Heaven

I’m always ready to hear something about Heaven, and I suppose you are, too.  I recently read a book by a 19th-century French priest, Fr Charles Arminjon, entitled, The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life.  Evidently it is a book that St Therese of Lisiuex had read with great spiritual profit.  I’m going to present some excerpts from his chapter on Heaven, which is quite welcome after his chapters on Hell and judgment.  Some people are motivated to do good by fear of Hell and some by hope of Heaven, and some by both.  I think it’s best to run the race with our eyes on the Lord and all that He has prepared for those who love Him.

“Our destiny is an enigma, which reason alone cannot explain; but faith elevates our thoughts, strengthens our courage, and inflames our hope.  It tells us: have no fear; you are not wandering along some lost and uncertain path.  Beyond our mortal years there is a new life, of which the present one is only a representation and an image.  On this earth, we are travelers; but beyond the stars and all space, our heritage and native land is found…

“We err in our judgments on the conduct of God toward men; we see nothing more than a pointless harshness in the mystery of suffering; we bear the burden of life without courage or dignity, because we do not know how to raise our eyes and our hopes above the limited sights and perspectives of the present life, and because we do not reflect upon their destiny and end.  Our destiny is the possession of God and eternal life: to live in that abode from which all evil is absent and where we enjoy a multitude and abundance of every good, a place that is commonly called heaven.

“Heaven: this is the torch before which the vivid appeal of earthly things fades, the light that, by transforming our judgments, makes us cherish poverty, sickness, and the insignificance of our state of life as a good, and makes us regard riches, the glamour of honors, the favor and praise of the world as an evil.  The thought and expectation of heaven impelled Paul to face the most arduous labors and the most formidable perils, giving him a superabundance of joy amidst his sufferings and afflictions…

“Heaven is something that we have not seen.  We travelers, wandering in this valley of darkness and tears, are reduced, like captive Israel on the banks of the Euphrates, to hanging our harps and zithers upon the weeping willows of this wretched, human life.  No human voice, no lyre can ever succeed in producing songs and tunes in unison with the melodies and sweet harmonies with which that indescribable city resounds…

“Even the inspired word itself cannot rise to realities that extend beyond the bounds of reason and surpass all the strength and capacity of our nature.  Let us listen to the great apostle Paul, immersed in the most exalted raptures, conveyed in spirit as far as the third heaven, and into splendors more profound and ineffable than those experienced by the Eagle of Patmos, as he exclaims: Heaven is not as you tell us; it is a thousand leagues above the analogies and descriptions you are offering us. ‘Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him…’ [emphasis in the original]

“Heaven is God’s ideal, the repose of His intellect.  Let us add: it is the repose of His heart.  The heart goes further than the mind.  It has aspirations and impulses, unknown to genius, which go beyond all the bounds of inspiration and thought…  The transports that the divine vision will arouse in the elect will make their hearts superabound in the most unutterable joys; it will be a flood of delights and raptures, life in its inexhaustible richness and the very source of all good and all life.  It will be, as St Augustine goes on to say, like a gift from God of His own Heart, so that we may love and rejoice with all the energy of the love and joys of God Himself… The contemplation of God will not mean immobility but, above all, activity, an ever-ascending progression, where movement and repose will be bound together in ineffable harmony… They will go from glory to glory, from joy to joy…

“How sweet it will be to contemplate at a single glance all the marvels of the Most High God in the realm of nature as well as in the order of grace and glory… In heaven we shall see and recognize one another; and in heaven we shall love one another… All the objects and causes that captivate our hearts and arouse love in this world will act with an intensity a thousand times greater, and without encountering any obstacle, on the hearts of the elect…

“In heaven… their awareness of happiness is not distinct from their awareness of God… the effect of this multifarious delight is not to induce them, by reflection, to withdraw into excessive preoccupation with themselves and the perfection of their nature, but rather to inspire them to soar upward with inexhaustible energy and lose themselves in the ever-closer embrace of God, who imbues them with His fullness through all their senses and penetrates every pore of their being.  On their lips the cry of joy blends with the cry of adoration and gratitude… they exclaim, ‘Holy, holy, holy is God Almighty…’

“In heaven, happiness is stable, since the elect, confirmed in glory, are beyond all fear.  The ages will succeed one another without diminishing their happiness, without a single line creasing their brows.  The certainty of eternally possessing the benefits they hold dear multiplies their sweetness a hundredfold.  What a source of jubilation when, after thousands of centuries have elapsed, they reflect upon the day in the distant past when they made their triumphant ascent, and say, ‘Nothing is finished yet; I reign today, today I am in possession of my happiness, and I shall possess it as long as God remains God—forever and ever!’”

Those are just a few snippets of this long chapter, which the author himself admits is just a crude and rough sketch.  But doesn’t it make the furtive and fleeting pleasures of this life—that is, those pleasures that are not part of our life in God—pale into complete insignificance and even wretchedness?  No wonder the Lord said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”  He came from Heaven; He knows what it is like; He has been inviting us there for millennia and warning us how grievous a loss it would be to forsake his Kingdom for the sake of selfish gains in this life.  Heaven will be the super-superlative of every good thing we can imagine or desire, and the experience of joys and wonders we can’t even begin to imagine.  The more we fix our minds on Heaven, the more free we will be in relation to things of this Earth, and we will do whatever it takes to join that blessed company who enjoy the utter fullness of life and blessing, the superabundance of love in the Light of the Face of Him who loved us first, and who awaits us in his heavenly Paradise.

Resentment: the Enemy of Joy and Gratitude

One of the sections in Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, concerns the elder son and his attitude toward the return and repentance of his younger brother.  Chief among his various negative attitudes is that of resentment, which has a spiritually paralyzing effect and keeps him from entering his father’s joy.  His self-chosen exclusion from the banquet his father gave to celebrate the return of the “lost” son is an analogy of the dreadful power of resentment to exclude people from the Kingdom of Heaven.

Since I have some interest in philology, I like to discover the etymology of words and see if that helps us understand better the language we use.  To resent literally means to “re-feel.”  When we give in to resentment we choose to “re-feel” the anger, hurt, humiliation or whatever negative experiences we have undergone, and thus we keep them alive as a reservoir of bitterness, envy, self-righteousness, or self-pity.  Holding a grudge is the same thing.  We take some cold comfort in keeping resentment toward someone who has hurt us or let us down somehow, and we continually re-feel the negative emotions to shore up our own wounded pride.  In the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt. 20:1-16), we find a similar message.  The workers who came in at the last hour were rewarded by the vineyard owner exactly as those who had worked all day—so these became filled with resentment and complained to the owner, who then gently reproached them for faulting him with his generosity to others.

After retelling the part of the parable in which the elder son comes in from the field and hears the sounds of celebration in the house—and becoming angry when he finds out what is actually happening—Nouwen concludes: “Joy and resentment cannot coexist.  The music and dancing, instead of inviting to joy, become a cause for even greater withdrawal… The experience of not being able to enter into joy is the experience of a resentful heart.  The elder son couldn’t enter into the house and share in his father’s joy.  His inner complaint paralyzed him and let the darkness engulf him.”

Perhaps it seems obvious that if one is nursing a particular resentment one cannot at the same time be rejoicing.  But one can enter into a more or less perpetual state of resentment that blocks the very possibility of joy, and hence makes one continually stand outside the Father’s house, grumbling and rehashing one’s grievances while everyone else is rejoicing in the Father’s love and bounty.

The Lord told the parable of the Prodigal Son not only to offer hope to sinners, but to warn those who consider themselves good to examine their own hearts lest they—instead of the sinners they look down upon—be found forever outside the Kingdom.  Nouwen continues: “In response to their complaint, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them,’ Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son.  It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people.  They finally had to face their own complaint and choose how they would respond to God’s love for the sinners… It was and still is a real challenge: for them, for me, for every human being who is caught in resentment and tempted to settle on a complaintive way of life.”

