The Realm of "I Don't Know"

We experience mystery when we enter the realm of "I don't know."  I don't mean the realm of confusion but of "I can't know" or "it's beyond me."

In today's gospel Jesus saw James and Andrew "in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.  He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed them."  Mt. 4:21-22.

The commentary (Living With Christ) points out that in John's gospel "Andrew met Jesus first and introduced his brother Simon to Jesus.  But in the gospel today, there is no indication that Simon and Andrew had ever met Jesus.  Matthew brings out the mystery of the relationship with Jesus.  As Matthew presents it, Jesus walked by one day and suddenly the brothers dropped everything and left their entire life behind to follow Jesus."

The realm of "I don't know" can be explored any time we accept an invitation.  As the commentary states, "Everyone's life with the Lord is mysterious.  One yes leads to another and to another.  Doors open and we find ourselves in places we never expected.  It's a mysterious love."

My marriage vow is a venture into mystery.  We accept our partner "for better or worse," not knowing the future.  The vow would be unncessary if we knew.

The basic realities of life are also beyond our ken.  Dante in Purgatorio XVIII (55-60) observes that "no one knows" from whence we derive our desire for the highest goods (primi appetibili), "those things or actions which in themselves and prior to all particular, concrete objects are good in themselves." Dante Soundings, article by Christopher Ryan at p. 106.  They, like the "zeal of bees for making honey" lie innate and hidden in man's heart.  (Man's moral stature is achieved only by his gathering of the particular objects of love that come his way into this mysterious primal good. Ibid.)

The experience of mystery is also an experience of awe, of wonder.  Christ's invitation to "follow me" is an invitation into the mystery of his love.  If we follow Christ, get near to him, we "will be struck by a sense of wonder at the mystery of God and of man himself.  Christ enlightens men's minds and hearts;  his light is transformative provided we seek to live the truth he makes known to us.  Our lives transfigured by the light of Christ will bear witness to the love of God, and the eloquent language of a transfigured life will be capable of amazing the world." John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, sec.20, par. 2.  

To live in the mystery of Christ is His special invitation to each of us.  All it requires is that we drop our nets (surrender our lives) and venture into the realm of "I don't know."

"We are Traveling East"

To live sacramentally is to live at once in the worldly and in the other-worldly dimension of reality. The sacraments, especially Penance and the Eucharist, draw us into this mode of being.

I recently read a compelling example of this way of living.  Let me set it up by referencing the first canto of the Purgatorio (lines 19-21).  There the poet remarks:

The fair planet that emboldens love,
smiling, lit up the east,
veiling the Fishes in her train.

Hollander's commentary states:

The planet is Venus, whose astral influence "emboldens love."  The rest of the tercet makes clear what sort of love:  her brightness is veiling, as the dawn nears, the constellation Pisces (the fish was one of Christianity's most frequent symbols for Christ, who asked his disciples to become "fishers of men" [Matthew 4:19]).  Further, she is making the east seem to smile by her beauty, the east in which the sun is about to appear, a second reference to one of the constant images for Christ, the rising sun.

Facing the east, by reason of the dawning of the sun (son of God), is a long-standing image of Christian life.   Our churches have traditionally been designed so that the congregation faces east.

The example is from an article about Edith Stein in the current issue of Logos magazine. "Awaken, O Spirit: Vocation of Becoming in the Work of Edith Stein," by Donald L. Wallenfang.   He writes: "To awaken from vocational slumber is to heed the personal Divine summons to travel eastward toward the Son of glory."  (p. 58).  He then cites, in a footnote, the editorial comment made to Edith Stein's last letter in her Vol. 5 of her collected works (Self Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942), written just before she and her sister (a fellow nun) were placed on a transport that took them to their death at Auschwitz:

From the transport as it stopped in the Schifferstadt railway station, early on August 7 (1942), a women in "dark clothing" identified herself as Edith Stein (she acquaintances in that city) and left a message either orally or perhaps in writing: "We are travelling east."  This was one of the final recounted communications of stein before her execution in a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 9, 1942.

In her remark Stein shows a profound understanding of her journey in this life, this nun who took the name "St. Teresa of the Cross."  It was to travel to the East, into the Sun, carrying her cross, to meet Jesus.

This, of course, is the essence of the sacraments, which enable us to live "in Christ" and walk toward him on our journey, that is, to live life sacramentally.

Finishing With Confidence

The end of the church year affords opportunity to reflect on the end times, death and the giving up of life.  In today's first reading the "angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth's vintage.  He threw it into the great wine press of God's fury." Rv. 14:19.  In Luke's Gospel for today Jesus says, "do not be terrified" when you hear of wars and insurrections.  Lk. 21:8.  Elsewhere Jesus promises, "do not be afraid, I am with you until the end of the age."

Our Christian challenge is to let go of our grasp on life and all of its trappings and accept God's promise of eternal life after death to those who believe in Him and live accordingly.  Letting go is very hard for we experience viscerally what we have, and its threatened loss, but not so powerfully what we don't have yet, even though promised.  It's the dilemma that keeps the fat man from exercising: Short term pain stops him from exercising and from realizing exercise's long term gain.

