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In the last reflection I mentioned, though in passing, that true theoria, the contemplative “seeing” of God in this life, is made possible only in faith, hope, and love. I have explored this reality in depth in many of my other writings, so I shall avoid doing so here, but I would like to at least say a little bit, which shall be a good preface for our continued meditation on the words of John’s Gospel, our own contemplation and pursuit of the face of the Beloved. Faith, hope, and love, the so-called “theological virtues,” are the created manner of our participation in the very way of living proper to the Persons of the Trinity—or, said from another perspective, they are God’s own life and love grafted into us as new “powers” by which we operate in a way more than merely human, but bringing our humanity to its truest fulfillment. They are the root and the expression of the “synergy” by which we are made docile to the gift and activity of God, and allow him to act freely within us, while our own activity comes to full blossom in union with him.
Faith grants us a participation in God’s own seeing, in the beatific vision that the Son has of his Father’s face, and in God’s own vision cast in tenderness upon this world. It is thus the definitive revelation of truth and a light shining upon all of existence and on the whole universe. Like the light of the sun which is too brilliant itself to be seen but which reveals all things in their true splendor, so is the light of faith. But more: it is also the light that wants to be seen, to enrapture our gaze and to become known to us, intimately known, in an awareness that is true even if surpassing the capacity of our minds to fully comprehend. Yes, through trust in the word and revelation of God we acquiesce through faith to his approach, to his unveiling. And through this same faith we enter into him as he enters into us. We come to live and to see beyond merely human seeing, with a certainty that surpasses all other certainty, for it is a spiritual, intuitive, mystical contact with the very reality in which we believe, with God himself and with all things bathed in his light, which is poured into our hearts through grace operative in faith. And hope is within us the flame of ardent desire and the impetus toward intimacy that ever draws the divine Persons into one another in reciprocal belonging of utmost intensity. This ardor, filling us, enables us to surmount the inertia that inheres in our humanity because of sin, to move beyond the paralysis of fear and hesitation, and to let a thread of hope, of true and abiding confidence in God’s goodness and love, lead us on through life and into eternity. Rooted in God as true evangelical hope is, it is not mere optimism, mere wishful thinking, nor the presumption that God shall give me everything that I want; it is, rather, a certainty that his love shall work all for the best according to his infinite wisdom, and that this very love is intimately close even in my poverty and weakness, indeed even in all the upheavals of history, in suffering and loss and failure as well as in all that is good and beautiful. Thus hope sets free both vision and action, stirring us from apathy born of fear and impelling us to live to the utmost in the energy that can be born only of hope. Thus hope, itself born of faith and in turn giving birth to love, is the foundation of all fruitful work, all meaningful activity, all authentic creativity and beauty, and indeed of suffering made fruitful, made joyful, in the likeness of the suffering of Christ, leading unto the Resurrection. The mature and succulent fruit of faith and of hope is love. It is the very mature presence and activity of God’s own love within us, moving us to act, to surrender, to live according to the activity that he himself lives in the innermost sanctuary of his life as Trinity. This eternal life, poured into us through the Holy Spirit as a new principle of being—indeed as an intimate personal presence, a friend always within us walking with us through every moment of life—also takes us up to grant us access into the inner heart of the Trinity. For if God is Love, then to be made a partaker in love is to be made a participant in the life of God. But we speak here not merely of natural love, though this too is already a reflection of God and a mysterious manner of his presence. But we speak here of something more, which does not degrade or neglect the beauty and importance even of the natural human capacity for love, but rather lifts it up, purifies it, and grants it a depth and expanse that it could not have even imagined—which, indeed, unveils and offers its true and final end: intimacy with God through living the very life of God. And rooted so totally in God as is this love (one with mature faith and hope) it also pervades and sanctifies all the details of life, from the humblest choices