treading the right path if I am to be truly human.
This experience is common to all religions: the experience of the cosmic God who reveals himself in creation; of the unique God who spoke to Ismael and to Abraham; of the God of the Covenant who is ever active in history, of the God who. took flesh in Jesus Christ, of the God who communicates to us His Spirit. All forms of prayer converge towards the mystical experience of a personal God who loves us and whom we can love. There is a divergence of expressions according to the manner in which one approaches the sensed presence. All forms of prayer manifest themselves progressively in history, and co exist in the diversity of cultures and in the variety of personal spiritual journeyings. All the covenants subsist together today: the rainbow is as resplendent as it was in the days of Noah; Abraham's call is forever true; the commandments of Moses are not out of date; certain people rejoice at the Paschal Feast of Jesus Christ. It is not necessary to travel in order to experience this truth. Even in our churches, some tend to live a relationship mainly to God the Creator; for others, it is to God the Giver of the Law; for others again. it is a unique relationship with the God who forgives in Jesus Christ.
Whatever the result of my discoveries, and the stage at which I am at present, the main difficulties in my prayer come from whatever is disturbing my relationship with the God whom I know. They stem from my blindness, from my want of attention to the mysteries of the universe, to the fragile beauty of living things, the regularity of the seasons, the mystery of human love.
Even if I recognise that God is love and that I am constantly in His presence, that my response is simply my life, lived out in this world and in time by my various activities, it is no less true that prayer is a privileged moment of face to face encounter. Even when lovers are separated by a great distance, they claim that they are never apart. Nevertheless, they always feel the need to meet in reality and more often than not manage to do so to see each other even for a short while, so as to intensify that ever existing communion in which they have put their trust, but which they need to verify, nourish and celebrate.
What kills prayer is the very thing that kills love, namely, doubt, suspicion, selfishness and betrayal. What kills prayer, snuffs it out, and prevents its upward soaring, is that very thing which wounds relationship: distractions, asphyxia, death which cherishes no hope of resurrection. Everything which claims that "there is no time for it"!, that shuts out availability attention, perception. Time exists only for the self. Every activity becomes an alibi, a pretext, an auto justification.
Indeed, prayer is always beyond our capabilities, but it is enough to make a decision, for we are never alone. God is our witness, He forgives us, supports us, welcomes us and causes us to make progress. `When you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret, will reward you."!
"Par la croix et la roue, par le feu et le pal, par la hache et la corde, dans la fosse commune de l'histoire sont tombes tant de supplicies! Et cependant, la mémoire des hommes n'est obsédée que des souffrances d'un seul." (Transl. In footnote!)
Man's memory is obsessed by One only, for all can recognise themselves in Him. The parching thirst which chokes them, He cries it out in public. The word imprisoned in their throat and which they cannot express, he cries out in their stead. When despair gnaws at their very being, He screams at the heavens and, victim of our infernal world He asks: "Why"? Georges Bernanos, in his well known novel: The Diary of a Country Curate, puts into the mouth of the Parish Priest of Tory the reflexion that each of us can, in the Gospel, try to find "his rightful place": some where, in Bethlehem, or Nazareth, on the way to Galilee or wherever find that spot where the Lord met us, that day above all other days, when His eyes met ours.
Now as if by chance, it was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the young priest found himself, and "at that moment yes", it is a strange coincidence at that precise moment when, placing his hand on Peter's shoulder, Jesus asked this question a rather useless and almost naive question yet so tender and courteous: "Are you sleeping"?
We slept profoundly. I was in a deep sleep. I was in a sort of daze, until the day when I looked at a cross and seemed to see it for the first time. It was a cheap crucifix which fortunately one sees less frequently nowadays, but I had heard talk of "The Affair", and my spirit became as it were haunted by it. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to take it seriously as though it were a question of life or death. I began to wake up and to exist. It was for me an electroshock; everything began to Vibrate. I came out of the coma and once more felt my heart beat. A bright light tore at the film which covered my eyes.
Now I did not know at that moment, whether the tortured One was a man or if he was God, one or the other or perhaps both simultaneously. That was not my question. What I did feel was an extraordinary authority emanating from him, a rootedness, a fullness, a presence, a power, a depth, a personality, something never before experienced, never before seen nor imagined; something so strong and so true, that nothing could ever be compared to it, that everything henceforth would be affected by it, in short, the eruption of some unsurpassable and absolute new thing.
How could one ever have become used to the sight of this man nailed to the wood? It is beyond me! But from the moment that the "Affair" took hold of me, I have never been the same as I was before, never more "innocent". I read an account of the Passion and my eyes were opened for good. I did not sleep that evening, nor have I ever recovered completely from that sleepless night. When in Cuba one day, Bartholomew de Las Casas opened his eyes and discovered around him not just one crucifix, but millions and millions; his life too was never the same afterwards.
I saw this unpretentious man, the essence of freedom and goodness, tracked down as if he were a savage beast. I beheld Health and Beauty destroyed, Justice condemned, the Word silenced and Life assassinated. I witnessed totally irresponsible purveyors of knowledge who were absolutely blinded. I saw the fickle crowd, the cruel and bestial populace, the friend who sold his friend, betraying him with a kiss and then hanging himself in a fit of madness and dispair...
"Light was there, but all were blind to its rays. The Word was there but the ears of all were deaf Love was there but no one suspected that Love could be a reality. They were sick to the point that they were ignorant of the very meaning of Health. They were dead and so completely dead, that they considered themselves alive. So turned away from the Living God were they, so far from his truth, that they esteemed that everything was in order. So accustomed were they to sinning, that they could not even conceive what sin is; so vowed to the abyss and so enveloped by its flames, that they interpreted the abyss as God and its flames as love."
Ah indeed! must we listen to the poets, the cursed ones and the rest, to discover that we are already in the abyss, slowly losing our sensitivities, ending up by being ignorant of what could be missing, reduced to brute status, unable to suffer, to weep, to have desires, to regret anything "The world is a bottomless drain, where the most infamous seals scramble about and gyrate on hills of filth." "Daily we descend further step by step, without the batting of an eyelid, through stinking darkness!"
If I had to say where I recognise myself in the Passion, I would have to state without hesitation: in the place of Jesus! And it is also the place where many of us merit to be, as the Good Thief clearly saw. Penitents of another age recognised this very well when they walked barefooted, carrying a cross, jostled by the crowd and insulted by the people: there are kicks which go unrecorded! Who would not merit if not ultimate punishment at least a severe correction? Who then is it who disobeys the most elementary rules of justice, the most sacrosanct laws of life and of love? Who is impious, proud, a blasphemer, taking upon himself the attributes of God? Who then will end up by destroying the wonderful Temple which is creation? Who for a long time has lost all contact with the living God, is unable to pray, is incapable of discovering his presence, incapable of listening to Him, incapable of speaking to Him? Who finds himself lost and abandoned? Who if not the great majority of our contemporaries? Everyone, except Him: He who should never have found Himself in that situation!
Here is the Innocent One, charged with the wrongdoings of which we are guilty! His Face bears marks of insults, the slaps, the spittle merited by our false claims. The roles are reversed!
"You were the high and mighty one! You wished to lord it over everyone! My lord, just a moment: we are about to serve you! You have foreseen everything, prophet of new times to come, can you identify the under the table kicks? You shine with ridicule... ah little god, if only you could see yourself!"
What is really hard is to see our own flesh and blood incarnate in another and carried to the ultimate limits of truth. It is an insupportable wrench, to be snatched from our very skin, and to be a spectator of our own destiny. Here in front of me is One who is living out my very death, someone who is not actually undergoing it, but who sees it clearly, to the very last breath, radically. His cry of despair echoes through my bones, strikes suddenly at my taste for the absurd, and denounces my resignation. The call resonates through my being. A word found for a God who has disappeared. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Yes, why, oh why, are you hiding from me?
In the moist putrefaction, Jesus is our cleansed and disinfected wound. He is our re-opened wound and I cannot endure it. It's too great a scandal, too hard to bear. "It might be just for us, but as for Him, He did no wrong" I suffer for Him. I make protests for Him, I express my solidarity: I begin to love. Hell is split open, hell is inhabited: we are invited to an immense communion...