As resentment is the enemy of joy, it is also the enemy of gratitude and of trust.  “Although we are incapable of liberating ourselves from our frozen anger, we can allow ourselves to be found by God and healed by his love through the concrete and daily practice of trust and gratitude.  Trust and gratitude are the disciplines for the conversion of the elder son… Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.  My resentment tells me I don’t receive what I deserve… There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home, and declared in a voice filled with affection: ‘You are with me always, and all I have is yours.’  Indeed, I can choose to dwell in the darkness in which I stand, point to those who are seemingly better off than I, lament about the many misfortunes that have plagued me in the past, and thereby wrap myself up in my resentment.  But I don’t have to do this.  There is the option to look into the eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein all that I am and all I have is pure gift calling for gratitude… Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions.”

If we were to examine ourselves carefully, we would likely finds areas of resentment in our lives that are preventing joy and hindering our ability to be grateful, and preventing even our ability to see the reasons for joy and gratitude that God has placed in our lives.  Sometimes I find it hard to be grateful for little things if at the same time big things are going wrong.  The bad things “fill my prospect” (as the psalmist says) and so it’s hard to see the good, or at least the good seems to pale into insignificance in comparison to the bad.  But gratitude isn’t only something that spontaneously fills us when we recognize some extraordinary blessing.  It is a discipline that must be consciously cultivated at all times (“Give thanks in all circumstances”; 1Thess. 5:18).  Nouwen writes: “The choice for gratitude [notice: choice, not spontaneous feeling] rarely comes without some real effort.  But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious.  Because every gift I acknowledge reveals another and another until, finally, even the most normal, obvious, and seemingly mundane event or encounter proves to be filled with grace.”

So the choice is set before us: resentment or joy and gratitude.  We can imprison ourselves in a dark dungeon of self-pity, feeding on “sour grapes,” taking perverse satisfaction in our negative assessment of others or even of life as such—or, we can respond to the Father’s invitation to enter his joy and thus live in humble thanksgiving for all the unmerited gifts, great and small, that He grants us in his paternal generosity.  The difference is, ultimately, on which side of the gate of Heaven we choose to stand.  The Father pleads with us, as to the elder son, to come in, but we are free to nurse our resentments and stand outside.  It’s not worth it merely to be “right” about the shortcomings of others and our own personal hurts and thus to justify our “re-feeling” of all negative experiences.  Feel them once and forgive; feel them once and let go of them.  Leave them behind and join the grateful rejoicing of all those who—through repentance, trust, and divine grace—forever enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Present Commitments and Future Destinies

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31) is important for understanding certain truths about Christian life and destiny.  It is not only about the inequity of wealth and poverty, nor only about the consequences of a grievous lack of compassion or charity, though these are of course key themes of the parable.  We’ll look at these as well as another, perhaps less obvious theme, or rather a practical application, which may be of utmost importance in allowing this message to bear fruit.

Jesus begins the parable by describing the fine apparel and food of the rich man.  A key phrase in this description is “every day.”  He dressed luxuriously and feasted sumptuously every day.  No one is condemned for dressing up on occasion and enjoying some special treats on certain festive days.  Even in very poor countries, people often have one special garment to wear on holidays, and on rare occasions manage to have a festive meal.  This belongs to human culture and is a good thing.  But it’s not a good thing when one has so much wealth that one can afford to do this every day, especially when there are desperately needy people in plain sight who would greatly benefit from just a tiny share in the goods of the wealthy.  Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate, hoping for a shred of charity, so the rich man had to walk by him many times and ignore him, and this was his greatest sin.

St Luke makes it a point to highlight Jesus’ love for the poor, and it is in his Gospel alone that the beatitudes are contrasted with the woes, which apply perfectly to the rich man of the parable. After pronouncing blessings upon the poor, the hungry, and the mourners, Jesus says: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have [already] received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full now, for you shall hunger.  Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep” (Lk. 6:24-25).  The rich have already received the only consolation they’ll ever have in the ephemeral wealth of this world.  This is exactly what Abraham told the rich man who was tormented in Hell: “in your lifetime you received your good things… [but now] you are in anguish.”  He was also full of rich food in this life, but in the afterlife he was parched with thirst, begging for a single drop of water.  The rich man celebrated and laughed while Lazarus suffered and wept in misery, but now he was groaning in anguish, tormented in the flames.  Lazarus, on the other hand, was poor, hungry and miserable in this life, but all these injustices were redressed in the next, so he was satisfied and happy in the bosom of Abraham and in the presence of the holy angels, who came to receive his soul when it was at last time to leave his suffering body.

This also seems to be a fulfillment of a prophecy of Isaiah: “When I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not listen; but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in.  Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, My servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, My servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, My servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame; behold, My servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and shall wail for anguish of spirit” (65:12-14).

Even though we know it is more than material poverty that makes one eligible for Heaven, and more than material wealth that makes one a candidate for Hell, this particular parable contains no further nuance, which should at least tell us that these conditions still are significant.  Abraham simply made the observation that the rich man had good things in life and now he has torment, and Lazarus had poverty and sickness in this life and now he has comfort and consolation.

In many countries, especially relatively poor ones, there is often extreme inequity between rich and poor.  The few rich are fabulously, opulently rich, which the many poor are desperately destitute. I read recently about someone who had wealthy friends in India and he stayed with them on their estate, and whenever he went out of their gates he was greeted with numerous dirt-poor beggars, just like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man.  His friends did nothing for them, but he couldn’t tolerate the injustice and stayed no longer with the rich.

What are we to do, when we hear a parable such as that of today’s Gospel?  Such injustices exist all over the world today, and the ultimate consequences will be the same as those we heard about in the Gospel. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I’m not rich, so I’m not guilty of the rich man’s sins.” As Christians the first thing we need to do for the poor and suffering is to intercede for them.

Now to some this may sound like a pious cop-out, and in fact in can end up that way, if intercession is not properly understood.  A little while ago we were reading a book in the refectory called God and Man, by Archbishop Anthony Bloom.  He talked about the authentic meaning of intercession.  Intercession is not just offering a few words of petition in church or at home, thinking that thus you have fulfilled your obligation to those for whom you pray.

To intercede literally means to “go between,” that is, to step into the situation, in whatever way is possible, of the one for whom you intercede, so as to actually do something about it.  To intercede for someone is to make a commitment, to bear the burden of another, to bring them before the face of God with more than just words or a bit of good will.  In the prophet Ezekiel, the image of intercession is that of standing in the breach of the wall of a city, putting one’s own life on the line to defend it.  Thus says the Lord, who looked in vain for true intercessors: “The people of the land… have oppressed the poor and the needy and have extorted from the sojourner without [giving] redress.  And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.  Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath…” (22:29-31).

Archbishop Anthony gave a dramatic example of literal intercession in a single woman who gave her life to spare the life of a mother with children who was being hunted by the Communists in Russia.  She chose to stand, as it were, between the killers and the other woman and her children, and this is the ultimate intercession.  Now of course such a heroic act can only be performed once, since she was killed in the process, and we have to go on interceding day by day, but the principle of radical commitment to, and self-sacrifice for, those for whom we pray still must be applied in concrete circumstances.

We haven’t discharged our duties to the poor by merely mentioning them in our prayer.  If our intercession is not to be superficial or a mere pious show, in which case it would be fruitless, we must, so to speak, put our lives where our mouths are.  If we intercede for the poor, we must be willing to experience poverty ourselves, and if we have any material resources, we should give without hesitation, and give more than we think we can afford.  Otherwise we are not stepping into their shoes or standing in the breach of the broken down wall of our corrupt and heartless world.  If we intercede for the sick, we must be willing to endure sickness ourselves, patiently and cheerfully, making it a sacrifice to God on behalf of those in much more serious straits than we are.  If we intercede for the persecuted, we must be willing to endure hostility from others, even if wholly unjustified, so that our prayer will bear fruit.  If we intercede for peace, we ourselves must be peacemakers in our own environment. If we intercede for the end of abortion, we have to be willing to make sacrifices, contribute to the cause, or personally participate in works to that end. If we intercede for the conversion of sinners, we must make a thorough and even brutally honest examination of our own lives, identifying clearly and working diligently on the areas in which we sinners need to convert, and never looking down on the weaknesses of others, but rather offering ourselves in sacrifice for their salvation.  Only in such ways will intercession be genuine and fruitful and hence pleasing to God.

