Loving with God Love

“What God longs for us to do is to live in the truth Jesus reveals.  This means believing in God’s absolute, unconditional love, not in a notional way but one that transforms our attitudes and whole approach to life” (Essence of Prayer, p.51-52).  These words of the Carmelite Ruth Burrows would delight St. Bernard whose feast we celebrate tomorrow.  Bernard was the great teacher of ‘love’.  Whatever book we pick up with his teaching will be laced with the reality of God’s unconditional love revealed, embodied in Jesus.   

What Sr. Ruth is saying is radical in this sense:  by ‘believing in’, meaning living into, God’s unconditional love, this will ‘transform our attitudes and whole approach to life’.  And surely we all are in need of this attitudinal transformation!  We can ask our selves what are those attitudes, which I get taken by, that need to be transformed?  Just observe my attitude towards a sister I have difficulty with. Or, observe interiorly my murmuring heart, or the harsh criticisms that come up towards others…Are we not being taken by those same negative, judgmental attitudes of the Pharisees whom Jesus faced on a regular basis?  Love is obscured when we are overcome by this judgmental, ‘better than thou’ attitude. In fact the larger horizon of God’s love and mercy is all reduced if not lost in the moment…our hearts shrink into an ego-serving mode of being!  Let us not forget: we love with God’s love…and when we do this, our love is free of any ego claims or expectations…it is a love that freely pours itself out for the sake of God and our neighbor.

Ruth Burrows continues: “What can be more important for a disciple than constantly to reflect on the truth of God, on this unspeakable, incredible love with which we are encompassed? But how often do we do this?” (p.52).  Ok: so let us honestly look at how often we reflect on God’s love for us, a love that is constant and unconditional?  Why is this so important?  We love with God’s love.  When we get a taste of God’s love what does it do within us?  Imagine our lives without a felt knowing in heart and soul of God’s love for us.  Imagine a life in which we are not loving the ‘other’:  God, and all those ‘others’ who we live with and who cross our path. Here are Bernard’s evocative words: “The capacity of any person’s soul is judged by the amount of love he or she possesses.  Hence she who loves much is great; she who loves a little is small; she who has not love is nothing.  As Paul said: ‘If I have not love, I am nothing’” (The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux, p.106).  The choice is ours:  will our loving be ‘small’ or will it be ‘great’ in the sight of God?

I was thinking that when Jesus prayed ‘your will not mine’, that it was motivated by unconditional love. This prayer is a profound exchange of love between Father and Son.  Perhaps we need to pray each day, ‘your will not mine’ for this prayer places us in the landscape of the One who loves us and as pray these words we are offering our love, ‘your will O God, not mine’.  As we come to know God’s love we want to give our all in return!  In his book The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux, John Sommerfeldt writes: “Bernard asks the obvious question: “‘What can I give to God in return for himself? Even if I could give God myself a thousand times, what am I to God?’  Bernard’s answer is that one should love God with all one’s heart. However, inadequate a response this is, it is all that is expected” (p.113).  What is being asked of each of us is possible.  It is as simple as this:  to know in heart, soul, mind, and body God’s constant love for us, a love that encompasses us always whether we ‘feel’ it or not.  And if we are in a dry spell where we do not sense this presence of love, we still have our anchor of faith.  A living faith reminds us of those moments in the past where we had a palatable sense of this love.  Memory in the patristic writings brings an experience of the past into the present moment, where that experienced memory becomes fresh, new, sustaining.  In the same vein, Bernard speaks of the ‘book of our experience’ (Song of Songs I, p.16)).  This book of experience will not let us forget the encompassing love of God. With Jesus at the center of our lives the way into God’s immense love is opened up for us…As we listen to him, as we follow him we will be met by Love, the Love that will continue to ‘transform our attitudes and approach to life’ so that we, in turn, will be vessels of God’s healing and transforming love.

I conclude with these striking words of Jean Vanier that we heard at vigil: “Transfigured by the Word made flesh our flesh becomes a gentle instrument of the love of God to flow in others” (Jesus The Gift of Love, p.172-173).