How can God love us like this? How can He endlessly offer us His friendship, his forgiveness and His truth, however much we insult and reject Him? How can He love us unconditionally and irreversibly, jealously and perseveringly? How can He who created us, who knows us, go so far as to forfeit the initiative, and, sensitive, vulnerable and mortal, put Himself totally in our hands? It is here that all the weight and content of His word of love becomes fully credible: He gives everything, furthermore, to everyone and forever He forgives everything.
If I could put into words how the Passion narrative falls on my cars, I would add that for a long time, it caused me to say "no" to the Resurrection. Never as on those first Easter evenings, did I live through such a nightmare and feel such abandonment. A Resurrection preached in a triumphal manner, leaves Jesus out of the picture and sends Him back to heaven. It overturns the table where He eats with us the pittance of sinners. Stupidly, it passes the sponge and immediately wipes out the fundamental solidarity Jesus establishes with the condemned, the marginalised, the outcasts of all time.
No, the Resurrection cannot efface the Passion. It is just another way of saying that the Crucified One is always present, living personally. When Latin Americans are criticised for their excessively realistic life sized representations of the Crucified, with blood pouring from His wounds, and with locks of real hair, it is because these critics have not yet understood that for Jesus to assume the human condition, it was not necessary for Him just to become a man. He could have lived like some of those rich people one sees in the newspapers or on the TV., unfeeling far away extraterrestrials. The sufferings of Jesus make His Incarnation real. Since He shares the condition of the majority of human beings, so every man and woman can at every moment, speak to Him with the certainty of being heard and fully understood.
The Resurrection does not wipe out the Passion. Triumphalism maintains Jésus in a suppedly divine condition which he enjoyed previously. The real resurrection is at the heart of history, at the heart of history, at the heart of the world, as simple and as intimate as the birth of a child. It is a mystery not of absence, but of a new presence, as discreet as it is promising. It introduces the radically new, but scarcely upsets anything. Let's listen and see!
Order reigns in Jerusalem on the night of the Resurrection. Anybody can go for a walk at night and pass by the tombs, while others slept soundly. Pilate sleeps with tight fists, his well-manicured hands folded over his smothered conscience. Mrs Pilate is somewhat disturbed. Her husband did not follow the recommendations of the dream which augured the prisoner's innocence. This so called governor is in fact, a coward, unable to resist the least pressure from the people. Herod too is asleep! He is dreaming about the prophet whom he had beheaded, John the Baptiser, and whom he is still confusing with the One they have just crucified. After the Passover liturgies, the High Priests are exhausted. They are asleep, tragically unconscious of the fact of having taken part in a real drama and beside... yes beside their pomps... in the vicinity of the tombstone! As for the disciples, they cannot close their eyes. They are too unhappy and ask themselves whether they are dead or alive.
Three women, the pride of humanity, are not asleep. They wend their way through the night to show honour to a corpse, the corpse of that Friend they loved so much. They are about to fulfil those memorable rites which mark mankind's respect for the dead. They are afraid, not knowing how to roll back the stone, nor what they will find at the other side, but they head on nevertheless, ignorant of what is about to happen.
By faith, we too are present there. But we know! Like Elias in his cave, what might astonish us is the silence, a disturbing discretion, no explosion, simply a coming forth. The earthquake, the veil rent in two, the tombs which opened up and rendered their dead, that was beforehand, on the Cross, at the extreme moment, at the point of no return, when Love gave itself utterly, abandoned itself, rendered itself completely vulnerable, and in one final gasp, gave all.
That evening, the birth of Jesus from among the dead, was just as peaceful as was His birth at Bethlehem. We might have wished for fireworks, one grand flash from the media a convincing and decisive sign. At least we might have hoped that the enemies would realise their mistake and be ashamed! But nothing like that, or almost nothing, just an amazing dramatic calm. No revenge, no settling of accounts, no recrimination. Love is the conqueror, but does not render evil for evil! Love does not shoot at the ambulance, nor trample on the wounded, nor finish off those about to die.
Here there is a strange respect for Pilate's lethargy, for Herod's dithering, for the difference of policy among the high priests and the fruitless games of the doctors of the Law. It is their own business if they take themselves seriously! Pardon has been gratuitously offered, in a lump sum, so to speak, and without publicity; let he who can, understand that! Let the one who so wishes, receive by silent contagion! "I say to you, love your enemies!" At least let them have the world they have chosen! Their lives pursue their own course, ours also, but on another register. A Cross has radically pointed us elsewhere. In the Fathers' creation, there is plenty of space and varied rhythms. No one is obliged to live in an open tomb!
What a masterly lesson in being other, accepting difference and even discord! How could God create, without appreciating what is different, call up from what is not God a liberty which can go off the rails and inevitably does! Creation is not a monotonous thing sung to one note; listen to the birds' cacophony, to choral singing, to harmonised melodies: there is a place for everyone, for the deaf, the blind and even for atheists.
God waits with infinite patience and a burning passion, and for centuries! for centuries and centuries! He waits until the world is ready, till life comes into being and conscience is awakened, and one begins to speak and to share, to forgive and become creators, re creators, gods even, like Him, with Him and in Him, in truth!
Easter night is the first night of a new creation, the beginning of a new evolution, of a new change into humanity community! Since then, morning gleams with rays of that light shining in the garden of the new world. Along the road of those disappointed in their hopes, those whom love has wounded or religion betrayed, we are sent to join discretely in their conversations. The Risen Lord awaits us there. It is there that He passes by, unperceived but very active, as did Jesus incognito throughout His lifetime. After a while, we recognise Him, by His way of setting fire to our hearts as we read the Scriptures, or when He is standing on the seashore or discretely sharing a meal with us in a restaurant.
This is characteristic of His own special style: to open a person's eyes in a gaze of wonder, only to meet that gaze by accident in the heart of the countryside, where He will ask questions, questions that go far beyond human understanding. His own particular mannerism, this way of opening hearts and ears, of restoring life to withered hands, even of opening tombs! It is indeed His style, to make the cripples walk, to raise up heads bent with the weight of blame, to set ringing those bells that the "music" of official language has silenced: "You're completely deaf! Call in the specialists! Common mortals have no vote in Chapter! Deaf-mute, you can stay put! 'Better get used to it!"
Jesus encourages the craziest of desires. To the one who says"thank you" He replies: "Your faith has made you whole" It is truly His unique style to live in an open tomb between whited sepulchres!
It is because he lived this way that they killed him.... It is because He already lived a completely sacrificed life, the tomb wide open, that the Gospel recounts the story of His life, so that it can speak to us about Him today, yes, about Him who rose from the dead.
But where exactly is He? When the surprise has died down somewhat, and they recognise Jesus, they wish to seize hold of Him, to throw their arms around Him and embrace Him, Latin American style, but He has already vanished. He is too alive! Exhilarating and frustrating at the same time! It certainly costs Him not to yield, but not for Him the easy way out, He wants even better things for them. Impossible to lay their hands on Him or even to stop Him! He waits for us further afield, when we are more adult, solid and mature: fully conscious down there in Galilee, crossroad of natures and cultures, in full globalisation.
On the night of the Resurrection as on Christmas night, something happened which escaped the wise and the powerful, something which is only revealed to the simple and to little ones, and which could only be perceived by the naked and wounded aspect of one's being; something which one never receives except at the core of an ignorance that is dazzled and ecstatic.
There one meets God, but it is another God!
From its very beginnings, humanity has been saturated with representations of the divine. There have been gods of thunder, of war, of love; deesses with ample bosoms and multiple arms. Human sacrifices continue: genocides and massacres, without forgetting the "absolute" assassins such as macro economic equilibrium, racism, territorial integrity and all the other modem idols which function as non declared deities.
However, in the absence of clergy of every kind, away from Temples and altars, at the heart of the countryside, the Christmas crib offers a profane picture, the simplicity of which has reversed the idols and false representations; here is a family picture which poses in its very existence, in flesh and in blood, the question: who is God?
The one who approaches and discovers the Child, is immediately baffled with questionings; whether intellectual or not, he is confronted with this reality. If he is a believer, he recognises in the wailing babe, in this tiny parcel of human flesh, the One who is sent, the Son of God, the Word made flesh: the very expression of the living God. And the question arises: is this manifestation of a fragile, dependent, vulnerable child a mere appearance? (And we are all aware of the recommendation not to judge by appearances!). Is it then, a mere appearance, or a phase or a moment of history, later to be contradicted when God reveals Himself as He really is, that is to say as we imagine Him to be: strong, self sufficient, invulnerable, insensitive, omniscient, all powerful, the centre of everything etc. Is this Child who is unable to speak, who cannot feed himself on his own, is he already God "such as He is"? Is God playing tricks with us by using a pedagogical method which only He can find amusing: birth in an irresponsibly dangerous milieu, on straw, not a very hygienic cradle, and death on a Cross like a common law criminal... painless? Is He really present there, or will He not resume His true identity after His Ascension into heaven?