For, as St Paul says in the epistle today (Gal. 2:16-20), “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  Jesus Christ is the Intercessor par excellence, who stepped into our human condition and bore its terrible weight.  He stood between the Face of God and the fires of Hell, gathering us to Himself, standing with us, identifying Himself with us, bearing our sins and taking them to the Cross.  He made a commitment to us, a covenant in his own blood.  We who believe in Him have thrown in our lot with Him; no servant is greater than his master.  That’s why just before Paul says that it is no longer himself but Christ living in him, he gives the reason and the necessary condition for this: “I have been crucified with Christ.”  He has joined the Lord in his universal act of intercession for the whole world.  Later he will say that he fills up in his own flesh the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.

Some might object: why should I identify myself with poor beggars and give away my goods to them?  I earned it with my own labors. What do I owe them? To them I would say: why should the Son of God have sacrificed his life for you, who made yourself his loathsome enemy by your sins?  What did He owe you?  Why did He put his life on the line to make up for your stupidity, selfishness and malice?  He did it because He loves us, and now He calls us to love as He has loved, to forgive as He has forgiven, to give as He has given.

Let us not shrink from the high and demanding calling to be intercessors with Christ, for our loved ones and for the whole world.  There is likely a Lazarus in our lives who needs our commitment of charity and sacrifice.  There are millions of them lying at the gates of the rich and powerful of this world.  There are souls who will soon be standing before the judgment seat of God, and if they are in a state of sin, they are poorer and more miserable than the most destitute wretch on earth.

So, let us not be among those who want only the good things of this world, being more concerned with ourselves than with others, for then the woes Jesus pronounced will fall on us.  We must be willing to accept the price of fruitful intercession, not just giving lip-service in our prayers, but making of our whole life a sacrifice of praise and love to God, bearing the burdens of our brothers and sisters, even in our own flesh.  Then we shall truly be followers of Christ, and when we die the angels will come for us and take us to the place of comfort and joy, the place reserved for all those who have been willing to be crucified with Christ. These are the ones who alone can truly say: I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.

Turn and Be Turned

Jesus has said in several places in the Gospels that we need to become like children.  I’m always trying to get a little more understanding of this.  Surely He doesn’t want us to become narcissistic, temperamental, or stubborn, as children often are, and there’s nothing in the Gospel that suggests we embrace infantilism or immaturity.  Yet whatever He means by it, it is of decisive importance, because “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:3).

We know that becoming like a child has something to do with humility, for in the next verse Jesus says, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”  I checked to see what one of my favorite Bible commentators, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, has to say on the matter, for he has produced a rich and detailed commentary on the Gospel of Matthew entitled, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, though he hasn’t quite finished it yet (he has written two volumes, taking 1600 pages to cover just the first 18 chapters of Matthew; he has recently professed solemn vows in a Trappist monastery [and is known as Br Simeon], and he has told me that he hopes now to be free to work on the third and final volume, which I eagerly await).

What I’d like to do now is share some of his insights on this topic, which can help us gain greater understanding of Jesus’ words. (I will transliterate the words he puts in the original Greek script.)

“The call to turn and ‘become like children’ and, in a moment, the exhortation to ‘humble oneself’ make it clear that Jesus is not here praising a condition of blissful ignorance, torpor, and mere passivity.  The attainment of this spiritual state in fact calls for very long and hard work, involving the anguish of self-renunciation, as we see amply demonstrated in the life of St Therese of Lisieux.  For a headstrong, self-reliant adult to become interiorly like a child requires an exhausting labor, the demolition of perverse habits, and the healing of illusory turns of mind.  Spiritual childhood is a goal to be achieved after long journeying, a dimension to be entered into by the skin of one’s teeth, not a passiveness into which one falls by default.

“Jesus’ call of the child to himself here (proskalesamenos paidon) precisely parallels his earlier solemn call of the twelve apostles to himself at the moment of their first commissioning (proskalesamenos tous dodeka mathetas autou, 10:1).  Jesus is at present reminding them of something essential to their condition as disciples: namely, that they did not originally come to him on their own initiative, as they have just now done in order to ask their question [“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”], but that he called them to himself when their lives were moving in a quite different direction. ‘We love because he first loved us… In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins’ (1Jn. 4:19, 10).

“If the disciples are to become vibrant instruments of grace in God’s hands, they have to acquire the malleability of youth, the pliancy of disposition and the gentleness of character that will make it possible for Jesus to use them as he sees fit… The child hears Jesus’ call, comes over to Jesus at once, and allows himself to be handled, disposed of, positioned by Jesus at will.  Such alertness and spontaneous obedience and availability to God will, for the disciples, come slowly as a result of a long process of spiritual purification and sanctification…

“This specifically biblical understanding of ‘childhood’ rests on a concrete understanding of the verb straphite, ‘to turn’ (‘unless you turn and become like children’), odd-sounding as it may be in this context.  Certainly, it refers to a metaphorical ‘turn’ of attitude or change of outlook; but the word metanoia is normally used in the Gospel to convey this meaning.  In the present instance something more immediate and physical must be meant.  The ‘turning’ to which Jesus is exhorting should be read in conjunction with Jesus’ call to the child in the previous verse, so that the import of the statement would be: ‘Unless you turn away from your present path and come to me in response to my call, as you have just seen this child do, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ [emphasis in the original]  The verb straphite is actually in the passive voice, so it should be more literally translated as ‘unless you are turned,’ namely, by Jesus, ‘away from your self-directed attitude and path, and toward himself.’  The passive voice here underscores the divine initiative and work in this process: ‘Yield to me and allow me to turn you in whichever way I choose.’  In this sense, spiritual childhood and discipleship are one and the same thing, and such childhood will also mean, paradoxically, that the person who is a ‘child’ interiorly must take up his cross in order to follow Jesus into his Kingdom.

“To come to Jesus, to follow Jesus, necessarily means treading with him the Way of the Cross, all the way to the shame of Calvary Hill (cf. 16:24-25).  That is how far spiritual childhood must be situated from a cozy sentimentality.  Whoever yields to Jesus’ embrace shall be crucified with him, in order to rise with him to eternal life.  The social marginality of the child whom Jesus calls into the midst of the disciples evokes a chief symbolic component of Jesus’ own Passion and death: his ostracism and abandonment by the rest of men…

“It is always the love practiced by the marginalized that redeems the arrogance of those at the center.  God loves the humility that positions itself at the outer edge of things.  That is where God’s scrutinizing glance instinctively goes when he searches for a just one.

“The disciples were ardently concerned a moment ago about rank within the Kingdom of Heaven.  Now Jesus is telling them that, as long as they persist in their present mentality, they will not even enter the Kingdom, much less contend for rank within it!  For this Kingdom is a kingdom of children where no one can enter who does not suspend all private projects of self-promotion… we must first unlearn all those encumbering adult habits that fill us with slavish fear and chain us to the earth, all those corrupting tendencies that inhibit the heart from recognizing that God alone is great and that before him we are all children.  We must work at making ourselves very small, until the greatest joy of our hearts will be to exclaim to God with boundless trust: ‘Abba!  Father!’ (cf. Rom. 8:14-15).  Only this password, in the Child Jesus’ mother tongue, will gain us admittance to the Kingdom.”

We now have greater understanding of Jesus’ words.  So let us turn and allow ourselves to be turned, so that we can return from our detours and run to God with the joyful abandon of a child who trusts absolutely in his father and finds peace and blessing in his embrace.

A. A.

A friend lent me a copy of the “Big Book.”  You know what that is, right?  It’s the standard text for Alcoholics Anonymous and it bears the same title.  It was first published in 1939 and since then has been published in several editions and, as of the year 2000, seventy printings.  I’m glad it’s so popular, because of all that good that has come from it, though I wish the reason for its popularity didn’t exist.  Anyway, before you start praying for my deliverance from the demon rum, let me assure you that I’m not an alcoholic (I probably have two or three beers a month, a small glass of wine on feast days, and liquor never).  But the book was lent to me simply so I could gain some understanding into the biological and psychological dynamics of alcoholism, but most importantly the spiritual dynamics of recovery.  The first part of the book gives a bit of history of the organization and an explanation of its principles.  The rest of it is a collection of stories from various alcoholics who found lasting sobriety through AA.

