Sign of the Cross, Sign of the Trinity

At St. Theresa's in Eagle, Wisconsin my wife and I heard a simple sermon suggesting a way to think about the Trinity.  The homilist associated the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with the first question and answer in the Baltimore catechism:  "Why did God make me?  To know, love and serve Him so we can be with Him forever in heaven."

The homilist invited us to make the sign of the cross.  "In the name of the Father."  We touch our forehead, seeking to know the Father who loves us, creating us in His image as rational and spiritual beings. "And of the Son."  We touch our heart, seeking to love as God's Son Jesus loved us in becoming a human being. "And of the Holy Spirit."  We touch our shoulders, seeking to serve God and our neighbor in the spirit of the active love between Father and Son.

In this way, our simple sign of the cross invites us to live the meaning of the Trinity, placing all that we are and do on our Triune God's altar of personal and sacrificial love.

Simplicity and Closeness to God

From An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, p. 86-87:

Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months:  the man, his work and his life.  And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else:  to let it all soak in, to let it mature slowly inside you until it has become part of yourself.  That, too, is a growing process.  Everything is a growing process.  And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you light lightning.  But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.

To be very unobtrusive, and very insignificant, always striving for more simplicity.  Yes, to become simple and live simply, not only within yourself but also in your everyday dealings.  Don't make ripples all around you, don't try so hard to be interesting, keep your distance, be honest, fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.  Instead, reach for true simplicity in your inner life and in your surroundings, and also work.  Yes, work.  It doesn't matter at what, I still haven't found solid ground under my feet, but whether it's Russian essays or reading Dostoevsky and Jung or having a tal, all of these can be work.  And have confidence that it will all come together and everything will turn out all right in the end.  That confidence is something I've had for a long time.

Since God is simple, striving for simplicity is striving to become closer to God.  The way of God is growth in simplicity.  Hillesum describes the result of this growth a few pages later in her diary (p. 89):

Something I have been wanting to write down for days, perhaps for weeks, but which a sort of shyness -- or perhaps false shame? -- has prevented me from putting into words.  A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body has been meant and made for the act of kneeling.  Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face.

It has become a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed from time to time.  And I remember: 'The girl who could not kneel', and the rough coconut matting in the bathroom.  When I write these things down, I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters.  Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love-life.  But is there indeed anything as intimate as man's relationship to God?

Guarding the "Threshold of Assent"

What does it mean to covet?  To covet is to desire more than you are entitled to in regard to something else. The 10th commandment refers to goods, the 9th to spouses.  To covet my neighbor's spouse is to yearn for a physical or emotional relationship with her that I am not entitled to have with her, not being married to her.

Luckily, we can feel (if we want to) the difference between being attracted to another as a friend and being attracted as a real or potential lover.   To covet is to walk, knowingly or unknowingly, any distance in the company of the latter feeling. Why does anyone?  Because the feeling is so powerful and beguiling.  It can take in even those who are "on the lookout," because the euphoric feeling can masquerade (to those who want it to be true) as "Christian love."

Dante's Divine Comedy sets out a theory of ordered and disordered love that offers an analysis and antidote.  Dante emphasizes that to avoid coveting one must guard one's "threshold of assent."  Purgatorio XVIII.  In other words, we cannot assent to walk through the door and into the chamber of emotional or physical attraction.  To cross that threshold leads to an ambiance of euphoric pleasure, of "falling in love" that can blind the reason to what is going on.  Before too long you are not acting rationally, and you risk unravelling the bond of fidelity in your marriage that belongs exclusively to your spouse.  Of course, the problem is that, like with any incipient addiction, it feels so good you can't (because you don't want to) walk away.

How does one who has crossed that threshold and walked down it any length, help himself?  If the person you covet is virtuous, she can help you by putting a stop to the nonsense.  But if she's caught up in the inordinate desire as well, the risk grows, threatening the ruin of both marriages.

Injecting formality, courtesy and distance into the relationship is a good antidote. Thinking of the person in the context of her own familial relationship is essential.  This isn't about you, or you and her.  It is about spouses and families, relationships much bigger than a solipsistic couple.

If you manage to pull in the reins after you've crossed the threshold of assent, what of your relationship?  Can you put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Hard to know.  Pope Benedict offers some hope.  He believes relationships of love (eros) can be turned into relationships of caring (agape).  There is a natural trajectory in that direction when persons try to embody what true love is:  willing and acting for the true good of the other person.

Moral of the story:  Walk with care near the threshold of assent!

The Mystical Bonds of Charity.

Sunday's second reading (1 Corinthians 12:31 - 13:13) brings home the centrality of love (charity) to all we do in life.  ( . . . if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. . . ."

Since love's ultimate source is God, all "good action" must (whether realized or not by the actor) be connected and directed by God's love.  Since charity/ love is self-less, it is God's grace that enables us to be charitable, to be loving.  This is very basic to Catholic belief.

