Weeping until We Have No More Strength to Weep

The first book of Samuel records that David saw the destroyed city, and found that families had been carried away:

Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept,
until they had no more strength to weep. 

(1 Samuel 30:4)

For all affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we weep and we pray.

September 2005

In God's Grip

One outcome of my visit to the ex-Christian web site (see “Being Scorned”) has been an e-mail dialogue with two of its habitués.  “D” is a young man who sends short messages written in abbreviations and capital letters.  (I have refrained from pointing out to him that, in e-mail etiquette, caps are considered shouting).  The other is an older man, a former preacher, whom I will call “B.”  Both are dedicated to their unbelief and militant in their proselytizing.  And both are still gripped by God and by Christianity, for they are focused on what they are now against.

Our conversation has been lively and, for the most part, respectful.  Both of them (like many of the others who participate in the ex-Christian forum) are locked into the idea that God, as presented in the Bible, is not only violent, but has killed “more people than Hitler,” as D put it.  

When B offered to send me the "hundreds of articles" he had written against Christianity, I asked if he thought they would make me more a loving and compassionate person. 

B responded, in part, “How does the Hebrew god Yahweh, who killed maybe millions of men, women and children … make you a 'more loving and compassionate person?'”

Both of them reject the notion of a violent and unjust God — and they are right to do so. 

What they also do not accept is a God in whom there is no violence at all.  Neither can they admit that the Bible, in a beautiful way, shows God leading the Hebrew people — through their history, prophets, and writings — from a primitive view of God to a more profound understanding of who God is, culminating after the resurrection of Jesus with a more intimate knowledge of God’s love and mercy.  

In other words, the story of the Bible is not static. The inspired writers and compilers of the Bible were honest enough to give us as much of the whole story as was revealed to them, including updates. That is, when a deeper understanding was given, they included that as well as the more primitive one — sort of like offering Windows XP along with 95, instead of pretending 95 was never part of the story. Sometimes they even presented more than one version of the same event, perhaps to increase the depth of our vision of that event.

We remember that Jesus would sometimes say, “You have heard it said,” after which he would add, “but I say to you…,” followed by a new understanding.  For example:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” [This is found in both Exodus and Leviticus.]  But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; … 

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  (Matthew 5:38-39; 43-45)

Sometimes Jesus made the same point less directly. To take an extreme example, the book of Leviticus instructs, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (20:10 ).  Jesus, however, when questioned about a woman caught in adultery, stooped down and wrote quietly in the sand.  Finally he said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). 

Unfortunately, many people who call themselves Christian still hold the primitive view of a violent God.

The word of God is found in the Bible as a whole. That is, it must be taken as a whole, not just as isolated parts.  And the touchstone is always God as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

Both D and B are in God’s grasp.  They are in God’s grasp, first, because everyone is held in being by the love of God; but second, in the sense that they have not been able to let go of God.  We are most distant from those toward whom we are indifferent, not from those whom we despise. 

I am reminded of the words to the church in Laodicea, found in the book of Revelation:

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (3:15-16). 

Neither B nor D could be called lukewarm.  They are constantly wrestling with God, battling with those who believe in God. They are not indifferent toward God, and this, I believe indicates that in some mysterious way, which they would not themselves admit, they are close to the God who loves them. 

August 2005

Po-Boy and Prayer

In New Orleans last week, I visited my favorite po-boy place, a combination filling-station/take-out joint. Everything there is made from scratch, so while waiting for my shrimp po-boy, I watched and listened, enjoying the atmosphere.

The woman behind the counter sighed as she worked, "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!"

From behind the cash register at the other side of the room came, "Have mercy!"

Yes, I thought, Lord, have mercy.  This August we are commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima . The date of the bombing was August 6, the same day as the Feast of the Transfiguration: a holy light and an evil light remembered on the same day. 

We read that the face of Jesus “shone like the sun,” after which “a bright cloud overshadowed them” (Matthew 17:2, 5). The bomb, too, provided light and cloud.  A survivor of the Hiroshima blast, Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, wrote,

Suddenly, a strong flash of light startled me - and then another. So well does one recall little things that I remember vividly how a stone lantern in the garden became brilliantly lit and I debated whether this light was caused by a magnesium flare or sparks from a passing trolley. ["Surviving the Atomic Attack on Hiroshima , 1945," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com  (2001).]