Most people have some familiarity with the 12 steps of AA (which have subsequently be successfully applied to other types of addictions), or at least have heard of them.  Some of it is basic morality and practical good sense, like taking “moral inventory” of one’s life and making amends to those one has harmed or offended.  But the most important element of the whole process of deliverance from alcoholism is the handing over of one’s life to a “Power greater than oneself,” which is much more often than not explicitly identified with God.  Now it is not just I who am saying that this is the most important part.  The founders of AA said so, and it has been that way for decades.  The book is not shy about quoting the Bible, encouraging use of the Lord’s Prayer, and using Christian terms for God.

Perhaps AA is unique among secular organizations in insisting that the solution to a problem that is a combination of a biological predisposition and a psychological obsession is primarily a spiritual one.  Time and time again, as the various testimonies are given, it is the “spiritual experience” of giving oneself over to the “Higher Power” that is decisive in stopping drinking and in maintaining sobriety.  It is also crucial that the recovery process includes sharing one’s experience with other alcoholics and inviting them to the same sobriety one is already achieving.  So the “spirituality” of AA is quite other-centered and not simply focused on dealing with one’s own problems.

I found it interesting that most of the testimonies in the Big Book come from people who hadn’t the slightest interest in God, and who mostly thought religion to be little more than pious hogwash.  One man put it this way: “The Third Step said: ‘Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.’  Now they asked us to make a decision!  We’ve got to turn the whole business over to some joker we can’t even see! … And so one gets thinking to oneself, ‘Who is this God? Who is this fellow we are supposed to turn everything over to? What can He do for us that we can’t do for ourselves?”  But invariably, in one way or another, they turn to God and find that God can in fact do much for them that they are powerless to do for themselves—like ridding them of the scourge of compulsive drinking!  In fact, the stated purpose of the 12 steps is not only deliverance from alcohol, but having a “spiritual awakening” that makes this deliverance possible.

There’s another excerpt that can be helpful to anyone struggling in the spiritual life, trying to understand the ways of God and to accept Him.  Here’s a section written by a man who had not believed in God, but came to AA and was confronted with this step of the program: “Then comes a thought that is like a Voice: ‘Who are you to say there is no God?’  It rings in my head; I can’t get rid of it.  I get out of bed and go to the man’s room… ‘How does prayer fit into this thing?’  ‘Well,’ he answers, ‘you’ve probably tried praying like I have.  When you’ve been in a jam you’ve said, “God, please do this or that,” and if it turned out your way that was the last of it, and if it didn’t you’ve said, “There isn’t any God” or “He doesn’t do anything for me.”  Is that right?  ‘Yes,’ I reply.  ‘That isn’t the way,’ he continued.  The thing I do is to say, “God, here I am and here are all my troubles.  I’ve made a mess of things and can’t do anything about it.  You take me, and all my troubles, and do anything you want with me.”’ … I return to bed.  It doesn’t make sense.  Suddenly I feel a wave of utter hopelessness sweep over me.  I am in the bottom of hell.  And there a tremendous hope is born.  It might be true.  I tumble out of bed onto my knees.  I know not what I say.  But slowly a great peace comes to me.  I feel lifted up.  I believe in God.  I crawl back into bed and sleep like a child.”

They know they need God and each other to remain sober.  The 12-step program is a serious and uncompromising one, though there is always mercy and encouragement for the fallen and the re-fallen.  They know they have to absolutely avoid that next drink, for even after years of sobriety, one single drink could (and this has been repeatedly proven in the lives of those who tried to quit without the benefit of AA) make them revert completely to their former state of obsession with drink and inability to do without it, and thus lose whatever they had gained.

The situation is not so different in the spiritual life when dealing with sinful habits or other moral failings.  For Jesus said, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn. 8:34).  That is why the Church always urges us to reject temptation the moment it arises and not try some sort of compromise or halfway measure, or to embrace a lesser evil as a substitute.  Giving in will be like taking that one forbidden drink.  A single indulgence in a particular sin that has been habitual but that one is trying to be free from, can start the whole addictive cycle over again, and it will be suddenly impossible to resist, and one will be overwhelmed and confused by the power of something thought to have been overcome.

It might be a good idea to look at the 12 steps and apply them to whatever besetting sin one might have, and put them into practice.  This program is profoundly Christian in principle, without being directly associated with any specific religion.  The Gospel is obviously its foundation.  I believe that AA is a way God has chosen to “come in the back door,” as it were, of the lives of people who might not ordinarily have turned to Him, and to give them something real and life-changing, so that some are perhaps living the Gospel more fully than others who explicitly profess Christian faith but are mediocre in living it.  I’ll close with the list of the steps.  You and God must do the rest.

First: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or, name your own vice or besetting problem]—that our lives had become unmanageable.

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

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

Fourth: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Fifth: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs [sounds a lot like confession, doesn’t it?]

Sixth: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Seventh: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Eighth: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Ninth: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Tenth: Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Eleventh: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Twelfth: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Sons and Daughters

I have been lately re-reading Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son, and it seems that the moment for this is right at last.  I read it once about ten years ago, and though I was edified by it, I think I was not in an interior spiritual “place” wherein I could fully benefit from its insights.  Through my present reading (which so far is only the first few chapters) and prayer, a little more of the light of Heaven has shone upon me, and I’d like to share some of that with you.  Perhaps much of what I say is not news to you, and you’ve been living it for years, but for someone who often wrestles with God as I do, it is something through which the Lord “gives me rest” (see my previous post).

I’m not sure even how to begin this, but perhaps I’ll just say that if you have ever been a sinner you ought to read this book.  It is not an exegetical commentary on the Gospel parable, though it does offer insights into the text itself.  It is more a glimpse into the Heart of the Father and the tragedy/salvation of the son, and as such it is the story of our own life and relation to God.  The return of prodigal sons and daughters, and the compassionate embrace of their loving Father, can perhaps be summed up in this line from the prologue of the book: “I have to kneel before the Father, put my ear against his chest and listen, without interruption, to the heartbeat of God.”

As Nouwen describes his own struggles and failures and gradual awareness of the Father’s love for him, I see reflections of my own life.  As he describes the Prodigal Son’s rehearsal of his repentance, he shows us what we may be like in our inadequate understanding of God: “[He] tells himself that he has lost the dignity to be called ‘son,’ and he prepares himself to accept the status of a ‘hired man’ so that he will at least survive.  There is repentance, but not a repentance in the light of the immense love of a forgiving God.  It is a self-serving repentance that offers the possibility of survival… It is like saying: ‘Well, I couldn’t make it on my own, I have to acknowledge that God is the only resource left to me.  I will go to God and ask forgiveness in the hope that I will receive a minimal punishment and be allowed to survive’ … One of the greatest challenges in the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness.  There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning.  Sometimes it even seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great to overcome.  While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant.”

After bringing all this into prayer, it seemed as if the Father opened to my awareness something of his own heart, something that I’ve always longed for but which I’ve been afraid to hear, or even more afraid might not be true after all.  But I finally discovered in a personal way something that is basic to Christianity: The Father loves me because I am his son.  The Father doesn’t love me because I have done good, and He doesn’t hate me because I have done evil.  I have done both good and evil in my life, but the Father loves me because I am his son.  This may seem standard fare to you, but for me it had the force of revelation.

This bond can never be broken and will last for all eternity.  God has made a commitment to me that He will not break.  It may be that I strain this relationship and render it unfruitful because of my sins, and I may need purification or even punishment to correct my waywardness and pave the way for my return.  But I will always be a son of the Father, and as such will always be loved by Him, and our eternal communion in love and joy will always be sought and willed by Him.  He revealed this to us even before the advent of his only-begotten Son in this world, as we read in Psalm 88(89): “My truth and love shall be with him… he will say to Me: ‘You are my Father, my God’ … I will keep my love for him always; with him my covenant shall last… If his sons forsake my law and refuse to walk as I decree… I will punish their offenses with the rod, I will scourge them on account of their guilt.  But I will never take back my love… I will never violate my covenant or go back on the word I have spoken” (vv. 25-35).

In the midst of the comforting assurance of the Father’s love for me—not conditioned by my good or bad actions, but based solely on the fact of my sonship—I found myself rather unexpectedly thanking Him for my baptism.  It didn’t take much reflection for me to realize that this was because baptism is the source of my sonship.  Immersion in the grace of baptism made me a “son in the Son”; it was pure gift, given before I could even think to have merited it, before even being able to choose one way or another.  It was a loving act of the Father’s initiative that forever constituted me as his son.  Nothing and no one can ever take this away from me.  I have a Father and a heavenly home to which I belong.  Perhaps many people do not realize what a tremendous gift baptism really is.