St. Thomas said, "it is by charity that all the other virtues are directed to [humanity's] final end.  Accordingly, [charity] informs the acts of virtures . . . and is the form of the virtues [forma virtutum] . . ." [S.Th. II-II, 23, 8, c] 

In other words, without actual participation in the very life of the Living God there exists no such thing as moral virtue. Virtues are nothing but embodiments of charity in a particular domain of life.

Quoted from God Encountered, Vol. 2/4 at p. 58, 60, by Frans Jozef van Beeck.

The point of all this is that the love that inhabits and inspires all good acts leads us to our final end, which is union with the God of love. According to van Beeck (who is in turn quoting Jan van Ruusbroec), at the lowest level, the "inner touch of God's love" produces an outwardly perfect moral life "after the manner of Christ and his saints."  This is not a minimal Christian life style at all, but a fulfillment of our natural capacities.  Van Beeck adds:

"But there is more.  At the interior, spiritual ('charismatic') level, charity stirs up theological virtue proper: faith, hope, and love first of all, but then also, 'under the influence of divine grace and other gifts, and of one's own zest for every virtue,' the capability to actively 'follow the example of Christ and of holy Christendom.'

'Finally, at the highest ('mystical') level (which most conforms to every human person's essential attunement to God), the active life finds itself even further transformed.  This is where maturely virtuous people recognize that they must lose even their interest in being good.'

They will act out of delight; in that sense, they will envision in every act of virtue only the honor and praise of God; even further, they will aspire to abandoning themselves to God beyond deliberation, beyond their own selves, indeed beyond everything.  Thus, precisely be living equivalently de-centered lives, they will find their true selves -- immemorial and authentic, and made new and ecstatic.'

And so, a love-centered, love-directed life (in which pure charity is the motivation and end of action) leads out of morality proper to our final end of union with the God who loves.  That union is a mystical in that our desire for love, and our compassion, unites with the God who is love, and who loves us without limit or end.   Ibid., p. 59.

God's Close and Healing Voice

Bette Midler sings that "God is watching us . . . from a distance." (Cf. Ps.11:4).  This is not exactly how Christians understand God.  The Christian God, while radically transcendent, is as close to us as our most intimate thoughts and concerns.  There, in the depths of our soul, God awaits us, and speaks words of love and healing. (The "distance" is made by ourselves, putting God off, casting Him away.)

I had the marvelous good fortune of hearing Jesus' intimate voice of comfort and power last Wednesday morning (Jan. 15) while in the throes of passing a kidney stone in Semachaca, Guatemala.  A more forlorn place to suffer that ailment I can't imagine!  About three in the morning, after two hours of active discomfort and pain, I was sitting uncomfortably, having prayed for whatever deliverance was possible. (Besides the intense pain, another disagreeable aspect of kidney stones is that you can't predict how long it will take for the pain to subside.)  I then heard these words inside me: "Tom, your pain gives you an idea of the suffering I endured for you.  Now I will take the pain away."  And from that moment, not really believing the words I heard, I gradually became aware that the pain was gone.

My own experience of Jesus' intimate presence and power testifies to his radical closeness.  'Doubting Thomas' that I am, I think that my suffering brought me to the place within myself where I could finally hear Jesus' words of consolation and healing.  Reflecting on the experience buoys my trust in Jesus' intimate, caring presence during my daily life when I am tuned to other things.  For my experience of Jesus' presence and power, near to me when I am not, I can only, in awe, give God thanks and praise!

Star Gazers

I happened to watch a PBS show (Nova) on telescopes.  Helping to extend man's "eye" on the world, they literally opened new horizons in human experience and knowledge.  Particularly poignant was what Galileo saw with his primitive telescope.  He discovered imperfections in the moon (a supposedly "perfect" heavenly body).  He also saw, for the first time, that moons rotated around Jupiter, and realized that the earth revolves around the sun in the same way.

In other reading I came across the following:

Our experiences, when really taken seriously, are painful, for they make us discover that we are full of needs, unresolved problems, sorrow, and ignorance.  If these experiences are truly taken seriously, they unequivocally require something else "else," something "beyond"; that is, they possess a genuine religious dimension.

If our experiences are taken seriously they are an authentic prophecy (expectancy, hope) of what we do not yet have.

What we still lack is the meaning of all our experiences.  And we await it, perhaps unconsciously.

If we are truly aware of this expectancy, of our human incapacity and of what our nature relentlessly tells us, then this expectancy is bound to become prayer.  It will become prayer to a mysterious Other who will be able to help and will provide a solution.  It will become a prayer to that God who elicits our question and who will provide the answer.

Thus, prayer is simple petition, entreaty; our most simple, heartfelt, and fundamental act of human awareness.  The most realistic person is the one who prays: that person takes his or her experience seriously.

 The Journey to Truth is an Experience, Luigi Giussani, pp. 57-58.