We all know about the huge mushroom cloud that followed, and the death, and the anxiety of the atomic age which had just begun.

An evil light and a holy light.  The apostles were witnesses to the glory of Christ, an experience which made such an impression on them and on the early church that the event is recounted in all three synoptic gospels, as well as in the second letter of Peter.  Dr. Hachiya, on the other hand, was witness to a light that represented the darkness that has plagued the spirit of humankind from the beginning of recorded history.

Pray without ceasing, Saint Paul tells us. When we look back, look around, and look inside ourselves, there is no doubt that we are in constant need of mercy. Working, playing, resting; cooking or eating a shrimp po-boy; here and everywhere, we can pray, "Lord, have mercy!"  May our light always be the light of Christ, peaceful, compassionate, and glorious.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.   (John 1:14)

August 2005

Being Scorned

Because Carol, the homeless woman, is outside most of the time, Sister Elizabeth gave her a sunhat.  She left very pleased with the hat, but a couple of blocks from here, her bicycle hit a slick spot on the road, and she fell.  The hat landed a little distance from her.  As she was scrambling to right herself, a young man asked her if she wanted him to pick up her hat.

“No, thank you, Sir,” she replied.

He picked it up anyway, and threw it away from her, into the mud.  (I imagine he had intended this meanness right from the beginning, whether she had said yes or no.)

Carol was understandably upset.  Even though she encounters a lot of scorn from people she meets, she never quite gets used to it. Nor should she.

Darkness in a Forum

The other day I was doing a search on Google – I don’t remember what the topic was, but it was for something I was writing.  One link led me unawares to a website for ex-Christians.  Once there, out of curiosity I read the webmaster’s story, and after reading it, decided to send him an e-mail.  I told him that I was sorry about his journey away from Christianity, but that perhaps it had been a journey away from a childish faith that needed to mature.  I urged him to remember that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in the sincere heart and intellect — and also (for I had noticed some rather hateful postings from visitors who were not ex-believers), to pay no attention to "Christians" who would curse him for his non-belief, as there is no violence in God, who is totally loving and merciful.  Since he had mentioned some non-Christian authors he had been reading, I suggested a few who were Christian.

I occasionally do send an e-mail, using a fairly anonymous e-mail address I have, to the person responsible for a website I have visited.  Most often there is either a simple reply or no reply at all.  I expected this to be no different.

The next day I received two messages from people I did not know.  One thanked me for what I had said; the other encouraged me to reply to the responses to my posting.  In the first place, I wasn’t aware of having posted anything, but I went back to the ex-Christian site and found that the webmaster had posted my e-mail (along with my e-mail address) to the site’s forum.  

There had been 56 responses, and the second time I checked, there were many more.  Some struck me as being from sincere seekers.  Many, however, were vitriolic: one called me a “biblically illiterate fool”; and some made comments such as how my parents had wasted their money on my education.  In other words, these people were not just disagreeing with me, they were in contempt of me.

For a couple of days, I found myself oppressed by a sense of darkness.  Since then I have been reflecting on the experience and on why the feeling of darkness was so heavy in that forum.  (I have also come to a profound gratitude for the kindness with which I am daily surrounded, and which, in countless lives, is woefully rare.) 

I write the following with some hesitation, because I do not want to give the impression that I am judging the people who posted to the forum, as I have no idea what the pain may be that led them to adopt an attitude of such derision. Only God can see into another’s heart.  Neither am I judging the young man who threw Carol’s hat into the mud.  Even basically good people sometimes perform wicked actions. 

A Question About Evil

But I ask myself: could it be that the essence of evil is scorn for what God has made?  This, of course, amounts to scorn for God.

The book of Genesis tells us, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (1:27); and, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (1:31).

Two chapters later, we find the serpent casting doubt on the value of the human beings created by God.  Tempting the woman, he says to her that after she eats of the tree in the middle of the garden, “you will be like God” (3:5).  In other words, he implies that she is not already made in the image and likeness of God.  She needs improvement, the snake suggests, that only his superior understanding of life will make possible.  He is dismissive of the beauty and stature of what God has done.