Here is my question: at Christmas is He really Emmanuel? God with us! Yes, you will reply. But the question surfaces once more: God as He really is, or God who plays the child to present us with a rather charming tableau? God in flesh and blood, or God who is pretending? In our hedonistic societies, Christmas has been hi jacked as a sentimental pageant Disney Land style. It has become the ritual of another religion, for Santa Claus is the central figure; just a fairytale moment, before life is resumed as before.
Even if this event is over 2000 years old, and even if oceans of piety have reclaimed its return, the real Christmas is still a scandal for the Jews and for their tradition, Just as it is for the Greeks and their philosophy, a scandal which is like an electric shock to the reflexes of the religious world. The Christian God is like no other! He does not fit into the categories of the divine nor into those of this world as it "goes on its way". It is not just in the inn that He is refused accomodation, but in the sacristies also! He is in fact, outside all categories, and even when He attains manhood, the "Son of Man" has not even a stone on which to lay His head.
At Christmas, a new universe, fresh and free, comes to birth at the heart of the old world. The desire of the peoples, the dreams of the prophets, nourished by the Covenant, refined by centuries, assumes a body of human flesh, so as to become accessible, tangible, concrete. Emmanuel, God with us, perfection in the making at the heart of our history, from this very moment and in this very world!
When the raw force of the Empire takes a census of its power, it catches in its blind nets this tiny germ of the future, about which it is totally ignorant. Here however, in flesh and blood, begins a world of sharing, of forgiveness and brotherhood, of communion and friendship, of which this cruel old king, latched on to his power, has not the vaguest idea. Just like the old Darwinian ape of our beginnings, Herod waves about furiously, but will never understand the extraordinary change that has come about discreetly in this little being, so human that He is divine
Has this face-to-face contact of two worlds, so different, so incompatible and so opposed, ever really been measured? To which of them do I belong? Am I ever sure of having made a choice? There is no middle road: I am an anachronism and past history, or I have changed. The error would be to imagine that these two worlds confront each other like two armies, fighting one against the other as equals on the same field. In fact, they have nothing in common. The One who comes to us at Christmas to take charge of our destiny, needs no forceful weaponry. His word alone suffices, without the slightest constraint or persuasion, save the simple evidence of His truth. The nature of His power is such, that arguments from authority find no place in His action.
As the tiny seed grows and develops by assimilating the reserves accumulated around it, so too the new world which points from the cave in Bethlehem, is called upon to fill the whole universe. Those who reject it are like lifeless shells, and are condemned to rot and die. Hatred leads to death, but fraternal love opens up the way to life.
This is how I understand the joy of the poor and the persecuted in the final Book of the Bible, when - on the day of reckoning - everything will be revealed. All one has to do is to wait faithfully, for it will all become clear. Violence carries within itself the roots of self destruction. Unjust, oppressive and lying societies, produce within themselves the poisons which stifle them, generating those very plagues which sooner or later, will lead to their downfall. There is no need to imagine here the intervention of some heavenly policeman. Justice, or rather inherent logic is sufficient proof
While meditating on the peaceful silence of the Nativity feast and its impressive discretion, I look ahead to the day of the great return, that day when everything will be brought to light, when "we shall see God even as He is". He came, He will return. How? In thunder and noise? I don't think so. What I do think is, that He will come in the same calm, the same peace of Christmas night and the night of the Resurrection.
Contrary to popular belief, appearances are not deceptive. The living God does not hide His splendour in order to be simple: He is simple! He does not sacrifice His riches in order to be seen to be poor: He is poor! And if He is not recognised, that does not prevent His being a truly wonderful creator. He is discreet. Two minutes of true meditation turns appearances upside down and makes one see that when one is God, great strength is required to pass by unperceived! That is His way, that is how He is, near us and vulnerable: "Just as He is".
When there is no longer rivalry, desire recovers its freedom. No longer does it need to emulate the All Powerful so as to emerge the conqueror. Now we must pose the question of our thirst: thirst for what? Thirst for whom?
Part II: THE HUMAN CONDITION |
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8. Desire and Repression? |
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We can say it in one word or in a hundred words, with flowers or with rapturous expressions, just as we can say it with reserve and restraint. We can speak it directly or allow images, allegories or songs express it for us. Yet, when love is authentic, but frustrated by the absence of the loved one; when love is strong and true it has to declare itself and paradoxically, it expresses itself negatively: "You are so far away. When will I see you? I miss you! Don't delay. Hurry up and come!"
"Do you know what it feels like to wait for a friend, and to experience his lack of punctuality? Do you know what it is like to feel anxiety about something that might or might not happen? To await an important event that makes your heart beat every time the topic is mentioned and which comes into your mind the moment you open your eyes? Do you know what it is like to have a far-distant friend, to wait for news of him and to wonder every day how he is and what he is doing now? Do you know what it is like to live for someone close to you to the point where your eyes follow his, where you can read his mind, where you are aware of every facial change, foresee his desires, laugh with his laughter and weep when he is sad, fretful when he is upset and rejoice when he is successful? Waiting for Christ's return approximates to something like this." JR. Newman
Belief alone then, is not sufficient. It is not enough to know that Christ will come again on some hypothetical day. We must love Him. We must love Him enough that the suffering we endure through His absence, makes us long for His return, and this, so that we can fully participate in the carrying out of His great plan. We must be passionate, ecstatic, consumed with the fire of hope and the fire of impatience.
Christian hope then, has nothing to do with static religion, be it Greek or philosophical; the religion of the here and now, that of seeking happiness in adaptation and in harmony, the religion of interiority, of God ever present, eternal and unchanging, so that all one needs to do is to situate oneself in an atmosphere of silence and of calm, without movement and beyond the existential, and all this by means of an appropriate technique of concentration.
In the parable of the virgins waiting for the Bridegroom to arrive, his absence and late arrival are a cause of suffering. The feast has not yet begun. The atmosphere is still one of emptiness, of cold, of something missing; they are anxious and frustrated. It is night time. Instead of seeking within themselves, these young bridesmaids go out into the night to look for the one who is coming - not in silence, but with the clamour and cries of a triumphal procession. That faith is a faith that does not cling to the self, but one that is generous, that goes ahead in spite of the risks involved. It is an extroverted attitude which despises comforts and security, consumed as it is by the flame of a fire, the fire of hope and of desire.
Man is sustained and urged on by what he lacks, by his desire: happy are those who hunger and thirst. In a world tormented by a suffering phobia, a world which fears nothing so much as failure and frustration, where everything is organised in a frantic cult of satisfaction and instant comfort, it has to be said and said over again: man cannot live nor breathe but by emptiness, by the hollow part of his lungs. He cannot without dying, suppress his desires; and he would be a "useless passion", a breath, a cry of despair, if hope that sets him on his way, had no meaning, no real and consistent goal; if we could not recognise in him, coming from the infinite and going towards the infinite, a gigantic movement which draws him along and sustains him.
So then, if it is a good thing to get out of the office or the kitchen or the shop, to breathe some fresh air outside; or in the evening to go out of the house, to leave behind the deafening babble of discussion, and to fill one's heart instead with the music of the stars, it is not just to merge oneself romantically with the night; rather is it to get away from useless din and agitation, to catch one's breath and discover the meaning of the universe by opening one's eyes to the enormous backcloth which is about to be brightened by the dawn of His presence: all nature, says St. Paul, sighs and groans in the pains of childbirth.
It is good during the week to stand back from things and to relax with friends by discussing fundamental questions, without which, man is but an animal or a machine. It is not to find an answer to every problem, but to challenge them by remaining conscious, free and wide awake. It is really a question of keeping one's distance from a society that seeks to muffle its ears and throw itself frantically into work, in order to prove the extent of its capabilities, and thus trample on every longing which independently it can never fulfil.