and activities of daily life to the deepest and most exceptional moments, to human acts that are in fact not possible except on the basis of God’s love active within us. But indeed every act, filled with God’s love in this way, becomes a supernatural act of immeasurable value. In the light of the activity of God’s love within us, the distinction in earthly actions between “great” and “small,” between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” is relativized. What matters is the truth of God’s love alive within us, and our co-operation with this love. As Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, said: Hope is the fruit of faith, we have said: in it our life stretches itself out towards the totality of all that is real, towards a boundless future that becomes accessible to us in faith. This fulfilled totality of being to which faith provides the key is a love without reserve—a love that is an immense affirmation of my existence and that discloses the fullness of all being to me in its breadth and depth. In it the creator of all things says to me: “All that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). God, however, is “all in all,” “everything to everyone” (1 Cor. 15:28); the person to whom he imparts all that is his is someone for whom there are no longer any ends or boundaries. The love that Christian hope approaches in the light of faith is not something purely private and individual: it does not enclose me in a little world of my own. This love opens up to me the whole of everything, which through love becomes “paradise.” The worst anxiety of all, as we have already said, is the fear of not being loved, the loss of love: despair is thus the conviction that one has forfeited all love forever, the horror of complete isolation. Hope in the proper sense of the word is thus the reverse: the certainty that I shall receive that great love that is indestructible and that I am already loved with this love here and now. What an incredible quote. Loved by the All who is God, I am myself opened wide through love, hope, and faith to the totality of being in all its breadth and depth, all its beauty and majesty, indeed all its sin and pain, sorrow and loss—all held ceaselessly in the world-cradling embrace of God’s own Love. My narrow and isolated world is burst open by the gift of God and it dilates, dilates indeed to God’s own proportions, which are the proper proportions of the human heart itself, created for the infinite and eternal. And this dilation is not a burden, even if it is cruciform, the tearing wide open in receptivity and gift of a heart that has been broken in sin, and that is united to a world marred by pain and sin, and thus also occurs in suffering. It is not a burden because this opening up to me of the whole of everything, since it occurs in love, is “paradise.” It is a taste and a participation already in the mystery that is heaven: the permeation of all things by love. The complete openness of love. The joining together of all things in love and by love. The life of God as Trinity conquering all things with his gentle and peaceful rule, which is intimacy and joy. And we see that all starts from the experience of being loved by God, the experience of belovedness. This is the root of the Christian life, and indeed of human life itself. For this alone is the remedy to despair and the root of life. Only in the conviction of being loved by an enduring and unbreakable Love can I find the courage and hope to live to the full. Yes, only in being born from Love and held always by Love can I also live my life fully toward Love as well. Thus faith and hope are the roots of love, and the true path to human flourishing and fulfillment, which blossoms only in being made like God, being transformed in his likeness as someone who is love: a person wholly open in love as the divine Persons are open, a “living embrace” both of God and of humanity, indeed of the entirety of created reality. This is our destiny and our calling. And since it is sustained by hope even now in this life, it is joy. Even if it passes also through, and takes up into itself, sorrow and compassion, suffering and solidarity—even the bearing of the sin and darkness of our world in the likeness of Christ—it is heaven, it is paradise, for it is the life of God in us, and our participation in the life of God, in the everlasting communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the last reflection I drew a distinction between true theoria and our contemporary understanding of theory or “theorizing,” which is the effort to create an abstract system that explains the universe or the contours and meaning of a particular reality. In a certain sense, the two could not be more opposed, at least when theory is understood in a certain way. The essential difference here is that between a possessive understanding of knowledge and a non-possessive, relational understanding of knowledge.