Living the Truth

Fourth Sunday of Lent

I like to begin with the last sentence from the gospel of this Sunday and then move to the beginning two sentences of the same gospel.   The last sentence reads: ‘Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his or her works may be clearly seen as done in God’ (John 3:21).  Is this not something we all aspire to, to live the truth?  This is what brings meaning to one’s life; this is what makes us free and joyful.  It is what reveals our true face and helps us glimpse the face of God.   But ‘living the truth’ is no small matter.  It involves I think what is said in the first two sentences of the gospel: ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son…’ (John 3:14-15).  Jesus offered his life totally and was raised up, and in his raising, he opened for us life, life that is divine and so ‘eternal’.  The image of ‘lifting up’ has a ‘saving effect’.  For us, living the truth involves surrender, dying to all that is not true, and is not giving life.  We die, like the seed falling into the ground, for more life, for more of the truth of God’s life and our lives to be revealed….As we surrender we are lifted up to a more profound level of seeing and believing: we see more the truth of our selves and one another….We are lifted up to see yet again the love God has for us.

The commentators that I read all refer to this gospel as revealing the immense love of God.  Von Balthasar says it the most clearly:  “The Gospel gives us a chance to revise our understanding of divine judgment during a time of repentance.  The decisive point is that whoever scorns God’s love condemns himself.  God is not at all eager to condemn people.  God is nothing but love, love that goes as far as his sacrificing his Son out of love for the world” (Light of the Word, p.177-178).  It seems to me that ‘living the truth’ is possible only so far as we know and receive this love that God has for us…and we know it most concretely through the self-offering of Jesus.  The closer we can come to Christ in his Word and through how he lived, the closer we are to experiencing and receiving God’s love.

The reality that Jesus became fully human says his humanity is bound up with ours, whether we are aware of it or not.  This is how close God’s love is.  To read again from von Balthasar’s commentary: “The whole question is whether we accept God’s love so that it can prove effective and fruitful in us, or whether we cower in our darkness in order to evade the light of love” (p.178).  These are powerful images:  our acceptance of God’s love makes this love ‘effective and fruitful in us’…imagine this!  Or, dear sisters, do we rather ‘cower in our darkness’ fearful of the truth of where we are in any given moment…forgetting that love encompasses any truth.  We are raised up to a deeper and fuller truth by love.

To summarize what I gleaned in my lectio on this gospel:  to live the truth involves dying, surrender, letting go and we will be raised up by love.  To live the truth pivots around our faith: do we accept God’s love for us moment within moment.  Our faith is not static; it needs to be renewed daily.  So we are ushered into the fourth Sunday and week of Lent remembering God’s great gift of love given to us in Jesus.

Christmas Eve – 2017

 What does the Incarnation bring us?

 

St Joseph with the Child Jesus

Love, God’s love: At the center of Christmas is the mystery of God’s Love.  Are we aware of the immensity of this gift?   Are we aware of the implications this Love brings to and for our lives, and for our world?  This Love brings intimacy in our relation with God and with one another.  It is a love that transforms the power of darkness into life and has the power to continue to do so.  This Love that is at the center of Christmas will not only gift us in profound ways, but it will also ask something of us.  It is a Love that stretches us in the shape of a cross because it asks that we first (daily) carry our own cross into life and healing.  It is a Love that calls us and enables us to shoulder the burdens of one another….And it asks of us, which I know often feels impossible, that we love our enemy….that we stretch to love the one who is different….even more to love the one who has hurt us…How we concretely do this or how we move in this direction is not for now.  What is for now is that we are given the gift, the loving power to do this in small and larger ways.  This Love given ‘to and for us’ is truly a miracle for what it can work in human lives!

Now, hodie, we are given the possibility because of Christ…because of God’s gift to us in Christ…we are given the power of an unrequited Love….it is holding us right now…it is sustaining us right now….and it is to become even more flesh of our flesh.  Fr. Alfred Delp writes: “What this celebration is about is the founding of a final order for the world, a new center of meaning for all existence.  We are not celebrating some children’s holiday, but rather the fact that God has spoken His ultimate Word to the world.  Christ is the ultimate Word of God to the world.  One must let this idea really sink in these days when people are seeking new values” (Give Us This Day, p.277).  This Divine birth is about a ‘new center of meaning’ out of which we are to live our lives.  It births forth the ‘new values’ that help us live more like Christ in our views and perspectives, and in our relations with one another.   It enables us to embrace paradox so that the ‘new values’ or new wine of the gospel take root and become embodied in our lives and in this community.

