Empty and Beautiful

Of late I have been struck with the immense blessings in my life. Many things I have received undeserved and even unlooked for. I certainly have not merited some of the gifts that have been given.

I was praying during the graduation mass for my school in thanksgiving to the Lord for an accomplishment that I am still slightly in disbelief over, and I cannot explain the emptiness of my being. It was joyful, and free. It was an emptiness that began in sorrow but ended in life. It was a miniature death of the self. I recognized many things in a few moments of prayer about my own littleness. I felt, very dramatically, my mortality and all of its frailty. Simultaneously, I sensed the power that is God's presence in our lives. I knew His strength in a new way. I saw in the Eucharist the true Bread that is Life for the world. I sensed how absolutely in need of the food of God I was, above and beyond all other forms of nourishment. I understood that though my stomach might hunger, my soul hungered in a way that was stronger and louder. I do not know if I have ever sensed the same level of poverty within myself that I did at that mass.

I beg us to consider poverty anew. Poverty does not need to be a material state, although I believe very firmly that if one is in a material state of poverty it is easier to reach a spiritual state of poverty. Yet, what does it mean to be "poor in spirit"? The Lord said that those who were poor in spirit were "blessed" and that "theirs is the kingdom of heaven." There is much to think on here. The Lord could easily mean both an earthly poverty and a spiritual one, and he could also easily have meant both an earthly experience of the Kingdom and the Heavenly one. For those who live a life here on this earth understanding their own meekness before the King, their indebtedness to their Father, will certainly be living a life that testifies to the Kingdom while on earth. Likewise, those who live that form of humility will most certainly be close to the Kingdom of Heaven when it is their time to depart from this life. We would not deny that this is what we receive in the Eucharist each day, and what the many readings surrounding the Eucharist during the Easter Season emphasize; we receive the Lord, the Giver of Life. We receive the Bread of Life.

St. John recounts the Bread of Life Discourse in Chapter 6, saying:
"So Jesus said to them, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' So they said to him, 'Sir, give us this bread always.'

Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst'" (6:32-35). 

It seems so simple, I think many of us (especially in our contemporary culture) do not know how to receive such an invitation. Was this not the fault and crime of the pharisees of Christ's own time? They were blinded by their expectations, by what they were accustomed to. They could not bring themselves to learn a new way of life, to accept a new teaching. Yet, we have the invitation to let go of our former sight. We have the invitation to ask that we might be able to see, like the blind man who pursues Jesus until he is healed. We have the invitation to ask to be able to receive that which is being offered. Christ's own disciples said that his teaching was hard. Further into John's Gospel Christ informs them that his very flesh and blood is the life that he offers them:

"'I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.'

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?'

Jesus said to them, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.'

Then many of his disciples who were listening said, 'This saying is hard; who can accept it?'

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, 'Does this shock you?'" (6:48-61)

Where do we begin to consider this? Christ raises an immense challenge, and yet, a beautiful invitation. "Does this shock you?" Perhaps we can assume that after God has given so much to us, our very beings over to us, we should not be surprised that He would feed us with His own flesh. Yet, our natural sensibilities seem to be repulsed at the concept. Not only is the idea strange to us, but the fact that Jesus explains this gift while being alive, and neither His flesh nor His blood being poured out yet, make it hard to understand. Yet, consider his words! "The one who feeds on me will have life because of me." 

This is the key to living in the Kingdom while still on earth! This is the secret to poverty of spirit, to being little and knowing our indebtedness. This is where we take up our cross of indentured servitude and simultaneously receive the adopted sonship given to us in Christ! It is feeding on Him, truly taking His life into ours, that enables us to see with true sight, and receive and understand all that the Lord gives to us while on earth. 