Here was the darkness, I thought: it resided less in the unbelief than in the disdain.  Is this why, for Jesus, calling someone a fool is such a serious matter (Mt 5:22 )?  What about throwing Carol’s hat in the mud?  Both of these would appear to show scorn for the creature God has made, and therefore contempt for the Creator.

It is not just ex-Christians who fall into this kind of darkness.  Practicing Christians as well can too easily dismiss those who seem odd, those who are not “orthodox,” those who are of a different political persuasion.  

All of us — Christian, ex-Christian, non-Christian — we are all made in the image of God.  And we all stand in need of mercy.  

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

(Romans 12:9-10)

July 2005

Life as Photo-Op

The digital camera is ubiquitous.  Soldiers have them, with the result that governments no longer have the same kind of control over information disseminated during wars.  (Note the pictures revealing the brutality at Abu Graib.)  Guests at social events have them. I have one, and it has both freed me from the restraints of film and made me more sensitive to visual patterns and the play of light on everyday objects. 

However, enjoying photography as much as I do makes me wonder if I am sometimes experiencing reality through the camera lens rather than directly.  Or worse, if I’m experiencing, not reality at all, just the photograph. 

I attended a baptism not long ago where it appeared as if nearly everyone on both sides of the family had brought cameras.  One man videoed the whole mass – usually a no-no in church.  There were moments during the baptismal ritual when all the photographers were huddled around the group at the font, and I would not have been surprised to see one of them ask the priest to move aside so he could get a better picture.

The baby was oblivious to the huddles and the flashes, and he yelled appropriately when dipped in the water. The parents, too, seemed immersed in the sacred event.  But what about the others?  Were they aware of participating in a holy moment, or were they just taking advantage of a photo-op? 

There are many ways to avoid a direct encounter with life.  Now and then, for example, I have to remind myself, when I am reading about prayer, that the time has come to stop reading and actually pray.  Spiritual reading is essential to the Christian life and can lead us to prayer, but it is not a substitute for prayer.  Eventually, reading about the experience of others must give way to a trusting and unmediated presence to God. 

Even the prayer with scripture known as lectio divina is intended to draw us beyond the inspired words to the God who inspired them.  The movement is expressed as reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.  Here is a very simple (and definitely over-simplified) description of this four-fold cycle: 

• Reading, listening to the word of scripture
• Meditation, reflecting on what is heard
• Prayer, in response to what is heard and experienced
• Contemplation, resting in God who is present to us in the reading, the meditation, and the prayer

The following are some links about lectio divina: 

Simplest and most practical:
How to Practice Lectio Divina
by Fr. Luke Dysinger, OSB.

More detailed:

Accepting the Embrace of God: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina
also by Fr. Dysinger

The Classical Monastic Practice of Lectio Divina by Fr. Thomas Keating, OSCO

When we offer ourselves to God in prayer, it doesn’t mean that we will see the skies open, any more than the family of the baby being baptized would have seen the Holy Spirit descend in the form of a dove. However, God is no less present, working to transform us, when we sit quietly, simply longing for the God who longs for us.  

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, 
my eyes are not raised too high; 
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, 
like a weaned child with its mother; 
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore. 

- Psalm 131

June 2005

Champion Live Oak

When the doorbell rang, I opened it to a man and a young woman (a student, it turned out), dressed in the uniform of the Forest Service.

“We’d like to measure your trees,” the man said.

He was talking about the two huge live oaks in the front yard — actually sand live oaks, as he informed us.  They are listed as champion oaks, the largest of their kind in the area, which is why the Forest Service wanted to measure them. 

He also told us that the state’s Champion Live Oak (the live oak is a larger tree than its relative, the sand live oak) is located in a field outside La Crosse, not far from Gainesville.  It is called the Cellon Oak after its former owner. Its trunk is 30 feet in circumference. 

Live oaks (and also the sand live oaks in our yard) are wind-resistant, and tend to do well in hurricanes.  They may lose branches, but usually remain standing – unlike laurel oaks, many of which crashed into roofs or smashed cars or landed across roads during the hurricanes of 2004.

As I lean against the massive trunk, I am reminded of the sturdy love of God – and also of George and Ira Gershwin’s song:

In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble,
They're only made of clay,
But our love is here to stay.

In time even a colossus like the Cellon Oak will reach the end of its lifespan.  The sand live oaks which shade our yard and our house will die.  God’s love for us, on the other hand, is here to stay. 