(Additionally, because I am a son in the Son, not only is his Father my Father, but his Mother is my Mother too.  Her maternal task is to pray for us and protect us and to lead us along the path to our true home, to know who our Father is, and who our Lord and Savior is, so that we can live as sons and daughters of God.)

All this got me to reflect on the (often) tragic foolishness of delaying the baptism of children.  The tired old argument goes that when they are old enough to make their own decisions about their lives, they can choose whether or not they want to be baptized, and so baptism shouldn’t be imposed on them before they can make an act of faith—as if it were a mere rite of passage or some optional ceremony.  A theological misunderstanding held by many is that baptism is merely an external rite of ratification of one’s faith.  Some Christian denominations don’t even require it, but only recommend it, more or less like icing on the cake.  In the case of infant or child baptism the opposite is true.  It is a conscious decision of faith that ratifies what has already happened in baptism.

This is because it is precisely the Trinitarian grace active in the sacrament of baptism that constitutes one as a child of God—it effects a profound change in the very being of the one baptized, creating an identity and a relationship to God that the person did not have before.  Contrary to popular sentiment, we are not children of God merely because we happen to exist.  Scripture tells us that we must become children of God.  Jesus Himself made it clear that we are not all automatically children of God.  “If God were your Father, you would love me… You are of your father the devil…” (Jn. 8:42-44).  In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus speaks of “the sons of the evil one” (Mt. 13:38), so there are those who are children of God and those who are not.

This means if you deny your babies baptism, you are depriving them of a Father and hence of a homeland.  We are born into a foreign land, the progeny of those who were cast out of Paradise.  We enter this world in desperate need of being claimed by Someone who can give us an imperishable name and inheritance.  Do parents wait until their children decide whether or not they want them to be their parents, and then withhold food, clothing, and shelter from them until they can make that informed decision?  Of course not; they give their children whatever is good for them before they can provide for themselves.  If they do so with material things, why not all the more with spiritual? Should parents wait until their children are sufficiently exposed to the poison and corruption of the world so as to preclude any decision for baptism—withholding divine grace from them, which could have enabled them to choose the Lord?  This is the worst form of child abuse there is!  Should not children be granted the free gift of God’s grace and divine adoption from the earliest moments of their lives?  A parent can to nothing more eternally beneficial for a child than to immerse it in the saving waters of baptism (“baptism saves you”—1Peter 3:21) and make it a son or daughter of God.

As I said above, the bond between God and his son or daughter (adopted through baptism) cannot be broken.  God makes a covenant with the child from the moment of baptism, and He will always honor his commitment.  God is henceforth that child’s Father and will always recognize the child as his son or daughter, and therefore there will always be a place for them in the Father’s house, and He will welcome them home even if they stray far from Him.

Jesus said that when they finally enter Heaven, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (Mt. 13:43).  Their Father, not just “the” Father.  He is their Father because of the specific and personal relationship He established with them from the moment of their baptism, and which they then lived out in the course of their lives.  He is not some generic universal spirit of paternity.  He is the Father of those who have become his children.

I hope I haven’t belabored the point, but having discovered in a deeper way the liberating and consoling truth that God loves me precisely because I am his son and therefore has a special commitment to me (and I to Him), it behooves us to make as many sons and daughters of God as we can.  Parents, baptize those babies!  Don’t leave them spiritual orphans.  Despite your best efforts, you cannot wholly protect them from the world, the flesh, and the devil until they are “old enough” to seek baptism, and you are exposing them to spiritual dangers you can’t even see when you refuse to make them members of God’s household.  Hand them over to the Father now, and He will make them his own.  Even if later in life they would repudiate their faith or baptism, they cannot sever the filial bond, and it is precisely that unbreakable bond which provides the best possibility for their eventual return.

I’m setting aside the theological casuistry that inevitably arises from such a topic, concerning the fate of the unbaptized and all that.  What we know for sure is that God wants all of us to be saved; He wants his house filled with his adopted sons and daughters.  Jesus commanded that all nations be “baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19).  “Now they were bringing even infants to Him… and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.  But Jesus called to them saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them…’” (Lk. 18:15-16).  Yes, do bring the infants to Him and do not hinder them, for they were created to be children of God.

Let us settle for nothing less than full divine sonship, and let us deprive no one of this indispensable baptismal grace.  The Father will always be waiting with open arms for the souls that are thus indelibly marked with that which makes them heirs of the Kingdom.  He will never withhold his love and mercy from his own sons and daughters.

Gentle and Humble

The following is one of the most consoling passages in the Gospels, even though the last verse may leave some souls perplexed: “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt: 11:28-30).

The first thing we find is an invitation that almost makes it unnecessary to say anything else: “Come to Me.”  Our whole life can be hidden and secured in those three words.  It speaks volumes about who Jesus is and what we mean to Him.  It should also tell us something about ourselves, not only of our intrinsic value in his eyes but also the fact that there should be nothing—nothing—that should hinder us from responding wholeheartedly (though it be contrite-heartedly) to this gentle invitation.

He almost didn’t need to specify which group of persons He is addressing his invitation to (“all who labor and are heavy laden”).  Are there any among us who are trying to live at least a decent life in our stress-inducing and even corrupt world, who are not laboring and laden with heavy burdens (or at least feel like we are)?  I’ve noticed that other bloggers (and I’m no exception) sometimes make little jokes about our stress levels and all that, but this is just a little steam vent for the very real pressures that build up daily.  I for one am very glad to hear that the Lord invites the heavy laden to come to Him.

Once we come (the common biblical expression is: “Here I am, Lord!”), what can we expect?  He says to us: “I will give you rest.”  This is most welcome to me, since I often think that for the first hundred years or so that I’m in Heaven (God willing), I’m just going to have to sleep in order to recover from this life.  Once someone asked me what I thought Heaven would be like, and I immediately answered: “Rest, eternal rest!”  But I digress.  Let us see just what Jesus is talking about, for it isn’t sleep.

The word in the Greek text for “rest” is anapauo.  There, it’s all clear now, right?  Don’t feel bad, I had to look it up, too.  Anyway, this does mean to give rest, to soothe, to refresh.  Literally, it means to cause to rest.  So the Lord isn’t just giving us permission to rest, He wants to cause us to rest, to give us rest, to make restfulness and refreshment happen within us.  Rather than give us a day off, as it were, to do whatever we feel like, He wants to be a part of our rest, the source of it, personally engaged in it.

But there is more.  The root of the word, without the prefix, is pauo.  This does not mean quite the same thing.  It’s a little more forceful.  It means to cause to pause or cease, even to restrain. (For all you philologists: pauo, future pauso, whence the English “pause”.)  So by giving us rest, Jesus is causing us to cease and desist from unrestful things, things that have nothing to do with the spiritual refreshment to which He invites us, things that would cause spiritual agitation or inner dis-ease.  The Lord is inviting us to pause, to be still and know that He is God.

The next thing He invites us to do may not seem all that restful and refreshing: “Take my yoke upon you.”  This sounds like he is calling the heavy-laden to assume yet another burden, yet in fact it is, paradoxically, the means to true spiritual rest and refreshment.  How shall we know that?  “Learn from Me” is his next counsel, and this is followed by an extraordinary revelation.  Often Jesus reveals who He is (the Way, Truth, and Life, the Resurrection, the Good Shepherd, etc), but He rarely reveals how He is.  We learn in this passage the precious truth that the eternal Son of the Living God, through whom the universe was made and is held in existence, is “gentle and humble of heart.”

Really, this revelation all by itself should remove huge burdens from the heavy-laden.  For there are many threats in the Scriptures concerning the terrifying consequences of sin and the stubborn refusal to repent.  But if we truly come to Jesus as He invites us to, our hearts will hear Him say: “I am gentle.”  To me, this gentle revelation is like a ray of pure light from Heaven; it removes the angry (or at least disappointed) mask we may have placed upon the face of God. “I am gentle.” We have to know this if we are going to come to Him and lay the secrets of our hearts before Him, both the good and the bad.  We have to know that He loves us and will treat us gently (even if firmly and without compromise whenever necessary).