This is why the joy of blessings in life must come hand in hand with the sorrows and pains. One cannot truly understand what a gift life itself is if he does not know the truth of death. Once we realize what we have been ransomed from, what true mercy it is that we have been preserved, we can truly rejoice. God's gift to his children is that simple. We have but to acknowledge our lowliness and be thankful for it all the same. We have but to offer thanks, to celebrate that we do not have to merit our salvation, this true life, for we could never do so. No, we have been purchased at a cost, the price of the Life of the Son of God. In Him we are set free, free to live in Him and love according to His love. This ought to be our strength and drive for every minor death to self or death to sin that we suffer throughout each day. To join in the kenosis, the self-emptying, the pouring out that Christ made on our behalf; this is to know what eternal life is like while still on earth! 

Mercy.

Too many thoughts have been dancing through (and colliding within) my mind, and at this point its fair to say the pinball machine is ready to break down.

My friends, mercy. Mercy, mercy, mercy! Divine mercy, real mercy, living and generous, form-taking mercy. Mercy alive and breathing. Mercy as a child. Mercy as a man. Mercy on a cross. Mercy as King.

I was reflecting on what true charity is. On the mountain that we all have to ascend to reach that unbelievable challenge uttered by Christ, "Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect." That journey is uphill. That journey is full of sharp rocks and steep ascents. That journey is also filled with beautiful landscapes and invigorating experiences! Oh! The colors. The breaths of air that seem to have been saved for your lungs alone. The intoxicating scents of mountain air that teach you about a way of living that our little world has forgotten. You pant for more. Nothing ever tastes as sweet again. You are lost to it. These are woods you will happily wander into, map left behind, rejoicing at the idea of being lost. This is a trail your feet know without being told. This is a way that is clearly marked, simply by the desire in your heart. Follow the love inside of you! Run when you cannot bear to walk, and you will gain ground. Sing when you are stirred within, laugh at everything. Smile because it is too ridiculous not to.

Do not allow yourself to get over it. Never get over it. There is never room enough in you to exhaust all that you can take it! There will always be more beauties, more glories! Hans Urs von Balthasar says that glory is the fullness of beauty revealed. That means that glory is what you experience when your heart is too captivated to do anything else but adore what you have been captured by. And the mountain, the ascent to charity... it captivates. Not only the mountain, but the journey itself. Every step! Every breath. Every stone that digs into our feet. Every inch of dirt we move through. Every drop of rain or dancing stream or fierce wind or starry night or great oak. Not just these things in and of themselves, but our participation in them. Our encounter with them. Our harmonies to their symphonies. It is the moments of "them being" and "us coming to them" and "together, it being better." And forgive me for all the mountain imagery because this is just as applicable to the eyes of one meeting the eyes of another, or a still moment shared between old friends, or the explosion of a family reunited with one another (at least, that's the caliber of sound when my family is together), or the smile of teammates when the goal has been accomplished or the pride in a professor's eyes at the student who has excelled. All of this is what is part of our climb into the heights and depths of charity.

Today at mass the priest said, "Humility is not putting yourself down or thinking less of yourself, it is simply the truth." This is the epitome of true charity - mercy. The truth is our littleness, and the truth is also God's benevolence. The truth is our pitiful infidelity and the truth is his UNFAILING CONSTANCY. He is always there. Always. Never leaves us. Never gives up. Never ceases to love. Gosh! Do we have ANY idea of what the words "never" and "always" really mean? How could we? Look at our society, at our culture, at our world! Everything is so quick, so instantaneous, and sadly, so inconsistent. If there is any quality that is most endearing and most healing to me in the merciful love of God it is certainly his perfection made manifest in his unstobbable and eternal and infinite and constant being. Never means, never. There is simply no time, no space and no place that you could be that he will not already be there and will not follow you to. Just waiting to pick you up again, waiting carry you back home. "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep" (Lk. 15:4-6). And this is Mercy.

Who among us can turn to our brother after he has insulted us and genuinely love him, forgive him, even get up and make him something to eat because he is hungry? Who among us wouldn't consider this complete foolishness!? He didn't even apologize! He might do it again! Will he learn nothing? Are we to be so poorly treated? Oh, but was this not exactly the life of our Lord? Is this not the entire love story of the Scriptures, of the Hebrew people and God, of the Bride (the Church) and the Bridegroom? When have we ever given him true cause to lavish the grace upon us that he does? The justification that we could never earn for ourselves has been generously supplied by the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God. This is mercy. The truth is mercy. Humility is acknowledging the truth of the mercy of God.