If through a keen sense of justice and a conscientious urge to effect something, I join humanitarian or social organisations; if I share the hope of generous people, and respect totally the absolute dedication of some in fighting for a cause, there is always within me a surfeit of hope which these too short-sighted ideologies cannot embrace, and which at times earns me the name of being a demobiliser. But in fact, it is the critical spirit, piercing through and illuminating these ideologies, urging me to see beyond them, and to denounce the pitfalls that are in reality simplistic, and lead to the line of least resistance.
For when reality resists, when ideologies crumble and hope turns to despair in face of the inadequate results of aimed at goals, in face of those who back out, or betray not to speak of the more or less generalised corruption, the unconscious ignorance of the illiterate disorganised masses- then the question has to be asked about the reality or the illusion of every concrete hope. My own particular question is: whether for some, the Resurrection can be reduced to a mobilising myth, or for others to a rhythm of life like that of Winter or Spring, or again if a new world is being constructed in the end, through the dramatic events, the spasms and the death of the world that was. A world that would be peopled by volunteers, and volunteers who had been tested, having passed through many experiences and many trials and had been found not wanting. The question has to be asked if one has also to pass through Baptism, and through that ultimate abandonment, namely, death. It is a question of the future, that is, of what is awaiting us.
But is the future waiting for us? Is it not rather we who should tend towards it? It is each one's business to determine his own proper goals at the heart of the present. Woe to those who sit back smugly, secure in a 'top job bent on pursuing their goal in a career which will eventually end in death. Strangers to discovery of all kinds, they will be rejected! Seeing that the feast has to be prepared in spite of their sloth, in spite of their resistance, in short, in spite of them, it will be celebrated without them! We know them only too well; their hope is frozen, for they have spent their lives securing it in the ice box.
My hope and my desire are based on a reality: Jesus has risen! That is a reality: He has risen in His Body, an unexpected and longed for reality. It is a "suspended" reality, for the Resurrection of the Crucified One has not yet achieved its full manifestation,, its full flowering. The Spirit fractures as it were, present time, by introducing a fault, a restlessness, which prevents us from settling down. He causes a certain nostalgia, a torment, an opening not yet fulfilled, to the future of God. He causes thirst, and provides an "aperitif." Everything speaks of Him yet nothing can replace Him. 'The Resurrection of Jesus is an extraordinary event, an event which is "present" in the sense of a "permanent" gift and whose energy enlarges history like a ripening fruit! Jesus' Resurrection is an event charged with promise!
Remark was
I once heard someone say we should "tame" our desire. The fact that the remark in his case was a conscious one, demonstrates the fact that he might well have deliberately deadened desire in a sort of euthanasia of Hope, by reducing it to domestic dimensions. On the contrary, nothing could be as great or as wonderful nothing could ever approximate to what is in store for us. The taming of desire means being unaware that from every aspect, the reality is far greater is capable of utterly fulfilling us beyond all our hopes. The taming of desire, the putting it in order, is spiritual suicide, for it means we are afraid. The risk we take then, is to find that the door is closed!
It is true that it is difficult for us to admit, that in the final reckoning, Christ will not come at the conclusion of our efforts, a result as it were, of our achievements. He will comw freely, at the hour He chooses, too soon for everybody to be ready, or so late that no one waits for Him anymore. But after all, if the coming of Jesus was a marginalised event at the heart of the Roman Empire, why should His return depend on our laboratories or on the European Parliament? No one knows! Whether it is tomorrow or at a distant date, or even this evening, the main thing is to be ready! His promise cannot deceive us, and that is why I love that verse of Tristan Cabral, a Nimes poet:
"I wait for the great wave that will open my eyes!"
I wait to see that Face which will shine on us "when we will become
like Him, and we shall see Him as He is!"
9. Human desire, God's desire |
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In his book The Plague Albert Camus asks the question: "Can one be a saint without God?" And a whole generation put its faith in generous activity, ready to forget about its foundations and finality. It could even be said that some went into politics as others did into religion, so difficult is it to be a coherent atheist. In most cases, it was a crossing over event in the circumstances, commitment was turned into an absolute. The "cause" was canonised, the "praxis" divinised, while the criterion of truth was completely depersonalised. In extreme cases, there was the romantic folly of the Red Brigade (Italy) or Direct Action (France) or Shining Path (Peru). For Revolution and utopia are forms of the absolute which, as is the case for every religion, sometimes demands human sacrifice.
The real question seems to me to be this: can we be happy without God? Can we experience complete joy, happiness, utter fulfilment without God? Malraux had an intuitive reply when he wrote: "The twenty first century will be religious, or it will not be". He was unaware then of the pendulum phenomenum leading to today's right-wing movements which are just as dangerous, because "God" is first and foremost a word, which in turn becomes a refuge for all kinds of paranoias, while His truth is still unknown. Was it not Jewish conservatism and the political religion of the Romans which, in the very name of God and with the complicity of the crowds, crucified Jesus and put the first Christians to death?
"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who asks you for a drink!" Humanity is unaware of this, and that is why it has to be excused. "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". There is among men an unexplained desire either for radical change or for ultimate security, an insatiable and mysterious thirst for the absolute, leading it tyrannically from one illusion to another, from deception to deception, and at times to a murderous impasse. On the personal level, there are in all of us countless attractions to money, sex, power, alcohol, tobacco, to name but these... all very attractive and fascinating, but leading us alas, into deadly snares. We go from distraction to distraction, and barely satisfied, we seek something new, always ending up disappointed and frustrated. "if you but knew the gift of God!"
If you knew what you are seeking; if you knew what you are waiting for since the day you were born; if you knew what you need and the hollow emptiness and longing in the depths of your being; if you knew the mystery that you are, that enigma that causes you to exist; if you could analyse the reason why you were created, and hear those deep waters below the surface of your being that flow and murmur like the underneath stream in Jacob's well; if only you could listen attentively to it and recognise it in all its magnitude, then most certainly you would walk straight without ever again losing your way in endless labyrinths. You would then be free in the midst of your brothers and sisters, capable of marvelling at the wonder of your being, quite simply, in giftedness and in peace!
But how can we know what we want, as long as we have not found it? Is it not always the discovery of something that suddenly and in blinding fashion, reveals what we had been searching for in some confused way? Isn't it always after the discovery that we become sensitive to what was already there, but in the subconscious veiled part of our being: as the poet put it:
"What would I be without thee who came to meet me; would I not be but a heart in a sleeping wood, a time-piece which stopped ticking at that very hour? What would I be without thee, but this babbling word?"
"If you but knew the gift of God and who it is who asks you for a drink!"
This I can in no way discover on my own. How could I even imagine it? How could I represent to myself the living God, without fabricating an idol and deceiving myself? When - independently of the Word - I imagine God, then that image is a false one. I see Him as different from me, and imagine Him as I would like to be myself. I dream of being all powerful so as not to be dependent; incapable of suffering, so that I may no longer have to suffer. I would like to be capable of living completely on my own in an auto-sufficiency, so as to be without problems or tales or worries; with no thirst requiring satisfaction and no emotion that would alter my existence.
Now the entire life of Jesus Christ teaches me that God is poor, that He thirsts, that He suffers and that He loves us passionately. The entire life of Jesus demonstrates a deliberate waiting with a freely assumed impatience. There is an underlying emptiness and even a wound in God's heart, a deep deep mystery, of which human longing is but a pale reflection.
And it is the urge to slake this thirst and the desire to meet the living God who is waiting for me, which reveal to me the truth, the nature and the object of my longing. So there is no question of suppressing this desire, but according it its proper place by recognising it as my very motivation and my deepest strength. Man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God in their very desiring, which is for the Other, that is, God Himself. And my thirst can only be alleviated by coming into contact with another thirsting which will quench it. My desire can only achieve its goal by welcoming this far more powerful desiring which precedes it and overwhelms it on every side. Joy wells up in the meeting of the "I and the thou"!
Thus, I am saved from death - or rather from my finite state and my fear of death-by the death of Jesus, which leads me into a mystery of communication and of communion, an entirely new relationship which transforms and exhilarates me: the very life of God, Father, Son and Breath common to both.
You who are reading me at this moment, welcome the One who is sent. Seated by your well, He asks you for a drink. He is ever present in the midst of your research or your daily chores. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows all about your life. He has known thirst as you have, but first and foremost, He thirsts for you. You can reject Him, His heart is already pierced, but you will find Him again, for He never tires of seeking you. If, like the Samaritan woman, you know how to listen, if you are not afraid to question Him, you will drink in His words in one go. Widen your horizons to those He will show you. Allow yourself to float along the great river of His love. Plunge yourself into that Passion which is His. Open your heart to the dimensions of the world and of history, for your desires and your thirst will never be great enough to espouse the magnitude of His plans. Forget about your past history and the false paths you have trodden, what you did or didn't do. You don't have to keep an account of merits. It will be enough just to accept, and all you have to do is to ask!
