In Meekness and Humility

“…all of us are constantly inclined to ask the question that Saint Jude Thaddaeus put to Jesus during the Last Supper: “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”(Jn. 14:22)…It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes a man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the divisive forces within history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him. And yet, is this not truly the divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power but to but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love…”(JoNII,276)As in the wonderful words of the carol:

“O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight”

Romano Guardini writes: “…None of the great things in the human life spring from the intellect; every one of them spring from the heart and its love. If even human love has its own reasoning, comprehensible only to the heart that is open to it, how much truer must this be of God’s love! When it is the depth and power of God that stirs, it there anything of which love is incapable? The glory of it is overwhelming that to all who do not accept love as an absolute point of departure, its manifestations must seem the most senseless folly.” (The Lord, pg.17)

Misericordiae Vultus of Pope Francis 5,6: “It is proper to God to exercise mercy, and he manifests his omnipotence particularly in this way”. Saint Thomas Aquinas’ words show that God’s mercy, rather than a sign of weakness, is the mark of his omnipotence.

Pastor Iuventus writes in the Catholic Herald Apr 18 2014 Jesus knows that his hour has come and that the Father has put all things into his hands. This is what gives the night it’s serenity. Jesus is in total control and this is the key to understanding the mysteries. The one who has all things in his hands chooses to give all things away for love of me. The God who deserves my worship and honour chooses to kneel and serve me. 

A striking feature of the Gospels is that it is not Jesus who clearly states His divinity, but the Gospel writers. Jesus refrains from and seems reticent when it comes to ever using the specific three words, “I am God” in his own mouth during his earthly ministry even when pressed John 8:25 “Who ‘’are you?”, Luke 22:67 “If you are the Christ, tell us” “Show us a sign” etc. He forbids the evil spirits from saying who He is, and even Simon Peter from repeating his famous confession (Matt16:22). Even after the Resurrection the number of witnesses is restricted to “those who were pre-ordained”. Philip inquires of our Lord as to “Will you appear only to us?” “Why not to these others?” , and so does Jude Thaddeus as in the quote above.

Jesus tells his apostles the reason for His secrecy in a cryptic answer in Matt 13:13-15 …For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.” Jesus is making it clear that there is intentionally a certain veil over the Revelation. In Luke Jesus answers, “If I tell you, you would not believe me” And at the parable of the sower He explains “ the secrets of the kingdom are not given…” There is, from the outset, a certain audience that the Gospel is pitched to, it is a treasure that will be found, only by those who are seeking it.

If you expected Jesus to behave like every other God-man, ring-leader, politician, and claimant to the throne that ever lived and follow the well-trodden prototype, then the God that you are seeking is other than the one I present. Put simply, Jesus is not clannish, He is not power hungry, and not a land-grabber or property mogul, or dynastic. God owns the whole world. (Psalm 50:12) “If I was hungry, I would not tell you”, therefore he is not here to “establish His kingdom on Earth”. He is here to establish it in our hearts, and an invitation to Paradise.

“He lies…in a situation where all his energies are exhausted as he bears the brunt of all powers hostile to God. His fate surpasses human tragedy; it is the super-tragedy of ultimate “God-forsakenness”(…) and so, as the matrix of all possible dramas, He embodies the absolute drama in his own person, in his personal mission…” (Balthasar TD3, 162)

Fr Ronald Rolheiser writes, “We are forever looking for something beyond what God gives us. But we should know from the very way that God was born into the world that faith needs to ground itself on something that is quiet and undramatic. Jesus, as we know was born into the world with no fanfare and power: a baby lying helpless in the straw, another child among millions. Then, during his ministry, he never performed miracles to prove his divinity, but only as acts of compassion or to reveal something about God. His ministry, like his birth wasn’t an attempt to prove God’s existence (beyond doubt), It was to teach us what God is like and that God loves us unconditionally…”(Catholic Herald Apr. 25 2014)

…God lies deep inside us, deep inside, but in a way that’s almost non-existent, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed and easily ignored. However while that presence is never overpowering, it has within it a gentle unremitting imperative, a compulsion towards something higher, which invites us to draw upon it. And, if we do draw upon it, it gushes up in us an infinite stream that instructs us, nurtures us and fills is with endless energy. This is important for understanding Faith. God lies inside us as an invitation that fully respects our freedom, never overpowers us, but also never goes away. It lies there precisely like a baby lies helpless in the straw, gently beckoning us, but helpless in itself to make us pick it up.