The Incarnation happened two thousand years ago…and it is still happening today.  Fr. Delp emphasizes that we need to let the reality of the Incarnation sink in, sink into our heart, sink into our consciousness.  I think he is right on…we, most of the time, are not even aware that it is at the center of our lives especially when we get pulled into ‘I-It’ stuff forgetting why we are even in a monastery or why God has placed each of us on this precious earth.  Letting the reality of the Incarnation sink into our lives: this gift of God’s very life given freely to us: this gift, ever-new, ever hopeful, ever bringing wisdom, ever bringing the new of God that can heal all division and conflicts within our selves, with one another and in the larger world dynamics that affect all of us daily.  The Incarnation of Christ is radical in the breadth and depth of its power to transform and to save…in its capacity for freedom and joy, for bringing meaning and hope, for showing a way forward when one can not find their way.  A light is shining in our darkness and the darkness cannot quench it…and this light is to be even more manifest because like Mary we are ready to receive it, receive it with our ‘yes’, receive it by giving our flesh and blood to incarnate God’s gift and not quench it, bury it, or put it under a bushel basket!

We just received Jim Loney’s Christmas card.  He writes so simply, so profoundly the following:

Good news joy

                                    born in

                        deep night waiting

                                    here, this

                        manger will do.

Dear sisters: the manger of our lives will do….because we are each here….here like Mary with our ‘yes’….there is nothing more we need to do…just to be here, here with a living faith and the right intention.  Yes, with these we will receive the gift that awaits each one of us this Christmas.  Amen.

Sunday Homily: Love of God, Love of the Stranger, and Love of Self

30^st SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME – A  –     October 29, 2017     br. Daniël

[Ex 22:20-26;  1Thess 1:5c-10;  Mt 22:34-40]

   Jesus is involved in a series of debates with the Jewish religious leaders. As soon as the Pharisees learn that Jesus has silenced the Sadducees, one of them comes up with a new question: ‘Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?’ As a good Jew, Jesus begins by quoting the most fundamental one: ‘Love God with all your capacities, heart, soul and mind’. However, Jesus immediately attaches to this the commandment of love for the neighbor, as being one and the same with the commandment of love for God. Indeed, it is impossible to love God without loving the neighbor.

     The Evangelist Mark has a parallel text in which this story has an interesting epilogue. The same Pharisee who – according to Matthew – tries to put Jesus to the test, gets so deeply impressed by Jesus’ answer that he exclaims: ‘Exactly Master, you have said it very well!’ And Jesus, seeing that his interlocutor has opened his heart, replies: ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God’.

     Not all Jewish Pharisees were as bad as our traditional picture suggests. Besides, in the Rabbinic tradition vivid debates with sophisticated questions about the Torah were quite normal. Usually, the intentions were not bad. The purpose was: challenging one another to penetrate into the unfathomable depth of the Sacred Text. However, this traditional game assumes an evil character when some are questioning Jesus just to find a pretext for sueing him and having him put to death. In such a case, religion becomes an aggressive hypocrisy aiming at destruction because of mere power. Nevertheless, we should correct the traditional picture of ‘the Pharisee’: in Mark we see that the dialogue is held in an atmosphere of mutual respect beyond separating boundaries.

     This brings us to the theme of respect, also concerning what seems to be strange in different religions and cultures. In the first reading we heard the commandment of respect towards the stranger, ‘for you were once strangers yourselves in the land of Egypt’. Without denying our Christian roots, love for the neighbor requires to open our hearts also for strangers. Not always easy, especially today, as our Christian faith is rapidly losing its influence upon society and other religions are playing a more important role, especially the Islam.

     However, Xenophobia is not the answer. Also the Islam, originally, is a tolerant religion, just like Christianity, in spite of all violence happening in its name. In the Koran, in fact, the second Soera says: ‘Those who adhere to the Jewish faith, as well as the Christians who believe in God and in the Last Day, who are acting by virtue, will have their reward from their Lord; they will have nothing to fear and will not be saddened’. And a little further, the same Koran even refers to the Covenant of God with the Israelites: ‘You shall serve God only. Be good for your parents, your relatives, the orphans and the needy’. Thus, two Islamitic passages that come very close to our readings of today: respect for the stranger and justice to those who cannot defend themselves.        

     But today’s Gospel also invites us to remain close to ourselves. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. We need a healthy amount of self-love to be able to love others. We should not just open our hearts for others and strangers without being in touch with our innermost self. ‘Know yourself’. A humble self-acceptance, as a fruit of sincere search for God, is a condition to make love possible for our neighbor. Love for God, our Creator, and love for the neighbor are the two sides of one and the same medal. A heart can be open for strangers only to the extent to which it is at home with itself. May this be for us the basis of an authentic religion, coming from a heart that includes all people – notwithstanding their origins – as children of one and the same God.