I0. Prayer of Intercession |
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The prayer of petition presents a problem. For a long time I thought it was a pointless exercise. When a nun said to me: "I pray for you", I thought she would be better employed communing with God, advancing in contemplation of Christ's burning love for us, without bothering Him with our little problems inevitably trivial. For after all, if it is a question of myself or of other sinners, the "Good God" has only to attend to His own business, and there is hardly need to ask Him: after all, is He not the first interested One?
On the other hand, some people think that they know better than He does what they need. God is too far away, or too reticent; He does not intervene enough as one might expect God to do. If they could exchange places with Him, things would be better. That was the famous prayer La Bruyere chose to make fun of:
"My God, do for the cavalier La Hire
What La Hire would do for you
If you were La Hire
And if La Hire was God!"
This is a false attitude, but why?
Because it establishes equality which does not exist between God and the cavalier.
La Hire is not God ( he is so much less than God in that he portrays God as a pure and infantile projection of what he himself would like to be), and God is not circumscribed by La Hire.
Man is a potential being, he is at a stage of development and therefore needs a teacher. He does not know, as neither do you or I or the rest know, what we really want! Besides, we do not know how to wish properly: herein lies all the difficulty.
I once knew the mother of a family who made the following bargain with her children: "you're asking me to buy you this toy today. Now if in a week's time you still want it, we'll buy it for you!" First of all, she had to be careful with money. Then what she did buy, corresponded to what was expected and desired. Finally, and more importantly, her children learned at the same time about desiring, asking for, really wanting and eventually obtaining what they had consistently requested in a mature and thoughtful way. The gap in time between the formulation of the desire and its accomplishment allowed the children to remain free in face of the tyranny of a wish, often as imperious at the moment, as diminishing in intensity in the waiting. In this time interval, they learned the lesson of their ability to choose. What then can be wished for that is really important?
This is where La Hire is ignorant and where we too can lack knowledge. Why does God want us to ask Him, and invite us to pray to Him? Because it is a first step in communication with the living God. Now it is a risky thing to enter into a relationship with Him, for we do not know how far that adventure will lead us. I throw myself into it with faith and with trust. Before the wide-open heavens, in face of multiple possibilities, what I most need is daring, the desire to live to the full, the audacity to ask for the moon, the lot! The "top job!", to ask for everything. "We must not ask God for less than Himself" said St. Thomas. We must ask Him for His Spirit.
Teresa of Avila could serve as a model of daring and even of impertinence, with that will-power which certain women like the widow in the Gospel are capable of ...and which justify the saying: "What a woman wants, God wants." We find again the symmetry of the beginning, not that of man who wishes to escape from his condition, and who claims the status of a little god, but the symmetry of the reciprocity of the gift of self, in the overflowing of love:
"If the love you have for me
O my God, is like that which I have for you,
Tell me why do I stop
And why do you?"
11. God's Promises, covenant and waiting |
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It is because our desire becomes stifled within us, without being able to expand in truth, that God's promise has to come to meet us, and reveal the magnitude of human possibilities. For the promise far exceeds all that we might have been able to hope for on our own.
Our life then, is not abandoned to an empty time sequence of indefinite duration. No, it is placed under the sign of someone's promise, and that Someone is God!
It was rather amusing to note that at the approach of the recent millenium, journalists who were short of publishing material, began to overestimate the topic. They keyed up readers and spectators to look out for some great event. But what were they promising? A big celebration without doubt, but why? For whom? To see them apply the whip, so as to appear very interested themselves, was a pitiful spectacle! With hindsight, this has become still more noticeable.
Christians however, have a different relationship to time, and the words they have to express it are not those of the press. To the degree in which the secular feast of the New Year is hollow, the simple passage of one millenium to the next, the feast of Christmas is charged with meaning. It is true that this day also corresponds to a simple convention; Jesus was probably not born on December 25, but the day has been chosen in order to tell the secret which lies at the heart of all the other days. The Eternal invited Himself into the heart of time. The Creator has come home "incognito", as someone who just slipped in! The living God opens up our lives and fills them with His own special time.
We commemorate the past, for it is the promise of the future. Our hearts are full of living hope: we wait for the day when what is already there will be fully manifested; when all that is in gestation at the heart of our history will be fully accomplished, like a promise in the act of being fulfilled...like a promise! Not just as a project which it would be our task to fulfil!
The man with a project creates his own ego, he calculates: he tends to dominate persons and activities in order to achieve a circumscribed and limited goal. As for the man of promise, he stands by and waits, open to that which has not yet been accomplished; instead he tries to welcome the gift which is offered to him. The man of promise fabricates no idols, nor does he create his own project, instead he waits for it. A promise is not something of which one commands fulfilment, instead it is received and welcomed. It creates a kind of sixth sense, a capacity for looking and listening, an attention to the welling up of the unforeseen - so long waited for. There is no question here of satisfying oneself, for such a one assumes the frustration another will banish. If the humanist conjures up projects, the Christian is more of a watchman. Changed as a result of the promise, a certain opening up, sometimes a discomfort is effected in him, by the eruption of the promised ungraspable thing. With humility and adaptability, he develops an attention capacity which allows him to welcome what comes, or rather the One who comes, as gift. God's promise transforms the one who keeps vigil. Thus it was that Mary conceived the "unconceivable". And we have knowledge of that mystery when it reveals itself to us. Happy are those who are able to recognise it in time.
This attention which presupposes waiting is in direct opposition to sleeping. It is incompatible with work when it is dishumanising, but it is possible to cultivate that delicate art of being a contemplative at the heart of action.
It means being ready, like parents who are awaiting the arrival of a baby, or sick people a visitor, or lovers a rendez-vous. To keep vigil is to desire. It is possible to develop new affective senses, new ears and eyes of the heart, so as to capture the subtle messages that come to us through the hundred and one incidents of life. God's gift does not blow a trumpet. The Nativity takes place in silence and during the night, in the presence of the poor and far from city life. He is discreet, is our God! He could pass by unperceived, if man did not hollow out in the depths of his being, that gentle silent waiting which makes of him an enlightened one.
An "enlightened one"? Buddists too use this word. Thus an extravagant idea comes to my mind: if He can come unexpectedly, at evening, at midnight, at cock-crow, could He not also come in stranger's disguise? Or speaking a foreign language? Or following another religion? This famour globalisation has complicated everything: let us too keep watch!
... and be waiting!
12. Is the faith an illusion? Auto suggestion? |
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The promise exceeds our thirst and our desire, and goes far beyond our capacity to hope. That is why those who ingenuously claim that we have invented it all to reassure ourselves, have no idea of the compliment they are paying us! Invent it all? If only we could! It is so far beyond our imaginings! One day a friend asked me if it ever crossed my mind that my faith might be just auto suggestion? Somewhat perplexed, and wishing to give him an honest answer I replied: if we invented it, then we are geniuses! But we know very well that we are not.
As for reassuring us in face of death, Socrates and Plato, much older and less tragic, did that well. Those who claim that Christ's Resurrection is an answer to our questionings, do not know what they are talking about! If they only knew what a cool breeze the empty tomb wafts into our closed in lives, and into what abyss of mystery and complexity we are immersed!
It is so rich in meaning, so concrete and radical, that in the domain of faith, the best image to portray it is that of a birth, the coming to life, the decisive entry into a very new world with all that this implies of sudden change, of separation, of dazzling light and even of suffocation.
When the child in the womb, still unsuspecting and comfortable in the embryonic fluid and in darkness, suddenly finds itself in distress and cries its anguish when the first breath of air opens up its lungs, so we too are afraid to take those deep breaths of evangelical oxygen, and to open new eyes, when the love that embraces us is too personal and too overwhelming. Yes, there is a whole programme for us to learn and everything to be discovered.
For the life in question here, is that concret existence which manifests itself in Jesus Christ, so insupportable to His contemporaries, that they did everything in their power to ensnare it, to strangle it, to kill it in the shell.