My love, however, is more flimsy.  It is inclined to give way long before the Rockies or the Cellon Oak. In fact, it is probably more like the laurel oak when faced with a strong wind.  

Another song comes to mind.  Here is the third verse of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

- Robert Robinson, 1758                                

Bind my heart to you, O God.  Fill it with the love with which your Son Jesus loved you, for that is a love both pure enough and strong enough to steady my own changeable affection.

June 2005

Sidewalk Messages

From the cave drawings of Lascaux to the proliferation of blogs, the human desire for self-expression is more than evident.

Lately I have been intrigued by two forms of expression less ancient than cave drawings, but far older than weblogs: 

• sidewalk art (for some amazing examples, visit these sites:
  http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm and http://gprime.net/images/sidewalkchalkguy/)
  and

• sidewalk messages, impressed into the cement while still soft, and destined to be read by passersby every day, at least until a new sidewalk is laid. Here are some examples of messages found around Gainesville:

1. Avowals of love.  

The first picture on the right reads "Tupelo -N- Zack."  One beside the church says "I love DIXIE," but it is not clear whether Dixie is a girlfriend or the area of the country.

2. Recommendations

Near the church (which is also near the university), there is a solemn recommendation, "Study Philosophy."  A second advises, less solemnly, "Smoke Pot." Beside our own house: "Peace." Other suggestions can't be printed here. 

3. Poetry wannabes

A verse spread over two slabs of concrete: "Though Lost Love's / woe with time's reduced, / She rambles & stumbles / 'til again seduced."  So far, Shakespeare's position remains unthreatened.

God's sidewalk art

It should probably not surprise us that human beings are fond of self-expression.  After all, we are made in the image and likeness of God, whose self-expression is everywhere we look.  The first verse of John’s prologue, “In the beginning was the Word,” (Greek: en arch hn o logoV), is rendered by J. B. Phillips, “At the beginning God expressed himself.” 

While God’s self-expression is fulfilled in Jesus the Christ, the only Son, it is not limited to the Incarnation. The psalmist exclaims, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”  And in Ephesians Paul says that “we are God’s work of art” ( 2:10, Jerusalem Bible). 

As God’s creation, we are, indeed, works of art – sidewalk art and sidewalk poetry in the sense that every day for our whole lives, all who pass by see the work of God.  Through us God expresses who Christ is, and therefore who God is. 

And so I pray:

Loving God, 
may the message which others read in my life 
communicate the truth of your mercy and love, 
and always be a sign of the glorious hope
promised us in Jesus Christ. 

May 2005

Jesus Takes Us Along

I have just finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s remarkable novel, Gilead, which recently won the Pulitzer prize.  Very near the end of the book the narrator, an elderly preacher composing a long letter for his young son to read after his death, writes:

I love the prairie!  So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing.

Our Cenacle foundress Saint Therese Couderc also knew that radiance.  For her too, the word "good" was profoundly affirmed in her soul.  She had a vision in which she saw the goodness of everything around her, and learned that God has communicated to all creation "something of his infinite goodness, so that we may meet it in everything and everywhere."

I believe that one thing the Ascension of Jesus shows us is the goodness of earthly existence, indeed the radiance of human life.

As Karl Rahner points out, Jesus has not only ascended to heaven, but he has taken us with him!  In this Rahner is following Paul who writes in Ephesians:

Because Jesus has taken us with him, all that is proper to our human existence has become radiant.  Nothing in the humanity which we share with Jesus is left to languish: neither our loves, nor the delight we have in the things of creation, nor our diminishment as we age, nor our disappointments, nor our pain.  Nothing is wasted.

The radiance is often hidden, but occasionally we are vouchsafed a glimpse of what is really there, sometimes through simple occurrences and very small encounters.  While ordinarily everything may seem solid and stolid to us, revealing nothing more than a surface reality, in those privileged moments events and people appear as if translucent, letting the glory that is theirs in Christ shine through. 

If we are not paying, attention, however, we may not notice the beauty spread out before us:

• A neglected plant in a pot abandoned outside the kitchen blooms through hurricanes and drought.

• A student is returning to her homeland this summer to work for the destitute, in spite of the dangers of the political situation there.