“All religions other than the Catholic religion are in more or less narrow and servile fashion, according as there metaphysical level is high or low, integral parts of certain definite cultures, particular to certain ethnic climates in certain historical formations. Only the Catholic religion, because it is supernatural and proceeds from the riven Heart of God dying upon the cross, is absolutely and rigorously transcendental, supra-cultural, supra-racial, and supra-national.” (Jacques Maritain, TAD p. 97)                                  

Recall all the times you have heard persons say “I will believe in God if He shows Himself to me…etc.” God has answered that question in the heart of every human being. The mission of Jesus is a “manifestation” of how the meek, the humble and the weak are made strong and upheld. The nations are watching as this tiny Jewish nation, invincible when their faith is strong against vastly mightier adversaries, yet just as easily brushed aside when they abandon the Lord’s ways. The pattern is unmistakeable and oft-repeated. How will this puny nation in the centre of a highly disputed and sought after land be saved? It is obvious for this very reason that most of all they need saving from themselves. God is telling the world, of its utter dependence upon Him. From the beginning it was a story of the weak overcoming the strong. From the stories of Gilead, and Sampson, the Exodus from Egypt, to the war of Hezekiah against the mighty Assyrians. In the end it is God himself who takes on the mantle of weakness, being born as a helpless babe. The great powers of the world then are observing their little gold-fish bowl, taunting as did Senacherib: “your God cannot save you from my hand!…”. All the while God the message couldn’t be clearer: God wants man’s acceptance, not his assistance: “I do not desire holocaust, but a broken spirit…”

Fr. Rahner wirtes about the life of Jesus: “He passes up everything that we consider necessary to mamke our life abundant and full (…) He passes up marriage, art, and even friendship (…) he does not pursue politics or science, he does not solve any of the social problems of the time. He showed no resentment toward these things, He did not despise them. He just did not busy himself with them. The only thing that we can say about Jesus is that he was a very pious man (…) we would like to find some traits in Jesus’ life that would make him a bit more congenial, but we find none of this! What Paul said of Jesus is very true. “He humbled himself” (…)Jesus …passes up everything. At the most, he allows himself a simple pleasure occasionally: a banquest, a deep fridnship with John, a look at the temple- but even in this case it is his disciples who call his attention to the beautiful building. He is silent and passes by like one for whom everything in a certain sense is already dead (…) It is difficult for us to accept the fact that Jesus really cannot so anything else but save souls…” (CoF,290)

God dwells with Man

We have already written about how God gives us himself, and not just words on a page. The beginning of this great romance of God with His creature, indeed like any good love story does really start at the beginning – introductions. Pope Benedict tells of how it is in revealing His name, “which is a name and non-name”, a giving and at the same time a refusing to give a name, that God makes himself accessible to us, and at the same time marks himself off from the pagan “earthy” gods with human names that surround Israel. At the same time, pg. 143 “a name creates the possibility of address of invocation. It ucreates a relationship…God…puts himself within reach of our invocation…He has made himself accessible and therefore vulnerable as well…The process that was brought to completion in the Incarnation had begun with the giving of the divine name. When we come to hear Jesus’ high-priestly prayer we will see that he presents himself there as the new Moses: “I have manifested thy name to…men” (Jn17:6). What began at the burning bush at the Sinai desert comes to fulfilment at the burning bush of the Cross. God has now made himself accessible in his incarnate Son…the name of God can now be misused and so God himself can be sullied.”

It is God who stoops from across the infinite chasm, because He is God. The first two words of the Lord’s Prayer, as Pope Benedict quotes Reinhold Schneider: “The Our Father begins with a great consolation: we are allowed to say ‘Father’. This one word contains the whole history of Redemption”. God’s great and unexplained desire to live in the midst of His people, “And I will make My dwelling place among you, and I will not reject you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” (Lev 26:11-12, Jer 32:38, Is 52 11,12, Cor 16:17,18).