What formula can encompass indifference and death those mortal enemies! The passion for life, the life of passion, that intense desire to enliven and to provoke, to share and to share again that longing for reciprocity in friendship; that infinite power of freedom and of creation, the irrepressible delicacy and respect for the other no dogma has ever encompassed all that!
No abstract terms can ever do it justice! It can only be apprehended by allowing oneself to touch to understand it, one must yield and allow the self to be consumed. To experience it fully, it will be necessary to plunge one's entire being into the mystery! Experience alone allows us to share in giving birth to the Risen One.
Experience alone permits us to discover the Father of all life, who inspires such a Son and justifies Him. Only the vital risk of articulated prayer, active presence among the poor, the sick, those in prison; only active charity which opens our eyes; in short, only the carrying out of our Baptismal promises, allows us to verify the living strength of love which conquers all. To understand, to enter into life, to know what it is all about we must make the effort!
As a child taking his first steps, and discovering at the same time what it is to walk, the muscles in his legs and the balancing of his body, the Gospel obliges me to live upright and in solidarity with others in joy, generous poverty, and true liberty. I have to try doing so, and after a while I am surprised that I could have for so long remained in the shade and without that spring in my step.
Christ's victory over death and the absurd, throws forever into confusion the criteria of our choices. The vital road is not opened to us by continual success nor by top class results. It opens in the middle of some crisis, at our blackest moments, in the depths of the tomb. For it is out of an absolute impasse that the living God frees His Son, so that He may become the First born of a new creation.
It is because He ceaselessly manifested God's solidarity with the poor, the ignorant, those excluded from society, that Christ was rejected. And it is because He has known absolute despair, that we know now, that there is nothing ever that can escape God's love, nothing that cannot be forgiven, no ill that cannot be reversed, no just cause that is doomed to failure.
Thus, from the deepest recesses of the abyss, Christ's victory over the forces of nothingness, are communicated to all. It did not take place as might have done a performance in a theatre or on the screen. Nor did it limit itself to one place or to one particular time. Its object was not to be seen or even to be recorded. Its aim was to be lived, and everywhere and at every moment to be experienced. It communicates itself as does a breath or a movement of the Spirit. The entire universe is carried along on this tidal wave, into which we must plunge with every fibre of our being.
For the living God whom we meet in Jesus Christ, is not looking for an audience to applaud, nor supporters on the steps outside. He seeks co creators, associates for freedom. His victory is for us! He is looking for friends, partners, co workers. He wishes to be known intimately, so that He can share the very experience which gives Him life, the Breath which is His own.
'The experience of suffering thwarts us in our ascending flight. All religions, wisdoms and philosophies, have come up against this obstacle. The Stoics advised acceptance - even to despising the body. The Buddha attacked the very source of suffering which, according to him, is the desire to live. The turn of the century witnessed an option for medicine, and the great specialists of our hospitals claim to be able to exorcise the spectre of suffering and reassure their contemporaries... as long as they remain in good health.
But to live in an anaesthetised condition, insensitive to stimuli or even unconscious, is that really a life? Have Christians who proclaim a suffering Messiah not a clear and true word to offer their sick and suffering brothers and sisters? For them, suffering is not the worst of evils - let me explain suffering in itself can become unbearable, absurd, which is worse than annihilation; it is something which should not even exist and in face of which death appears as a liberation. But suffering in itself is non-existent. There are men, women, old people, children, peoples who suffer. And suffering presupposes that one is Iiving.
A person who is suffering is someone who feels in a direct unexceptionable, physical, spontaneous way, a call to something else, a deep down longing to be cured, to be freed. Every fibre of his being is electrified with a negative protest at what is assailing him in this painful state, where love is prevented from manifesting itself, injustice reigns supreme, and the world no longer makes any sense. Protest, appeal, cry, to what? To deliverance? to cure? To something that as yet does not exist, but is there somewhere in shadow, acknowledged in the screaming, in the complaint, the agony, the struggle. From the depths of suffering, from the deepest pit that seems worse than nothingness, there mounts a cry to the impossible!
Is it possible this cry could be heard? Or does it remain imprisoned, echoing off the walls, amplified to infinity? There are persons who can no longer communicate, no longer say anything, but who are walled-in, perpetually isolated by such intense suffering, that they appear unable to feel anymore. Patients suffering from autism, for example, bang their heads against the wall and do themselves injury, without appearing to notice it. As the black spaces in between the stars at night are so dense, that the rays of light can no longer free themselves, so too the spoken word is locked into these peoples' darkness and can never escape.
As a Christian, I believe that humanity is saved from this fatality, because on a certain day, a cry pierced the very depths, traversing the underworld to rejoin the living God. This cry which my parched throat would have been incapable of uttering, was wafted heavenwards on my behalf, and was prayed for me with an intensity of sound beyond human imaginings. In Christ's prayer in the psalms a word springs forth which is not just my prayer, i.e. the desire to live and get better, a word which meets mine and leads me on towards change, towards hope, towards communion.
A thirty six year old man, who was to die a few days later, said to a Religious sister who came to visit him every day: "Do you know it's very important for me that you are there, just there. When you are there, there are three of us, you, me and suffering. If not, I'd be all alone with my suffering."
My suffering isolates and closes me in, but as soon as I realise that it is not mine alone and that it does not belong to me; as soon as I remember that I am a member of a much larger body, from that moment onwards, I feel sympathy and communion. Suffering alienates and changes me, but the echo of Christ's word de-alienates, and reveals to me a new identity, on the way to being freed.
In their suffering brothers and sisters, Christians see the tortured members of Christ's Body, "I am He whom you are persecuting" He tells St. Paul, who in echo as it were, replies: "I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in Christ's sufferings, for His Body which is the Church". Jesus has passed through suffering but He has not abolished it. As Paul Claudel put it: "He has filled it with His presence". Presence and sympathy.
The Sacrament of the sick is at the same time the word which liberates, by causing me to cling on to Christ, and the anointing with holy oil on the forehead and on the palms of the hands. In the Sacrament of the sick which is Christ's own gesture, we affirm and make actual our incorporation into the suffering Christ, our passage with Him from death to life, from sickness to health, from solitude to communion.
And all this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Just as oil makes the limbs of boxers slippery, and so difficult, to grasp, so too the Holy Spirit rescues us from the snares of the Evil One. As oil and fats served in former times to heal wounds, so is the Holy Spirit a source of love and gentleness, assuaging pain and healing in depth. And as in old houses, oil lamps were used to banish darkness, likewise, body, soul and entire being of the patient are illuminated with the brightness and the warmth of the Holy Spirit.
It is to be regretted that this powerful and moving gesture which I have never personally made without seeing tears, tears of joy - well up here and there, is so little known and so little practised. It is not just a symbolic act, but truly one that brings peace and freedom. Thus several times I have heard the wives of those sick men say after the anointing, that for them too, this sacrament had repercussions. The efficacy of the sacrament far exceeds the healing of the sick person.
We must all suffer and eventually die. This common destiny poses three questions: Why? What must we do? Why do we have to? Why bother caring and battling against illness if death is always to have the upper hand? What are our faith resources?
An amateur of black humour once asked that on his tomb be written the words: "See you soon!" But the joke was found to be sinister and in bad taste, so the epitaph was rejected. It is a want of discretion to make of death a common topic of conversation. Death is inevitable, but it inspires fear. It is a scandal which revolts us and which we reject outright.
"There is no such thing as a natural death, nothing which happens to man is ever natural, because its presence calls the world into question. All men are mortal, but for each man, his death is an accident, and even if he knows it, and even if he consents to it, it is an undue violence."
We always die of "something". Remove from the hospital wards accidents caused in the work place, the overworked, those with agonising problems, those victims of external aggression... remove the victims of bad ecological or affective environment, or those who by way of compensation have become alcoholics... go back a few generations and remove those whose background is tainted in some way... transfer to medical research what is gained by the arms race; you will discover that old intuition: man in his enthusiasm is destined to live forever! God creates for life, a life to be conquered, but a life which sin drags down, in a headlong slide towards death, towards nothingness.
To sin has always been to choose death. Biological death is a metaphor for spiritual death. It is a fact that some are already dead before their bodies die. There is a saying in Provence which is both humorous and realistic: "He's dead, but we're not telling him... when he does die, we'll take advantage of it to bury him."
The Gospel rejoins us in our historical condition, that of death: a constant daily dying, death which comes to us through generations long gone by, death which has become organised into a system. No one can escape it. But the Gospel does not teach us how to die, but how to live! By giving us back our taste - the salt as it were - to our love of life, it makes death still more intolerable!