Our faith is in the promised long term gain.  The short term pain is life and its aching loss. Let us ask for faith in the promise so we can face the future con fides, with confidence.

Freedom, Sempiternam, in Love

Is freedom getting what you want (desire) or letting go of desire?  It would seem the former since to do what one wants appears to define freedom.  But not wanting also seems to be freeing.  Can we make sense of the paradox?

Love underlies all desire.  But it's easy to appreciate that not all desire (love) frees.  Passions often enslave while seeming at first to be freeing, so much what we want.  All addictions turn out this way:  Not getting enough of what you really don't want. 

What I truly want is what I truly need, and that is found in a direction different from what most passions promise.  Faith and reason teach that true happiness is found in falling in love with Divine Love.  But to do that I have to break my attachments to lesser goods that are forbidden or do not satisfy.

And so I have to give up my desire for what I think I want to get what I truly want.  Sublimation of desire isn't easy.  What motivates it?  Reason's knowledge of the true good (Jesus Christ, God), and the will to turn (in repentance) to it.  The experience of conversion is one of grief and suffering, but in the grief of losing what I thought I couldn't do without I find flecks, then rays, of God's true Love and the joy and peace that Love brings.  In the experience of turning, grief is transformed to joy and peace.  Loss to gain!  And our lesser loves are raised up, purified, given a new identity, in the Divine Love that makes all love as it can and should be! Loving others in God's Love is what I truly want, and so is true freedom.

To work this out in words is one thing.  To live this paradox . . . that's the suffering, the joy, the peace, and the everlasting freedom of life!

Dogma and Doctrine

Recent preparations for the RCIA have led to an attempt to articulate the meaning of and the distinction between dogma and doctrine. Hence a series of blog posts on the topic.

 

This from the online Catholic Encyclopedia:

The dogmas of the Church, such as the existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of Christ, the sacraments, a future judgment, etc. have an objective reality and are facts as really and truly as it a fact that Augustus was Emperor of the Romans, and that George Washington was first President of the United States.

As a dogma is a revealed truth, the intellectual character and objective reality of dogma depend on the intellectual character and objective truth of Divine revelation. ... Are dogmas considered merely as truths revealed by God, real objective truths addressed to the human mind? Are we bound to believe them with the mind? Should we admit the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental dogmas?

Abstracting from the Church's definition, we are bound to render to God the homage of our assent to revealed truth once we are satisfied that He has spoken.
 

Hence it is not permissible to distinguish revealed truths as fundamental and non-fundamental in the sense that some truths, though known to have been revealed by God, may be lawfully denied. But while we should believe, at least implicitly, every truth attested by the word of God, we are free to admit that some are in themselves more important than others, more necessary than others, and that an explicit knowledge of some is necessary while an implicit faith in others is sufficient.

The lines in bold are my emphasis and they express a concept that has been fuzzily harbored in my mind but until now unarticulated. Having been read, however, I'm not quite sure of their exact meaning. Asking questions leads to answers, also, more questions. Stay posted for more of both.

Thanks Giving

In giving thanks we see reality.  Love sees how things really are.  The impulse to thank is recognition of the gift of creation that we live -- we are gifts in it!  And to see a gift is to see the love that lies behind it, that motivates it.

Thanks giving is particular, for gifts are as manifold and abundant as a cornucopia.  But it is also universal, general, in seeing a transcendental reason in love that brings each gift into being.

Let us give thanks abundantly to God for the manifold gifts we have received!  I want to tell each of YOU in my life that I give thanks to God for YOU!

My Pledge . . .

Earlier this week Amity Shlaes in an opinion article in the Tribune explained the Petraeus affair as prompted by Petraeus' "narcissism" (=excessive self-love).  Today Meghan Daum described his lover as "a young, worshipful woman."

They come close to the Judeo-Christian truth of the matter: Idolatry (=worship of false gods).  The first great commandment requires us to love God with our whole mind and heart and soul, and the second, to love our neighbor "as ourself."  That is, we are to love God above all, and each other as creatures "under God," not as gods.  Worshipping myself or another person in an ecstasy of self-love is NOT permitted.

Today's first reading brings home this sobering point.  John in his second letter, mentions the commandment [of love] that "we have had from the beginning," and says, "[f]or this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. . . "

So the two great love commands are to be read in light of the other commandments, including the commandments not to commit adultery and not to covet a neighbor's spouse.  The "great" commands of love "work with" all of God's commandments, given to us for our fruitfulness and joy, not for death.  For, as John says in his first letter (ch.3:14), all who do not love (in this way) constitute the "living dead."

Gen. Petraeus and his paramour must be "living death" now under the shame and opprobrium occasioned by the effect of their actions on their families (and on all of us at risk because of security breaches)..

What can I do about this?  I can (and do) pledge: In all my behaviors in love (which should include all of my behaviors) I will be on my best behavior, honoring and following all of God's commandments.