Everything is mercy. The grace to have our hearts stirred by the beauty of the ascent to charity throughout our lives, even the sorrows and the darknesses and the freezing cold nights... that is mercy! The grace to see, that is mercy. Just to open our eyes is mercy; to have ears to hear, that too is mercy. He is embodied Mercy. Love made flesh is mercy. The Eucharist is Mercy.

Memory

It is the season of Advent in the Church, and we are called to consider the waiting period of Mary, Joseph and the whole world for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

My thought is a simple one.

The word "anamnesis" is used by Plato for "recollection" or "remembrance." For the Christian, this word takes on new meaning in light of Christ's words in the Gospels, "This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me" (Lk. 22:17). Every celebration of the Eucharist is a remembering of Christ's sacrifice and the salvation offered to all mankind through his Body and Blood in the Church.

This is, perhaps, obvious. But to draw the idea a bit further, consider how memory is ever present with us. Day by day, every instance and occurance continues and builds within you. You cannot eradicate anything that has passed by, for time does not obey our wills. So as we grow and develop, especially cognitively speaking, that which we remember becomes more a more a part of our being.

We will find ourselves recollecting fond memories as we grow older, revisiting times and places that hold special significance. In particular, we hold fast to memories of people when they are not able to be present to us in the immediate time.

In practicality, I find my mind lingering on childhood fun, on words and moments my parents had with me, on periods of intense joy with friends and on many moments of immense challenge or change in my life. My mission trips to Ethiopia and Jamaica, my time spent living in Gaming, Austria, my time working in New York last year, my friends who I loved so dearly in college but who I have not kept in touch with... these memories allow me to revisit my old feelings, the lasting impression of those moments, but also to renew the feelings in the here and now, to reassure myself of the reality of those times, places and people.

Specifically love. This is the hallmark of what I am considering. When I was dating someone who lived states away, there were certainly times that I felt I must be making up the reality of the relationship. Likewise, when my closest friends live states away, there are times when communication on the phone or through messages just isn't enough to provide clear and concrete evidence of their affection and love.

This is the epitome of what Christ is inferring when he says that we must remember him. It is more than we can really articulate, because it happens in the part of the mind that is not really controllable by our intellect. There is a memory of his love that is stamped into our souls, a memory that lasts beyond all intelligence, because it was created when we were created. Cognitively, we were not aware of God's love in an intelligible way until we were five, six, seven years old. But in our essences we have known him from the time his hands were fashioning us out of nothing. We cannot call ourselves forth, nor create ourselves. We exist, we are, and that is all. No matter how hard we try, there is no possible way for us to will ourselves into being. As such, there is this imprint that holds us.

We remember what is lasting and deep, and this aids us in transending from what we cannot see with our physical eyes to what we must know with our hearts. No, we may not be able to be held in Christ's arms and feel the safety and peace and joy of his love. Yet, in our memory it is so, and as we remember his love it is made real and present to us.

This is what I believe our season of Advent is meant to be. Memory made alive in our hearts. Who he is, and what he has said, and what he has done. The God of the world made human, the mystery of the Incarnation, the joy of the Nativity, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, alive in the womb of Mary and now given to us in the flesh through the Eucharist.

So let us remember who Jesus is. Let us meditate on his words in Scripture, on his holy life and the miracles and teachings he gave. Let us also allow him to bring up his memory in our hearts - to reveal to us the many times he has been with us in this life, most especially when it would seem that he has not. Let us seek to deepen the foundation of faith, with every opportunity of being united with him, body, blood, soul and divinity. Let our anamnesis lead us to strong conviction of the love he has for us. His love has been eternal and will forever be. So memory spans all time and will forever go on. We cannot forget that he is always present and will be with us forever.