Only those who are passionate, the non-resigned, are capable of suffering. Only those who love know the cost of dying. Only the living can die! Jesus did not die as a hero might have done. Neither was He calmly resigned to it as were the Stoics. He entertained no morbid death wish. Completely innocent, He alone could cry out with every bone in His body: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me"? Everyone who dies participates in this unique dying. He enters into the death of the Man, which is now the death of Christ, and he bursts through the mighty door of the Resurrection. "Death is swallowed up in life" "I am the Resurrection. Everyone who believes in Me, even though he die, will live."
But how can we believe, when everything contradicts faith? Adherence to Jesus Christ is gained by fighting against doubt and despair. That is why, when a Christian follower of Christ becomes ill, other Christians gather round him to ward off loneliness, strengthen his hope and sustain his faith. They pray that the patient may recover, for they genuinely desire his return to full health in his family, at his work and in the community.
Between the anonymous sheets of a nickel hospital, confronted with suffering and broken bodies often deprived of their dignity and reduced to the state of objects (handled, looked at, manipulated), Christians recognise this same human body given over to men, to treatments by his contemporaries. They recognise Him who had lost all His autonomy, whose entire body was lacerated, whose liberty and responsibility has been taken away from Him. They see the body, the mask of the Suffering Servant, who takes upon Himself all our infirmities.
"All our infirmities", which besides organic troubles, must include the injustices of society; for with my faith, I recognise in this an identical suffering, an identical and unjust violence which torments all those who are affected by it. The same clamour surrounds all the cries; many and diverse are the wounds, however there is but one suffering, one passion, one human cry: "Jesus is in agony until the end of the world", wrote Pascal, and Saint Paul: "I fill up in my body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, for His Body which is the Church."
Suffering, injustice, illness, can never be explained or justified; evil is always evil, opaque, absurd, nonsensical. But our refusal in the face of it, the protests that rise up within us, find their total and strongest expression in the cry of Jesus on the Cross. "Beyond despair", through suffering and death, a breach is opened, and from that moment, all is changed. Our fight against sickness and death strengthens us, forms us, and tempers us, making us like to Christ suffering, assimilated to Him, side by side in the same battle, united in one desire, in one longing, in one breath: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me."
So it is vital to celebrate this paradoxical communion which breaks through isolation, and re-establishes solidarities. We must proclaim Hope in the very place where it is tested. We must collaborate with the work of the Spirit of life, communion and holiness. When we are sick, we need an extra dose of faith, a special sacrament.
The oil of anointing symbolises all the different treatments. It expresses the very large context into which the Holy Spirit infiltrates each gesture that activates the healing process. The oil of anointing recalls baptism and reactivates the first choice, the election and the privileged love known to the Christian. He receives the royal anointing, that of free men, of witnesses and of those ready to do battle.
As a man is never completely free on his own, but grafted on to a people, a Christian linked to the Body of Christ, so the sacrament of the sick demands a public expression, the presence of the body that is of the Church, of the community. A sacrament is never a private affair, but presupposes that the Church congregate around the brother who is testifying to his faith.
And if the hospital becomes a sort of hypermarket offering all kinds of medical care, and where a patient can be treated as just another case or a simple number, the Christian community must intervene and testify, that the doctor is there to serve the patient and not the other way round. It thus accomplishes an act which demystifies the claims of science and technology, desacralising the medical world, and restoring to the patient his dignity as a member of Christ. After all, this body is first of all a person!
Unfortunately, all this is hard to live when surrounded by tubes, X-rays, the daily rhythm of duties which of necessity and as a general rule have priority. Faith is never an easy thing, but it is precisely because this attitude cannot be taken for granted, that it is a sign both to believers and to unbelievers that it is truly a sacrament. It is a festive act, one that is public, open to discussion, prophetic - in short, an act that expresses something, a true preaching. It is completely geared towards life, requiring people who believe and are aware of what is happening, sick people who are conscious. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Extreme-Unction!
For the last moments of life, there is a final sacrament. Because it is a sacrament for the journey, for the passing over to eternal life, it has received the name of "viaticum" "Jesus, knowing that His hour had come to pass from this world to His Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end" He took the bread of His Body, broke it and gave it one last time, thus expressing the definitive meaning of His life and of His death. If there are tabernacles, they exist for that reason: we keep the Body of Christ and we give it to the dying, so that in a final communion" with the Risen Body, source of life and health, i.e. complete health and eternal life, they may cross the threshold, completing the Passover by becoming one body with Christ.
There are some who die peacefully, but there are others who in the final spasms, cry out in anguish, tear through as it were, the darkness which is closing in upon them. Rebels, you will say? But no! Christ Himself lived this torment in Gethsamene when He "offered up prayers and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the One who had the power to save Him out of death"....Heb.5.7
15. The next world: Between the grave and Resurrection |
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Where have our parents and friends gone to? When our turn comes, what will be our destination? What is that interval between the tomb and the Resurrection like? The question is simple, the answer less so!
Jesus promised paradise to the Good Thief, there and then, without any delay. Now the Gospel speaks of the Risen Christ, but never is there question of the resurrection of the repentant thief, so what became of him? The ecumenical translation notes that for Jesus'contemporaries, paradise is a place where the dead await the great final day of reckoning. So what is the significance of this time-interval between tomb and resurrection? Is one dead or alive? Can one be alive without having been resuscitated? Where are the dead and how do they live?
Images are not wanting in this kind of speculation. Men have always exorcised their fear of the unknown by forming images. In the past, there was a whole geography of the great beyond, with rivers and valleys, a boat and animals. There were even reports of money having been found, for Charon the ferryman had to be paid for his services! Today, one talks of a tunnel, a bright light, music and singing. I'm not finding fault with any of these representations, but I'm simply saying that the Bible is not - as we say familiarly - "into" images, the reason being that its concern is with a wholly different aspect. For believers, the essential is not a question of where? but of relation. The other world is not apprehended as a geographical landscape, but as a theology, as a discovery of the living God. So where are the dead? Answer: the dead are living in Christ. When Jesus promises paradise to His companion in ill-fortune, the accent is placed not on the "in paradise" but on the "with Me". Paradise is "to be with Christ". "This day I say to you, you will be with Me in paradise". For both Jews and Christians, life is first and foremost, relationship, exchange, friendship. Life is communion, while isolation is death; exclusion is hell.
A good relationship with God would seem to be the guarantee of a life that flourishes like a well-watered garden. Still, trials will beset us, ever more demanding, even to the point of scandal which seems to block out all hope. When the people are forced into exile and the prophets persecuted; when the wicked triumph and increase in numbers, and when Job languishes on the dung heap; when the song of the Suffering Servant bursts forth from the heart of Isaiah's prophecy, then the tables are turned. The road of life often passes through suffering, and being faithful to the living God can lead to martyrdom. It is better to forfeit one's life here below, than to reject love and lose the source of life; it is better to die rather than betray the covenant, to be calumniated rather than to abandon the God of truth.
This is how Jesus -to the very end - gives witness to a relationship that cannot be destroyed. Neither men's deceit, nor the torture inflicted on his body can force him to yield. He gives back his life into the hands of the Father, not esteeming it to be jealously defended. The relationship is His life, it does not belong to Him! And this is why His death is a total gift of self in a relationship so perfect, that the Resurrection is a natural sequel that is -so to speak- assured of reciprocity.
Now it is through faith that we commune with the Son of God; it is through faith that we enter into that living relationship which unites the Son to His Father, in such wise, that our death does not open a door to nothingness. It is by faith that at our moment of death,, we too can abandon ourselves, as we did perhaps one day on the occasion of our adult Baptism. When the end does come and we have to let go, we can abandon ourselves to the Father, certain in faith that He will be there to receive us and to welcome us into His presence: "I say to you, this day you will be with Me in paradise."