• The homeless woman who comes by our house expresses her longing for a real lodging, then prays, "But more of Jesus and less of me."

Truly we should be amazed, like the narrator in Gilead, that we are allowed to witness such things.

May 2005

Miss Atom Bomb

My brother and I have been sorting through our parents’ stacks of photographs.  They fill an old trunk to the brim, so we agreed on a couple of ground rules: that we would bravely discard more pictures than we would keep; and that any pictures of unidentifiable babies would be thrown out.

Deep in the top layer, we came upon a series of black-and-white snapshots identified on the back as “St. Pat’s Day ‘48.”  These featured scenes from a local parade, and as the floats carried people we didn’t know, the pictures were on their way to the discard pile — until we took a closer look at one of them.  It showed an innocuous-looking float bearing a beauty queen in crown and long flowing gown, and proclaiming boldly (are you ready for this?) — “Miss Atom Bomb.”  Behind Miss Atom Bomb was a large model of the bomb, and the lettering on the side of the float indicated that the sponsoring organization was the Society of American Military Engineers.  In other words, the theme of the float was deadly serious.

I had heard of all sorts of beauty pageants, for men and women both, but I couldn’t get this one out of my mind.  So I have been pondering the phenomenon of Miss Atom Bomb, and as I’ve pondered, I’ve remembered that, yes, we too have a crown awaiting us.  We are a royal priesthood, as the first letter of Peter says.  That makes us beauty queens and beauty kings, called to share in the loveliness of the God who is Beauty: whom Saint Augustine called, “O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”  

Unlike Miss Atom Bomb, however, we find our glory in the cross — an expression of weakness, not of force. 

"But God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." (Galatians 6:14)

There is power in the cross, of course, the true power that burst forth on Easter morning — but it is not a power over anyone, not even over those we know are wrong —  but a gift of life to all who will accept it.

As Christians we are not to take pride in our own power — whether it resides in weapons of mass destruction, or money, or honors, or physical strength, or intellectual strength.  We hear, with Paul, God saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  And we can respond, like Paul, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10). 

The crown awaiting us is a crown of life (see James 1:12), a far more desirable crown than the one Miss Atom Bomb is wearing.  (By the way, if you are interested in this lesser sort of crown, you can purchase one online, silver plated with rhinestones, for $260.)  

What is the glory that that is promised in this best of all beauty pageants?

In the Old Testament, the term glory is often used to express God’s presence as it is perceived by human beings.  Therefore in the New Testament, “Christ is presented as the glory of God made visible on earth to those whose eyes are opened to see it…” ¹

God does grant us glimpses of glory.  It’s just that we don’t always recognize them:

partly because our human eyes are dim;

partly, I think, because we are conditioned to thinking of glory in worldly terms: the glory of battle and of military strength (Miss Atom Bomb again); the glory of athletic prowess; the glory of wealth and fame.  Society tells us that it is foolish to think of glory in terms of the cross and resurrection.  We know better, but it is hard to get beyond our cultural conditioning.

It is easy to praise the glory of God revealed in the magnificence of nature. We have to gaze very reverently, though, to see glory in the people sitting across the breakfast table from us or slumped in front of the television; or in the people in line with us at the grocery store checkout counter; or in the ordinary events of daily life.  It takes a special kind of heart-seeing to perceive the glory of Christ in someone slowly dying.  (That kind of glory is something Pope John Paul II revealed to many people in his last months on earth.) 

In this life we often behold glory in terms of Mystery.  We look, we gaze, we feel, we rejoice, and we suffer — and so much of what we experience is incomprehensible to us.  We are living the paradox of the already and the not-yet, a tension between the Resurrection of Jesus, which is already a reality in our lives and which expresses the fullness of glory, and our own resurrection, which is still to come.²   Christ has made all things new, yet we still experience the cross; and we still live in an age that glorifies destructive power (although we are probably too sophisticated now to crown a Miss Atom Bomb). 

This is where we are — in the already and the not yet.  But this is not where we will always be.  “When Christ who is your life is revealed," says Paul, "then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). 

Christ who is your life right now, Christ who is the path you walk right now, Christ who is your all: when he appears, then you will be revealed with him in glory.  

The Johannine writer puts it a little differently, but the meaning is the same.  