Fr. Rahner writes: “The mystery which we call God gives himself in his divine existence, gives himself to us for our own in a genuine act of self-bestowal. He himself is the grace of our existence. We shall say therefore that what we mean by creation is that the divine being freely “exteriorises” his own activity so as to produce non-divine being, but does this solely in order to produce the necessary prior conditions for his own divine self-bestowal in that free and un-merited love that is identical with himself. He does this is order to raise up beings who can stand in a personal relationship to himself and so receive his message, and on whom he can bestow not only finite and created being distinct from himself, but himself as well. In this way he himself becomes both giver and gift, and even more the actual source of the human being’s own capacity to receive him as gift.” (CoF p.47from TI-VII)

Love for Enemies

“If…we search”, Fr. Rahner continues, “for the historical personality who permits us to trust that in him our hope is fulfilled, then we cannot find any other name except the one presented by the witness of the apostles…in Jesus God has answered the question that the human person constitutes in his unlimited, incomprehensible nature…Jesus is the ultimate answer that can never be surpassed, because every conceivable question is annihilated in His death and he is the one answer to the all-encompassing question of human existence in that he is the risen one….” “…the salvific presence of God in the flesh, that is, within human history- the perennial stumbling block of all philosophy and autonomous mysticism..”  “In Jesus destiny, every human philosophy receives for the first time a truly specific and concrete form…”He continues (…) For what does Christianity really declare? Nothing else, after all, than that the great mystery remains eternally a mystery, but that this mystery wishes to communicate himself in absolute self-communication- as the infinite, incomprehensible and inexpressible being whose name is God…this nearness has become a reality not only in what wecall “grace” but also in the tangible reality of the one whom we call the Godman…” (CoF pgs.63-4,68, from TI-XVI).

Josef Pieper notes,“…according to theologians, the essence of the Christian faith can be summed up in two words… Trinity and Incarnation…man participates is the life of God through Christ.” Pieper continues, “In speaking to men God does not cause them to know objective facts, but he does throw open to them his own Being…in accepting the message of the self-revealing God, (the believer) actually partakes of the divine life therein announced. ..Divine revelation is not an announcement of a report on reality, but the imparting of the reality itself.” (Ch. 8, Anthology)

“Cor ad cor loquitur”- “heart speaks to heart”: St. John Henry Cardinal Newman

“The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
    a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
    he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing
 as on a day of festival.”

-Zephaniah 3:17

Love Engendered as it is Given:

“Kneel!”, his executioners commanded, and God obeyed, willingly going down on both knees and bowing his head over the pillar, all the while as saying, “Now will you love me?”

“Christ’s Passion is applied to us even through faith, that we may share in its fruits, according to Romans 3:25: “Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood…” (…) thus Christ’s Passion may be applied to us, not only as to our minds, but also as to our hearts. And even in this way sins are forgiven through the power of the Passion of Christ. [STIII Art.1 [ad 5] “…in order to secure the effects of Christ’s Passion, we must be likened unto Him…” [Art.3]

Thus it is that Jesus is able to make the seemingly outlandish demands of us: “Love your enemies…if you love those who love you what good is that?…”, “If you so much as look at a woman with lust, you will be guilty…” and “if you call your brother “fool”..” “bless and don’t curse them (those who curse you)…do good to those who harm you…” Love is all Jesus wanted to prove to the world, and for us to take out into the world: “by this might all men know that you are my disciples…”.

“…The hope of the world took refuge on a raft (…) For blessed is the wood by which righteousness comes.” Wis 14:7

The Right Worship of God:

Finally at the culmination of the discussion of God’s action in man, we might be able to say that man is truly able to offer “right worship” to God. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “Thus in his body, “ a new obedience becomes possible, an obedience that surpasses all human fulfilment of the commandments…to put it another way, our own morality is insufficient for the for the proper worship of God.” (JoN, p.235) He notes that while animal sacrifice that could only ever have been a symbol for “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Heb. 10:4).  “true priesthood is therefore ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people into an offering to God” (p 238). “The Son becomes man and in his body bears the whole of humanity back to God” (p 235). Jesus himself renounces every worldly consideration on the Cross. He teaches us and enables us to be like God through the imitation of Him.