Christianity:a love that does not cease to ask and to give

In February we had conferences on John Ruusbroeck, the Flemish mystic of the late 13^th / 14^th century.  I was struck by a question that was posed to us during the course of the week.  I thought and felt then, that this question could provide a fruitful entrance into Jesus’ passion and resurrection, and even lead us into a ‘renewed encounter with Christ’, to use the expression of Pope Francis, as we interface Jesus’ life with our own.  The question is this: ‘What happens when we open ourselves to love without condition?’  We can imagine that this could have been a question, perhaps expressed in different words, which Jesus addressed to his followers.

I feel this question is an important one to ponder given all that is happening in our world and the invitation of Pope Francis to a ‘renewed encounter with Christ’.   To walk with Jesus, to let this question pulsate within our heart and soul, will lead us into the paschal mystery, and will reveal what Christian discipleship is all about.  The sacramental life of the Church on Holy Thursday is, in many ways, at its richest and deepest.  In the Eucharist we witness and participate in an embodied love as Jesus offers his life in the words:  “This is my body, this is my blood given for you.”  And then again in the washing of the feet, which in the gospel of John is another type of ‘Eucharist’.   The words of the evangelist sum up this profound ritual: ‘He loved them to the end’.

Br. Christophe, in his journal titled Born From the Gaze of God, wrote: “Christianity is the great adventure for through it one is called by an infinite love that is, by a love that does not  Called by an infinite love that asks something of us; called by an infinite love that never ceases to give us something, always.  The love we receive, as we take it into our lives naturally leads us to want to do something with it…to give to others and in this way we are giving back to God.  It is an amazing exchange of love: of God’s covenant, ‘My love will never leave you’ and of our ‘yes’ to follow and to live from the impulses of the Spirit, allowing God, as Mary did, to work through our lives: ‘Let it be done to me according to your word’.

cease to ask and to give” (p.16).

Loving without condition:  if not in small ways we will never do it in larger ways…Keep in mind during these days, Jesus’ journey with his disciples: the figure of Peter who betrays him, who often does not understand, though, still step by step he changes…James and John as they argue about who is the greatest…the rich young man, a would-be disciple, who Jesus looked at and loved and then asked him to follow: who could not quite take the leap and turns away…Such human stuff that we all know and all fall into…and yet this call of infinite love remains: whoever would follow: take up your cross and come…and how often we hear Jesus say, ‘Do not be afraid’…we are afraid…we do not know where we are being led or what we are being led into…still we have the One who goes before us…

Loving without condition involves ‘kenosis’:  a kenotic opening of heart, mind, and body.   Without kenosis, without this self-emptying process, whatever we do ends up being more about us than about God.  To lose this self-centered, non-clinging, controlling ego, opens us up to the immensity of God’s love, to freedom.  With each kenotic opening, where we ‘lose our lives’, we are lifted up as God’s love pours forth gracing us with a renewed heart and mind, giving us the capacity to serve and to be stewards of God’s mysteries, not counting the cost.

Cynthia Bourgeault, in her book, The Wisdom Jesus, wrote: “In Jesus everything hangs together around a single center of gravity, and you need to know what this center is before you can sense the subtle but cohesive power of the path he is laying out.  What name might we give to this center?  The apostle Paul suggests the word kenosis… ‘to let go,’ ‘to empty oneself…’” (p.63).  And later she writes on this same theme: “The act of self-giving is simultaneously an act of self-communication; it allows something that was coiled and latent to manifest outwardly” (p.68).  This is the humble power of kenosis: it unleashes God’s transforming love not only within our lives, surely as well, in our communities, our Church, our world.

The Eucharist and the washing of the feet: sacramental rituals that reveal and proclaim one message: He loved without condition.  Last year for my Holy Thursday talk I emphasized that both these rituals, happen within the context of community.  Several days ago I received a letter, which included these words of Dom Helder Camara:  “When we are dreaming alone, it is only a dream.  When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality”.  We gather during these days as one community.  As we live into the discipleship call ‘to love without condition’, let us dream together of peace for our world:  a peace that begins with us as we follow Jesus, and live his embodied love, in the daily happenings of our lives and in the larger ways that this call of infinite love will continue to ask of each of us.