Galileo's experience caused him awe, wonder, euphoria.  Maybe this experience wasn't initially negative for Galileo, but it certainly was for others, and later for him as well.  You can understand why: Dislodging a settled understanding of the earth's centrality in the solar system (universe) caused uncertainty about man's place in the universe and opposition to truths that seem to contradict our traditions.

The Epiphany is another story of star gazers.  Benedict XVI (in his Epiphany homily) emphasizes the restlessness and courage of these "wise men":

These me who set out towards the unknown were . . . men with a restless heart.  Man driven by a restless quest for God and the salvation of the world.  They were filled with expectation, not satisfied with their secure income and their respectable place in society.  They were looking for something greater. . . . They above all wanted to know what is essential.

They were also, and above all, men of courage . . . [which] was needed to grasp the meaning of the star as a sign to set out, to go forth -- towards the unknown, the uncertain, on paths filled with hidden dangers.  We can imagine that their decision was met with derision:  the scorn of those realists who could only mock the reveries of such men.

Restlessness can impel one to seek what is real, what is essential in life.  Restlessness to raise one's eyes and look about, to embark upon a pilgrimmage, to follow our star.   But to act requires courage to face a prevailing mindset (maybe your own!). 

Restlessness and courage: Galileo had such qualities.  Plus, he was a devout Catholic who tried to avoid confrontations with the powers that be, and regularly prayed for God's guidance and strength.  Can we say the same as we gaze upon a star?

What Kind of Person Are You?

In yesterday's reading (John 1:19-28) priests and Levites asked John, "Who are you?"  John immediately told them he was not Christ.  He said he was "the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord."  In other words, in speaking he was speaking on behalf of someone else, of God, the one who called him to prophesy.  And in today's reading (John 1:29-34), John repeats what God had told him about Christ, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit: ". . . the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God."

A marvelous example of a person, John the Baptist.  In all his rough simplicity John's uniqueness and "voice" as a human being emerged from another, God, speaking through him. 

Jesus himself spoke only the words of his Father.  He counted himself "sealed" by his Father in his baptism, and promised that what his Father made known to him, he in turn made known to his apostles and disciples. (John 15:15)

A person literally is a "per-sona", a speaking through.  I become a person when I speak on behalf of, give voice to, another.  That other, for Christians, is Jesus and his Father, and all they stand for: justice, mercy, forgiveness and love.  The voice that makes us persons is participation in the grace of the Holy Spirit of that Trinitarian relationship.  It is a harmony, a dancing with a divine partner, in beauty.  Grace makes beauty and helps to re-make the sinful world we live in.

Dante had a similar comprehension of his craft.  In the Purgatorio (24:522-54) he wrote (speaking of his poetry, which captured his persona): "I am one who, when love inspires me, take note and, as he dictates deep within me, so I set it forth.

The same understanding is voiced by the saints, e.g., Mother Theresa, "I am God's pencil."

How do we hear that voice and repeat it in our lives, thus becoming persons?  Adriaan T. Peperzak, in his The Quest For Meaning, at p.44, writes:

To follow Jesus does not lead one away from das Man, but purifies one from Sin, that is, from the loveless, arrogant, and idolatrous concerns that imprison individuals within themselves.  The turn of heart demanded by Christ is the acceptance of Love as the unique and overall secret of heaven and earth.  Since the very existence of the Son is the result and proof of God's absolute and complete self-giving, the Spirit in which the Father generates the Son repeats this gesture in the complete self-giving of Jesus' Passion, for which the Christians say thanks when they receive it in the eating of his body and the drinking of his blood.  The gratitude expressed in this eucharistia is translated into practice when their involvement in body, world, and history shows itself inspired by the same Spirit through a self-giving equally complete insofar as their deaths reveal in retrospect how their entire lives have been lived in love.

Turning away from the idols -- that is, the divinized powers of Money, Fame, Knowledge, Pleasure, or Autarchy -- presupposes the acceptance of an infinite desire that is met by the love revealed in Jesus Christ and the saints.  Conversion to Christ is therefore unconditional receptivity, acceptance, and recognition of the most incredible, yet most desirable, gesture of a God who accepts human involvement in everyone's world and history.  Instead of the pleasures and pains of idolatry, confidence, joy, and peace become possible because of the absolute and total self-giving that enables desiring humans to live without finite gods.  Though not engaged in sin, the saints are no less involved in the affairs of bodies in the world and their everyday activities, albeit in a different manner.  Purification has now received a new meaning:  growth in the practice of the truth that "tout est grace", including existence, world, and history itself.  Not onlyl forgiveness, protection, guidance, and fulfillment, but creation itself are received as gifts of the Spirit, that is, as expressions of God's internal communication. 

(emphasis added).

Today's first reading reminds us of the same need for purification.  John (1 John 2:29-3:6) says to be like Jesus is our hope and "[e]veryone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure."

May our prayer be to be pure voices of Jesus in the world.  Then we will be real persons.

The surrender and acceptance entailed in living in Christ is well shown, in my view, in Leonard Cohen's "If It Be Your Will."