Most icons of Jesus are rather stern of visage and hence somewhat difficult to pray before, especially if one happens to be particularly conscious of one’s sins.  But the one pictured here is the one I pray before the most, for in that holy face I see One who is gentle and humble of heart.  He is pictured in the midst of his passion, wearing the crown of thorns, bound and holding the reed, wearing the scarlet cloak of mockery.  This icon is entitled “The Bridegroom,” for the altar of his nuptial covenant with mankind is the Cross, and this blood-red robe is his wedding garment.  In the Byzantine tradition the bride and groom are crowned in the wedding rite with crowns of gold or of flowers, crowned “for” each other as a seal of their love and a foreshadowing of their heavenly coronations.  But He who is gentle and humble of heart wears a crown of thorns, for his bride is a harlot and He must expiate her sins before she can enter into his joy.

So He says “learn from Me” precisely insofar as He is gentle and humble.  The Lord is many things: almighty, all-knowing, omnipresent, eternal, etc.  But He never said, “Learn from Me, for I am almighty.”  What He wants us to learn is gentleness and humility.  For those of us without a naturally gentle disposition (and we are legion), this is a hard lesson to learn.  But it must be a very important one, for He has asked us little else in the way of imitating Him.  While He does give general counsels about following Him, and certain prophecies about our being like Him (“if they persecuted Me, they will persecute you,” etc), if I’m not mistaken there is only one other place in the Gospels where Jesus explicitly asks us to be like Him.  And it is the same message of humility, for He tells us to follow his example right after He washed the feet of his disciples (Jn. 13:14-15).  St Peter also tells us that Jesus gave us an example to follow, and this takes us back to the Bridegroom icon: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps” (1Peter 2:21).

Again, once we learn from Him who is gentle and humble, He says that in this we will find rest for our souls.  And so we come to the last line, which many find hard to believe: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”  One might be tempted to question whether anything in the Christian life is easy and light.  Isn’t the Cross really what is meant by his yoke that we have to shoulder?  And isn’t the Cross all about self-denial and suffering?

There are a couple things I can say about this.  First of all, let’s just get it out of the way and accept that life, any life, Christian or not, is going to meet with suffering and trouble and burdens and sorrows.  So accepting the yoke of Christ is not going to give anyone a pain-free or trouble-free life.  That much should be common sense.  But if we learn from Him gentleness and humility, we’re already well on the way to finding that soul-rest, which is inner peace that springs from hope, and which is secure in the gentleness of Him who loved us unto death.  Our putting on the yoke of Christ is the way Jesus makes us pause, makes us cease our ceaseless pursuit of pleasure or possessions, and restrains us from accepting yokes that are truly heavy and burdensome.  In one of our long Lenten Offices, we say that we have pursued material things and pleasures, and now we wear a heavy yoke, and so we cry out, “Take from me the heavy yoke of sin!”

Finally, I wonder if it is not the yoke of Christ itself that is the heavy thing, but rather the fear of the yoke of Christ that is our burden.  We think it will involve all sorts of deprivations and disagreeable things, so we never get around to humbly accepting it, or we positively flee from it.  I’m still too chicken-hearted to ask for sufferings as some of the saints did, but Jesus doesn’t ask us to ask for sufferings, only to accept and do the Father’s will.  In the final analysis, to learn from Jesus by accepting his “easy” yoke and “light” burden is simply to say yes to the Father’s will.  The verse before this passage gives us an insight into the intimacy of Father and Son: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  We can infer from this that Jesus is just like his Father, that is, the Father is gentle, too, and not the distant, fire-breathing Avenger of transgressions that much art and literature has made Him out to be.  He is just, to be sure, but his justice does not diminish his gentleness.  Much has to do with us.  If we learn gentleness and humility from Jesus, we will discover that the Father is gentle.  If we reject Jesus and choose malice, violence, and a life of sin, we will meet Father’s justice, and it will be none too gentle.  But even the most hardened sinner will still meet with gentleness if he repents, for God is the Father of prodigal sons and daughters, and his heart is rent as He anxiously waits for all to return.

Come to Jesus, then.  Don’t fear his yoke, but willingly accept it.  Learn gentleness and humility from Him.  He will give rest—both now and forever—to your soul.

I Say to You, Arise!

In our liturgical texts we often call Christ the “Giver of Life.”  When we hear a Gospel like today’s (Lk 7:11-16), we see how that title is justified.  For Christ is the Giver of Life not only because, as St John says, “through him all things were made,” but also because He has power even to give life to the dead.  And, as we’ll see in a little while, He has power to give spiritual life to souls, which would otherwise have no such life within them.

One of the reasons that Scripture offers us for Jesus exercising his power to give life is his compassion for the mourners.  There is much weeping surrounding the deaths of the three people whom the Gospels tell us Jesus raised from the dead: the son of the widow of Naim, Jairus’ daughter, and Lazarus. In the first case, the Gospel explicitly says that Jesus had compassion on the dead man’s mother.  He told her, as He told those mourning for Jairus’ daughter, “Do not weep.”  He did not say this to those who were mourning Lazarus’ death, but there He went one step further: He Himself wept!  In all these cases, it is clear that Jesus, the Son of God who willingly entered the human condition, is moved by human suffering and sorrow, and He takes steps to alleviate it when such interventions are in accord with the Father’s will.

Another thing is striking about all three raisings from the dead: Jesus addressed them directly and personally.  He didn’t simply lay hands on them, nor did He invoke the power of the Father and just stand back and watch it happen (when He prayed to the Father at Lazarus’ tomb it was already a prayer of thanksgiving).  Jesus, through his own divine power, directly called them back from the dead: “Young man, I say to you, arise… Little girl, I say to you, arise… Lazarus, come forth!”  What must it have been like for the souls of these people, which had already left their bodies and gone to the abode of the dead, to hear the voice of Christ and be irresistibly drawn out of that shadowy realm to return to the light of earthly day, entering once again their bodies, which they thought they had forever left behind!  That divine Voice was first heard from an apparently great distance, but then quickly came closer and closer, crossing the chasm of death and opening its impregnable gates, filling their whole being with the divine summons: “I say to you, arise!” They would know Jesus for whom He really was, once they discovered that it was He whose voice had called them back from the dead.  They would know that He was indeed the Lord.

It’s unfortunate that we have no written testimonies of the personal experiences of these three who had come back from the dead, for they could have perhaps opened up to us some of the mysteries of what lies beyond the grave, and of the incredible experience of hearing the voice of the Son of God and returning to life.  In today’s Gospel we are given the tantalizing detail that when the young man was raised from the dead, he began to speak.  If only we could have heard the first words from the mouth of him who had just come back from the dead! (There are some people today who claim to have died and returned to life, having had some experience of the Lord in the beyond.  We may tentatively benefit from these, but there’s no way to verify them, and we don’t have the kind of guarantee of veracity that we have for Scripture, so we have to be content with what the Church teaches about these mysteries.)

After Jesus raised the man from the dead, the Gospel tells us that “fear seized them all, and they glorified God.”  Two weeks ago I spoke about the holy fear that St Peter experienced when the Lord worked a miracle.  It is the same phenomenon here.  When God suddenly intervenes, immediately and dramatically, in the daily affairs of man, the spontaneous response is awestruck wonder and even terror at coming so close to the presence of the Holy God, sinners that we are.  But the next response is to glorify and praise God for loving us enough to manifest his presence in extraordinary ways.  We should remember, though, that miracles of healing are not the main reason the Son of God came to this world.  He came to save us from sin and to draw our hearts to Him in faith and love.  So even if sensational miracles are not evident, God is always at work to change hearts and enlighten minds so that his people will find forgiveness, inner healing, and salvation.

Let us return and reflect a bit on the mystery of the voice of the Lord, which has the power to reach beyond the confines of this mortal world and bring the dead back to life.  As Giver of Life, through whom all things were made, the Son of God was instrumental in the creation of the universe.  The psalmist says of God: “He spoke, and it came to be.”  The Father spoke the Word, the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God.  So, as eternal Word of God made flesh, Christ could speak with the full creative and re-creative power of God.