Fr. Rahner therefore gives this beautiful definition of Christianity: “Christianity is the assent on the part of the whole community (church) formulated and held explicitly by that community to the absolute mystery which exercises an inescapable power in and over our existence, and which we call God. It is our assent to that mystery as pardoning us and admitting us to share in its own divinity; it is that mystery as imparting itself to us in a history shaped by our own free decisions as an intelligent being; and this self-bestowal of God in Jesus Christ manifested itself as finally and irrevocably victorious in history”(pg.45 CoF)

Was There No Other Way?:

One of the great question asked of Christianity, and perhaps one of its greatest mysteries, or at least the most enigmatic take on the mystery of the Incarnation, is the question: “Was there “another way”?”, one that neither necessitated the Incarnation, but also the seemingly more unpalatable event of the Crucifixion. This is by no means a straightforward reply to this. St Thomas addresses this in III Q.46, Art.2 Having already commented shortly before that it was not the same with the angels because

“the sin of the angels was irreparable; not so the sin of the first man (I,Q.64,A.2 Rep.3)”, he goes on to say that although Christians say that the Crucifixion satisfied for God’s Justice, yet “…if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice…He is the sovereign and common good of the whole Universe. Consequently, if He forgave sin, which has the formality of a fault in that it is committed against himself, He wrongs no one”

But then he goes on to discuss the reasons why God deemed this to be a fitting remedy. “…In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Romans 5:8): “God commendeth (NRSV: “proves”, NIV: “demonstrates”) his charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us.” [Art.3] Secondly, because thereby He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (1 Peter 2:21): “Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.” Thirdly, because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss…” (This is discussed in the next paragraph)

When it is asked: “How could God possibly let His Son suffer etc etc?” such a  question simply does not take the end into account, an end that transcends any end conceived of in any other tradition that God plans for man in love.

Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Cor. 6:20: “You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body.” Fifthly, because it redounded to man’s greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death. Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 15:57): “Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (he adds in Rep. Obj.3 “This was also a fitting means of overthrowing the pride of the devil, “who is a deserter from justice, and covetous of sway…It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good-will.”

It is in St Thomas’ elucidation of the Temptation of Christ that he says wonderfully:

“Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, not by powerful deeds, but rather by suffering from him and his members, so as to conquer the devil by righteousness, not by power; thus Augustine says (De Trin. xiii) that “the devil was to be overcome, not by the power of God, but by righteousness…” [STIII Q41 Art.1 ad.2] “Let us test him…so that we may find out how gentle he is.” (Wisdom 3:19) Evil is conquered by the gentleness of our God, that gentleness on the Cross which is “to those who are being saved, the power of God” (Cor 1:18) “But, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 1), by the mystery of the Incarnation are made known at once the goodness, the wisdom, the justice, and the power or might of God–“His goodness, for He did not despise the weakness of His own handiwork; His justice, since, on man’s defeat, He caused the tyrant to be overcome by none other than man, and yet He did not snatch men forcibly from death; His wisdom, for He found a suitable discharge for a most heavy debt; His power, or infinite might, for there is nothing greater than for God to become incarnate . . .””

The Cross on my Wall

I am a shift worker and there will be nights when my family sleep alone. I am comforted that the last thing that my child sees as she goes to bed and the first thing she sees in the morning is the image of our Crucified Lord. My dear wife did once suggest a ‘Christ-less Cross’, in keeping with her Protestant tradition. After dwelling on it, I feel sure that nothing would comfort me more than this very image. On the Cross there is to be found that ultimate dignity in the face of the ultimate indignity; absolute love in the face of absolute spitting hate; ultimate peace in the face of the ultimate violence. It is all of the things that protect us in the face of all the things that assail us. The greatest malevolent act will be overcome by the greatest act of submission: a God bowed down. There is nothing more threatening on the face of the Earth than man, there is nothing less threatening in the whole world, than the God-Man. I would like nothing more than for my daughter to see this picture of the Man with his arms painfully extended saying “I love you forever!” I will leave her in the embrace of the most powerful Man in the Universe, at his most loving. Were I in the same room, I could not love her more. Though I will not always be with her, I know that He will. And when she looks up at the Cross, she will KNOW. Praise be to God!

Rex admirablilis et triumphator nobilis

Dulcedo ineffabilis, ineffabilis

Totus desiderabilis, totus desiderabilis (bell)

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia,

Wondrous King,

Noble Victor,

Unspeakably sweet,

Totally desirable

Alleluia!