The unbeliever has not this chance of being able to dialogue with the living God. He knows not the name of the Father, nor the Face of His Son, our Brother. He is an orphan, but is none the less alive. So it is in his relationship with his family and friends that he can live this gift of self, this call to a relationship which is both free and disinterested, which is love and life, and already a deep reflection of God's intimacy. When those without faith meet Christ, and when in their delighted astonishment they ask: "When did we see you in prison, hungry, naked, frozen with cold and wounded on the roadside?" He will reply: "Each time you..." Matt. 25.40
Everyone knows that love and friendship are a foretaste of heaven. But there are shadows in our life here below. So I'll have to say a word here about those who prefer death, self-interest, violence and contempt. This is where I have a question to ask: ought we take away from people that liberty which leaves them their dignity? Must we renounce love because it may lead to failure? Not to mention the half-hearted, the ditherers, the "neither cold nor hot", those who are neither totally closed nor truly open. They are going to find God's wishes for them completely overwhelming, incomparably greater and truer than the timid and easily discouraged searching which they have perhaps undertaken in their lifetime.
But in the presence of the Innocent One, nailed one day to the wood by the creature's refusal to love, my eyes at last opened to Him who slipped into my night and did everything to wake me out of my sleep, I will with a sad heart, realise my unworthiness. It will be too late to deserve such love, but it will always be possible to regret the missed occasions. It will never be too late to let the tears flow, to allow the shell to crack and permit myself to be transformed, in order to meet this wonderful God ever waiting for us, impatient to allow us get to know Him as He really is.
Some imagine that this will be the end ("after me the deluge" floats through our subconscious). But history is not going to end with my death. Others will go on their way. My entrance into God's presence far from making me indifferent, will plunge me into His passion for humanity..
As long as there remain beings in evolution, as yet incomplete, still enmeshed in the nets of evil; as long as there remain men and women who are suffering, struggling, accepting or rejecting the love of the living God, how could there be total peace anywhere, even in paradise?
The saints too are waiting, precisely because they have greatly loved, and because now they love with even greater intensity. Yes, they are waiting for the final liberation of each one, and for the great assembly of all. As for the others, they are no less concerned, and for the reason not difficult to understand, that their faults too follow the normal outcome. Let's take the simple case of an assassin. He will be relieved to see the results of his crimes slowly compensated for, by concrete acts of love performed by others rather than by himself. We are all in solidarity one with the other, and evil and good diffuse themselves and intermingle.
They snowball as it were, until that final day, when each will be accorded his true place and - let me add - his true body.
That is why, with two exceptions - that of Jesus needless to say, and she whom both Orthodox and Catholic churches celebrate on I5 August - it is not true for Christians that the dead have already risen. This is why in the Creed we say: "I await the Resurrection of the dead", yes, I await! For to say as do the Valentinians of the second century, and certain modern theologians, that resurrection immediately follows death, because it by-passes space and time, is to encircle the difficulty by simplifying it in an exaggerated way. The Resurrection would then be de-materialised, and we would be returning in a subtle way to the old abstract notion of the immortality of the human soul. Not of course that I have anything against the immortality of the soul, but all I am saying is, that to rest at that position, would be inadequate to the proclamation of the Christian message.
We could never have thought up a promise that could go so far. There was no need for us to do so. Our God loves man more than he could ever hope for; He loves the whole man with all his loyalties and all his relationships. Our God is mindful of man's body, if not there would not be so many cures in the Gospel narratives, nor bread and wine at the Table of the Eucharist. Above all, He would not Himself have taken a body, been born of a woman, in a certain place at a certain time!
In one way or another then, the Resurrection will have an effect on the body, if not, it is no longer a question of Resurrection, and the word would have to be changed. It is true that we shall know another type of body, that of the Risen Christ, where no sickness is possible, and which becomes the perfect expression of the Spirit. But the Christian affirmation of the Resurrection implies body, and is inconceivable without a certain link with matter.
Our God loves the whole man. He also loves His entire creation without excluding anything, so the entire cosmos is involved here. When the love of the living God is completely manifest; when God will be all in all, then no one and no thing will be forgotten.
Part III: GOD AT THE HEART OF OUR CREATUREHOOD |
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16. Finding a rhythm in life |
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While waiting to die, we must live. But in the end, life is mortal. The crazy rhythm of everyday living is literally killing. Have we lost the secret of rest? Who is going to teach us what real peace and real rest is?
"I will give you rest." It's really strange: in this world of recreation, unemployment or retirement, one thing alone seems to be missing, and that is true rest! I'm not speaking here of relaxation, nor even of sleep, but of real repose, of that feeling of plenitude: of serene joy and of peace. I'd like to say a word about calm and happiness. Not only do people not rest, but to rest takes on a negative meaning, and is criticised and even forbidden as something profoundly immoral. Letting off steam is at times excusable, but to indulge in real repose and to indulge in it deliberately, is regarded as perverse. One has only to listen to the litany of blame: "When millions of children are dying of hunger; when there are plagues like torture and cancer, we have no right to be happy, nor to fold our arms and rest; we must be up and doing! The poor must everywhere wake up and learn how to read and count (especially to count)!; they must learn what their rights are and insist that they be respected. We must together invent an economy which will include everyone and give work to all! Research and techniques must be developed. All this is possible and it is urgent! Consequently, delay is to be deplored and repose forbidden." We must, we must, we must...
And to the collective "musts" individual obligations are added: each one must develop his/her personal gifts. We must learn how to express ourselves, in the theatre, in poetry, in dance or in singing. Each one must take stock of his own limitations, and surpass them until he literally "explodes"! and what do you think of the recent media debate? Inform yourself! In order to be a good citizen, you must go beyond the slogan threshold! You must, you must, you must... Even the unemployed, the retired or the beggar can find work, but work that is backbreaking, unworthy and inhuman.
Never, since our society has become frankly materialistic, has it been so weak in its forward march. It is as though a vacuum was created that had to be filled. Rapid progress is being made, but at the same time, man is discovering that his efforts are endless. Researches mean more researches, and discoveries mean more discoveries. His limitations are lessened, but he remains dissatisfied - even if he makes it to a better job - and he is totally frustrated because of the majority who cannot reach the coveted goal.
The experience that we have, both personally and collectively, is that of failure, which is tearing at the roots of our being and creating a gap between what we are and what we ought to be. We constantly want to have more, to be able to do more, to know more, to bridge the gap that separates us from ourselves, to fill in the ravine that separates us from our ideal. But the ravine moves along with us! Sometimes, it becomes so wide as to cause dizziness in certain people. They become wan, empty and depressive, in revolt against their mediocrity. So the number of failed beings increases, disqualified as they are from achieving their own potential. As models of sanctity proposed to them are inaccessible, they feel like lost souls, unworthy of the final reconciliation, unworthy of rest.
So then, to get away from megalomania and discouragement, I'm going to propose a parable, and to change the scene somewhat, I'm borrowing it from a different cultural background.
It seems that in order to complete the famous wall of China, the builders put forward an extraordinary piece of strategy. They built a tower and linked that to the preceding one, building the wall by starting at the end. Thus by successive and limited stages, they steadily advanced without becoming discouraged. Each block they had built, had a certain unity in itself, a certain perfection. Each link prefigured the whole and provided proportional satisfaction.
Likewise we might put rhythm into our lives, and take time off to breathe. Each one of our actions, inspired by the ultimate goal, would become like a sacrament. With a sprinkling of poetry, the smallest of our acts would be enriched in meaning and in liberty, and would become a prayer of praise and celebration. Work would become a game, shot through already with the great feast in preparation. And the final reward would be the same for all. What a surprise!
This of course presupposes that we change our ways of behaviour. In the Gospel, the widow's mite is of greater value than the superfluous money of a rich man, for quantity means nothing if it is not the expression of the gift of oneself. The joy of finding one sheep is multiplied a hundredfold, for all are found in the one which had gone astray and was found. Jesus turns it all upside down. He is glad to work precisely on the day of rest. He places sinners at the centre of redemption. Prostitutes and tax officials see Him approach them without any preliminary talk about repentance. He forgives them without asking for an admission of guilt.
Finally, whatever the sermons have to say, Jesus is not an unsurpassable model. He is not the "Superman" who has exceeded all humanity's limitations, nor the superman we dream of becoming, and who will return to pass judgement on our half-heartedness. Jesus is like us, a being of flesh and blood, circumscribed by time and space, a limited, sexual, mortal being. He knew the meaning of hunger and thirst, fatigue and anguish, sorrow and fear. Each of us has travelled further than He has. He did not invent the potato nor cross-fertilisation nor penicillin nor vaccination. If He healed a few sick people and took up the cause of some marginalised, it wasn't a lot. His life did not achieve any major success. He was born on straw and nailed to a cross, but others have undergone more suffering and were poor |