“The voice of the Lord is full of power,” cries the psalmist, “the voice of the Lord is full of splendor… the voice of the Lord flashes flames of fire; the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness… the voice of the Lord makes the doe give birth and strips the forest bare…”  The voice of the Lord has spoken through thunder and lightning and earthquakes as well as through gentle breezes.  The voice of the Lord has spoken through the prophets, both tenderly and sternly.  So it is through the voice of the Lord, that is, through the very word of God, that God reveals Himself to us and communicates his wisdom and his glory.  The voice of the Lord continues to speak to his people in many ways, but often in ways that we can only recognize if we are really listening for his voice, really open and available to any and every way He might wish to manifest Himself and communicate his will.  He rarely thunders in ways that are unmistakable to all, for He still wants us to accept Him through faith, and not by the sheer force of undeniable evidence, for then believing in Him would just be a reasonable matter of logic or empirical verification.  But God wants to keep our freedom intact; He wants us to choose to believe in Him and to love Him, without the aid of mathematical proofs or irrefutable physical evidence.

There are two things we learn from the Gospel of John about the voice of the Lord and about his power to raise the dead (5:25-29).  In the context of bodily raising those already in the grave, He says: “The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of God’s] voice and come forth: those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.”  So, in a sense, what happened to those whom Jesus raised from the dead in the Gospels was a kind of foreshadowing of the general resurrection—not only from the fact of being raised from the dead, but also from the fact that it is the same voice of the Son of God that they will hear and that will draw them back to life.  That hour, says Jesus (referring to the Last Day), is coming, but has not yet arrived.

But there’s another coming hour that has in fact come, for in the same discourse of Jesus, he says the following: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Let us contrast this with what he said about the Last Day.  We’ll begin with the end: “those who hear will live.”  When speaking of the last day, Jesus says: “all will hear.”  No one can avoid the universal call to the judgment seat of Christ at the end of time.  But in the other passage, Jesus refers to “those who hear,” which implies that some will and some won’t.

Going to the preceding phrase, we see that Jesus said that the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.  There are three reasons why it’s clear that “the dead” here means the spiritually dead and not the bodily dead.  First, as I mentioned, some will hear and some will not.  On the Last Day, no one can choose to hear or to stop one’s ears.  But the living can choose to hear the Son of God or to ignore Him.  Second, Jesus merely says “the dead” here, which in itself is ambiguous, but He contrasts it with “those who are in the tombs,” which clearly means the bodily dead.  Finally, the hour of the universal raising of the dead is still to come, but Jesus said that the hour of the dead hearing the voice of the Son of God now is.

This hour that now is, is our time, it is the time for everyone who happens to be alive in the present moment.  If we already believe in the Son of God, we may not be spiritually dead, but due to our sins we are all spiritually wounded and still need to hear the voice of Christ calling us to a renewed and deeper life in Him. But there are many people in the world who really are spiritually dead, who do not believe in Christ and who couldn’t care less about believing in Christ.  For these we must pray, so that they may hear the voice of the Son of God in their hearts and live.  The voice of the Lord spoke through the prophet Ezekiel saying: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back, from your evil ways; for why should you die…?” (33:11).

So let us realize that the hour when the voice of the Son of God speaks is now.  This isn’t the hour to be called out of the grave, but it is the hour to be called out of grave sins, out of sinful habits and negative attitudes and self-centered behavior.  Let us pray and listen for his voice, the voice that called the universe into being and that raised the dead, for it is, as the psalmist says, “a voice that speaks of peace… for those who turn to Him in their hearts.”  Let us then glorify the Lord, who has compassion on us, who enters our condition of suffering and sorrow, and who promises to make all things new: “God Himself will be with them,” says St John in the Apocalypse, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3-4).

Worship: A State of Being

An essential element of what it means to be a Christian is the worship of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But what exactly does it mean to worship or adore the living God?  I think of that sometimes, for even though we’re well enough acquainted with the externals of worship, the inner reality may escape our attention or understanding, and if that’s the case, it will escape our practice as well.

Oddly enough, my most recent reflections on the matter came in the context of Jesus’ temptations in the desert, when the devil told Jesus he would give Him the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would fall down and worship him.  Is it just a matter of his monstrous pride that the devil wants to be worshipped?  Probably, but I think he will be eternally frustrated in this. It seems to me that if adoration is properly understood, the devil would be incapable of receiving it even if someone were to willingly prostrate before him, because it presupposes a relationship the devil (and anyone stupid enough to submit to him) is incapable of entering into.

First let us look at the terms adoration and worship, which have been corrupted by colloquial usage.  Babies and puppies are “adorable,” and a man worships the ground on which his lover walks, or a girl absolutely adores her new boyfriend.  There are sun-worshippers and hero-worshippers, etc.  One of the few things I remember from my earliest religious education by the good nuns of the Basilian Order is that adoration belongs to God alone, and the term should never be used for anything else.  And I’ve obeyed that injunction ever since.

If adoration belongs only to God, then it is a unique and incomparable thing.  That’s why it’s hard to define.  There are many things we do to express our worship of God, such as prayer and liturgy, and ritual gestures like bows and the sign of the Cross, veneration of icons and even prostrations before the Holy of holies.  I think that essentially, though, worship is a matter of the heart, a kind of state of being.  For one can perform all the ritual expressions of worship and still not be truly adoring God: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me…” (Mt. 15:8-9).

The interior worship of God is a combination of faith, hope, and love.  It is an acknowledgement of who the Most High God is (though we only know who He is to the extent that He has revealed Himself) as well as of his sovereignty and absolute rights over all that He has made.  But it is more that that, for if it really is to be true worship this acceptance and acknowledgement of God and his divine rights must be infused with love, and with the gratitude and joy which ought to spontaneously spring from any true knowledge of God or awareness of his presence and his overflowing generosity.  Therefore worship, especially Christian worship, implies (and requires) a certain conscious, personal, and loving relationship with the One who is adored.  One can prostrate before God out of terror or a grudging sense of obligation, but this is not worship, except perhaps in a pagan sense in which the gods required certain acts of obeisance or sacrifice to appease them, while the personal disposition of the “worshipper” was irrelevant.  But it really isn’t worship if the heart isn’t engaged, or if one bears a secret contempt in his heart for God or the whole business of religion.

I think we may have to examine from time to time what is actually happening in our church attendance and our prayer.  Are we truly worshipping the Lord?  Or is it all in vain because our hearts are far from Him?  If we don’t live in a state of worship—that is, in a conscious, free, and loving relationship to God—then our specific acts of worship may be rendered fruitless, especially if they have become an unthinking routine, a social convention, or a kind of insurance against hellfire.  Sometimes I get a little tired of praying the same prayers over and over, especially in some of the Offices in which the prayers are theologically imprecise, aesthetically unsatisfying, exceedingly verbose, or just tediously repetitious.  But I begin to wonder if any of that is particularly important as far as my worship of God is concerned.  Maybe I’m just supposed to remain in his presence and be a kind of conduit for the hymns of the ages—despite their imperfections—and take care that my heart is not far from Him.  If my heart is adoring the Lord, then the particular form of worship is secondary, as long as it is an acceptable form (and for this we need the wisdom of the Church), for left to our own devices we would mostly end up as idolaters in one way or another.  For “our God is a consuming fire,” says the Scripture, and we must “offer to God acceptable worship, in reverence and awe” (Heb. 12:28-29).

Now when I say that we have to be in a state of worship as a state of being, I don’t mean the we have to be explicitly praying or focused exclusively on God alone 24/7.  Living in this world renders that impossible, and God understands that, so our explicit 24/7 adoration of God is reserved for Heaven (where there are neither twenty-fours nor sevens!).  But we have to retain, as consciously as possible, the disposition of worship and hence the avoidance of anything that is opposed to or incompatible with the spirit of adoration.  Our moral life is thus purified, even down to the level of our thoughts, as we seek to make of our lives a hymn of worship unto the Lord. We can also make the explicit intention that in the depths of our spirit, even beneath our ordinary conscious awareness, we might be always in a state of adoration, regardless of what is happening on the surface of our souls or minds.  If God will accept this (and grant the grace for it), it will be a comfort to know that somehow at a deep level we continue to worship the Lord even when necessarily involved in other activities.