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)  

That is our glory.  We will be like God.  We are already made in the image of God.  We are already God’s beloved children, but that likeness is to be fulfilled.  In Christ, we will be like God. That is the glory in which we are to grow in this life, and which will be our final destination in Christ.

1. L. H. Brockington, Theological Wordbook of the Bible, edited by Alan Richardson (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 175).

2. See the monumental book by N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003).  

April 2005

ACT OF OBLATION

Lord Jesus, I unite myself to your perpetual, unceasing, universal sacrifice.  I offer myself to you every day of my life and every moment of every day, according to your most holy and adorable will.

You have been the victim of my salvation, I wish to be the victim of your love.

Accept my desire, take my offering, graciously hear my prayer: let me live by love, let me die of love, and let my last heartbeat be an act of the most perfect love.

- Saint Therese Couderc

The following reflection on St Therese Couderc's "Act of Oblation" is by Sister Elizabeth Hillmann.

I unite myself – to this sacrifice…

What is this sacrifice?  
Humanity, not God, is responsible for the crucifixion. Crucifixion was an evil deed, a form of torture.

As Augustine says, it is not the physical suffering of Jesus that we love.  It is the reality that he overcomes evil by love.  "Having loved his own...he loved them to the end" (John 13:1).  It is the returning of love for evil that overcomes the wickedness of all of us.  And the Resurrection confirmed this.  All is healed by the Resurrection of Jesus, which is central to the Christian.  If Christ be not risen from the dead, Paul says, we are of all people the most foolish (1 Corinthians 15).

Paul also writes these mysterious and yet wonderful words:

“The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18 ).

So what in the world do we mean when we say, I unite myself to the sacrifice of Jesus? 

I unite myself to the only real power: the power of love.  Love is so easy to ignore, seemingly fragile, and indeed is fragile: yet in this fragile, disarmed self is the true power and the true glory of the world.

Some questions:

Does uniting myself with this sacrifice mean I am willing to go on loving and trying to be loving and pure of heart even if it looks totally unimportant in the great events of world history? Do I realize that the simplest acts of loving and kindness are greater that all the magnificent works of construction, of art, of music, of science, of bombs?

Does it mean I am willing to live in the mystery of human existence with trust in God my only support?

Does it mean that I am willing to accept what seems to be my total unimportance in the greater scheme of things, just another of the 6 billion people around?

(This does not mean giving up excellence; it does mean giving up one-upmanship. In the pursuit of excellence, we seek to do our own best, not to win over someone else.)  

Does it mean that I can live without anxiety in the midst of the demands of life?

Could it also mean that I live more aware that I am intimately connected to other humans and am willing to feel my own connection to those who suffer?  That whatever they suffer, I stand with them as Mary stood at the foot of the cross? 

Does it mean standing with the homeless, the persecuted people of Darfur , the innocent victims of war – and also the people who make war and persecute others, the peaceful and the enraged as well?

Mary was there standing with Jesus but standing in the midst of the people who did the crime of killing Him. We are the Body of Christ.  We have an intimate connection to the suffering of others – as if it were our own. “By what boundless mercy, my Savior, have you allowed me to become a member of your body?” asks St. Symeon.* 

I am reminded of the two saints writing to each other.  One said she had a sore toe.  The other wrote back that her toe hurt him. Are we to feel the pain and suffering of others as our own because we are all one body?

Other possibilities:

Does it mean forgiving from the cross, as Jesus did?  As Augustine reminds us, “If, therefore you have learned to pray for your enemy, you are walking in the way of the Lord” (Sermon on I John 1:9).

Does it mean that I have faith that God is with me when I am suffering, whatever that suffering might be?

Is this what it means to unite oneself to the sacrifice of Christ: to give witness to God’s great love by our own forgiveness, our own compassion, our own kindness, our own simple care of another’s needs?

Does it mean that I have no other desire except to do the will of God? 

This is what St. Therese asks of God in her "Act of Oblation" – to live by love, to die of love. What a mysterious and wonderful gift – to live by love night and day.  St Ignatius says to ask for what we want. (You know: like what do you want for Christmas.) Why not beg for this gift, to live by love, to die of love? This is greater than a want.  It is the need of our hearts.  Our hearts are restless till they rest in God.

What more could we ask for?  

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  * The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, trans. John Anthony McGuckin.