Going back to the temptations of Christ, we see that He could not possibly have worshipped the devil, even if He had physically prostrated before him.  It was impossible for Him who is the Truth to acknowledge anyone but the Father as worthy of worship, nor could there have been any sort of mutual loving relationship between the Lord and the devil.  “What fellowship has light with darkness?  What accord has Christ with Belial?” (2Cor. 6:14-15).  Nor could the devil receive worship, properly so-called, because he is incapable of drawing forth from anyone the loving allegiance of the heart and the free self-surrender that characterizes true worship.  The devil may try to force others into submission (for his lust is to dominate and enslave), and others may indeed submit out of fear or out of a misguided desire to gain power or some other advantage.  But none of that is genuine worship.

It may be objected that some people actually and intentionally do worship other gods.  But I still maintain that this is not worship in its proper sense but either a wicked or a misguided attempt to invoke or manipulate some power that is not God.  There are, on the other hand, people who unwittingly but sincerely worship an erroneous concept or image of God, but I trust God to accept from them whatever is good in their hearts and intentions, and to enlighten them about the rest.  Worship belongs properly and only to the one true God.

We have to cleanse ourselves from idols and make sure we are worshipping God alone.  This cannot be done merely by perfunctory church attendance.  That is little more than paganism (not in content, but in form or mentality—give the gods what they want and then get on with life).  Anything that is not God is not worthy of the dispositions that belong to worship.  That to which we give our time, energy, and devotion indicates our actual allegiance.  Our faith and our intentions have to be explicit in our adoration of the Lord. Shortly before receiving Holy Communion in the Divine Liturgy, the priest prays: “We have not bowed down to flesh and blood [i.e., any created thing], but to You, the awesome God.”

We need to have the kind of relationship with God that constitutes a state of adoration, and we have to express this in concrete acts of worship and of service to members of the Body of Christ.  Perhaps that is the double dimension Jesus was indicating in his dismissal of the devil: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”  In the context of what I’ve written above, worshipping God is the interior state, and serving Him is the outward expression of that inner reality.

So come, let us worship Him, making our relationship with Him a continual hymn of praise and thanksgiving, acknowledging his majesty and glory, receiving humbly his mercy and the manifestations of his love.  We have to be genuine in our life with God. He can tell if we’re just “punching the clock” or offering Him lip-service or some token prayer or gesture.  “True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him” (Jn. 4:23).  True worship is something God requires, because it is for our good, rooting us as it does in truth and reality.  Outside of the times of explicit liturgical worship, let us live in a contemplative spirit of adoration, heeding the voice of the prophet: “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you?  To do justice and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8).

From Hot Pants to Habit

Back in the mid-1990s I was guestmaster of the monastery.  On one bright and warm day I was expecting a woman to arrive for a retreat.  Little did I know what I would find and what would later come to pass.  When I had heard she arrived I went out and saw her sitting by the gatehouse.  She was tall, blonde, attractive, wearing Hollywood sunglasses—and pink hot pants!  Regaining my composure, I greeted her and took her up to the retreat house.  I discovered she was a successful corporate attorney from a large Midwestern city, and she was taking a break to do some spiritual searching in California, but I think we were the only Christian address on her list. There were Buddhist monasteries, new-age centers, etc. She was nominally Catholic, but she evidently didn’t deem it inappropriate to come dressed as she was.

She kept her shades on even when we were inside the retreat house.  I matter-of-factly told her: “Make sure you put on some clothes before you come down for Vespers.”  This was the beginning of a rather long series of discussions (more like debates) which lasted far beyond the time of her retreat, since we corresponded quite a bit afterward.  She had all the usual “progressive” ideas about faith and morals that characterize those who want to jettison the Church’s tradition in order to get it to swing with the times.  So I tried patiently to explain the Church’s teaching and the reasons for them.  Even if she didn’t always agree, she began to understand.

She came back some time later for another retreat.  She had been thinking about her life and didn’t like the way it was going.  Even though she lived and worked in a big city, she was raised in a small town, and I think she was still a small-town girl at heart.  She was smart and savvy enough to hold her own with the cutthroats in the legal system, but after a while the corruption and the compromises began to gnaw at her soul.  She told me once that when she objected to an unethical course her bosses wanted her to follow in a particular case—which would help win it but would not serve truth or justice—she was bluntly told: “You are not paid to decide what’s right or wrong.  You are not paid to see that justice is done.  You are paid to win cases.  Now go and win this case.”

I don’t remember if it was during her second retreat or a subsequent one that she told me she had quit her job.  She was starting to feel something of the presence of God in her life and she didn’t want to spend her days in a corrupt law office.  She then started working as an executive for a small publishing company, and that suited her for the time being.  But it wasn’t her vocation, and she didn’t stay with that for very long.

I saw her at a Marian conference in the San Francisco Bay Area, and when all the talks and the services were over, she asked me to hear her confession.  I was pretty sure this would be a “big” one, since she had been away for a long time (and she had been hesitant about the whole idea of it), but since the conference was in a hotel, there were no confessionals or even an open makeshift chapel at that late hour.  I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass.  We finally convinced one of the custodial staff to let us use a large storage room for an hour.  He looked at us as though he thought we were going to use it for something other than a sacrament of the Church, but he let us use it anyway.  Well, that was a real turning point in her life, and she was henceforth free to seek the Lord in earnest.

She had made enough money so that she could afford to take an extended time off.  It was becoming more and more important to her to discover what God wanted her to do with her life (by this time she was in her mid-30s).  So she temporarily moved in with some neighbors of ours in order to be able to come to services regularly, to pray and to receive spiritual direction.  She still had a lot to learn about spiritual life, but she did learn quickly and was willing to do whatever it would take to bring her closer to God.

She still drove the fancy sports car she had bought in her less devout days, but the Lord took care of that.  She got into an accident which totaled it, but she walked away unharmed.  That matter being settled, she looked for something more appropriate to drive.  Little by little she was weaned away from her previous world-view and assumptions about life, and she began to embrace the ways of the Lord.  Once I even told her to stop wearing makeup (even a little) when she came to church.  And she did it!  I’m sure it cost her something, since she had prided herself on her appearance, but she didn’t complain.  OK, I thought, this woman is serious about following Christ.

Another turning point came when we both happened to be in Mexico.  Actually, we didn’t just happen to be there.  I was invited to go on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and I suggested that this might be something she would like to do.  It would be a holy place to pray and to seek the blessing and guidance of Our Lady for her future, whatever that might be.  Well, she did go with us and made some lasting friendships among the group, and her heart was finally turned over to the Lord after receiving the many graces of that pilgrimage.  Upon her return, she started asking about religious life.

The next several years were taken up in a search for a place to live the consecrated life.  I needn’t dwell on this process, but suffice it to say that the call to be a nun became more and more clear to her, and she did not want to live the worldly life any more.  Finally she was accepted in a convent of a very traditional and strict Order.  I had to smile as I thought of our first discussions about God and the Church, how rebellious and stubborn she was in defending all the dissenters and heretics.  Now she was becoming a humble and devoted bride of Christ in the heart of his Church and her sacred traditions.  I wish I could have been there to see her take the habit.  I probably would have cried, like a father giving away his daughter in marriage.

I don’t remember exactly how many years it took her to get from hot pants to habit, but I think it was six or seven.  It was time well spent.  She loves it in the convent, despite its demands and her own perceived shortcomings in living a life of consecrated virtue.  We still correspond from time to time, but I no longer have to answer questions about the Church or defend Catholic teachings.  Instead, I am simply edified by her complete transformation, and all I need to do is offer a few words of encouragement and ask for her prayers.  She thanks me in every letter she sends for the role I played in helping her find the Lord and her vocation. God opened her eyes to see the vanity of her former life and where it would likely have led her, and now she is so happy and grateful to be able to live the consecrated life.  I am humbled by this, for I think our roles are reversing: now it is I who need to learn from her.  The sacrifices she makes in her way of life far exceed mine, and her love for the Lord is growing such that I feel like I’m standing still as she advances toward the Kingdom.

Well, maybe she’ll put in a good word for me.  And maybe we can all learn that even a small gesture in the service of God and his righteousness can bear fruit beyond all proportion.  After all, her religious vocation began when I told her not to wear hot pants in church…