To theorize, for the contemporary mind, is to categorize, classify, and explain, if not actually to interpret a meaningless mass of facts by imposing an interpretation upon them. This is seen in the masculinized effort to “master” nature for the sake of man’s own well-being which is present, for example, in John Locke, and is a presupposition of most of the “scientific movement” of the last four hundred years. Of course science itself is good, and can even be a space of true theoretic intuition into the beauty of reality; but “scientism” can also infiltrate our understanding in such a way that we cease to reverence the reality that we behold, and instead relate to it only in order to grasp, comprehend, and control. In this way, our relationship with the world becomes almost exclusively pragmatic, and truth itself is then defined not as what is in itself, what is real, but rather as what works. In this, an over-adult and over-masculine approach to reality suffocates the capacity for childlike wonder and awe as well as the ability to receive and be impregnated by the gift of beauty, goodness, and truth. This is visible, for example, in the words of many contemporary atheists, whose arguments against the existence of God—the “flying cookie-monster” whom humanity has supposedly invented for itself—purport to be scientific while actually being the very opposite of scientific. They reveal a profound blindness of mind and heart, in which the person is no longer capable of seeing beyond the surface appearance of reality. There is no “seeing-within” or “seeing-beyond.” But this inability itself springs from a greater incapacity: the inability to humbly reverence that which is greater, and which speaks a word that awakens wonder, humility, and grateful awe. But to believe in God (or rather to know him, for he can be known!) is precisely to see in and beyond the surface of reality to the burning Love present within it and unceasingly enfolding and sustaining it. Often, I fear, the supposedly scientific arguments of such atheists can be fueled, whether knowingly or unknowingly, by a deep hurt or woundedness. How often in the lives of God’s children does an experience of hurt in early life—whether abuse or neglect or conflict—cause a rupture in one’s confidence in the all-pervading and sustaining Love that lies as the true ground of being. One begins to doubt that it is possible to “see beyond,” because one begins to doubt that it is possible to trust, to surrender, to enter into a living contact with another without being hurt or violently overcome. Thus life becomes, not a movement of mutual self-giving, a surging of the heartbeat of Love from God into us and from us back into God, but a power-struggle in which threatened man must blot out the sky in order to avoid sunburn. But what quickly follows is anemia, and the dying of plants and animals, and the ultimate death of what is truly human in man. And yet such can never truly and definitively die, for—praise God!—it is impossible for mere men to actually blot out the sky, however much they may hide in the caves and holes of the earth. Indeed, it is impossible for the human heart to forget its Origin, to cease longing to return into the embrace of the Love that has fashioned him, and in which alone his restless being shall find definitive and enduring rest. In other words, the same drama is being played out in the “new atheism” which has been played out since the beginning of human history, when Adam and Eve took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then, ashamed and threatened, hid from the face of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But even to refer to the beginning of human history also directs our gaze back to the central reality, to the answer for which the hearts of the people in our world are thirsting. Adam and Eve fled from God because they no longer recognized him as the perfectly good and loving Father, the One from whom all beauty, goodness, and truth flows as a gratuitous gift intended for the human heart, and seeking to draw this heart back into the ecstatic joy of enduring intimacy. They ceased to recognize themselves as beloved children because they no longer recognized their loving Father. But he has never stopped loving! And we have never stopped being beloved! To tap into the truth of grateful wonder before the awesome gift of existence is to get back in touch with the very giftedness, the very givenness, of our being as an expression of God’s creative and cherishing love. It is to rediscover the meaning that lies at the very root of our existence, a meaning that consists in love and intimacy—in our flowing from Love and toward Love, and being cradled unceasingly within Love from beginning to end. Is not creation itself, after all, but a masterpiece fashioned by eternal Love as a gift for the human heart, a masterpiece which speaks of the Giver and reveals the contours of his own face, the ravishing mystery of his own Beauty, Goodness, and Truth? To begin to see in this way again, to allow the childlike mystery within my heart to be reborn by my living and contemplative contact with reality, is to enter immediately into the joyful and life-giving orbit of true theoria--into the childlike gaze of wondering love and love-filled wonder upon the face of the Father who gazes unceasingly, with delight and tenderest desire, upon me. And here, in this mutual gaze of wondering and grateful love, we enter into the radiant beauty of the true meaning of human existence: the flowering of intimacy in childlike playfulness and rest, in the spontaneous freedom of joyful love, in which the words of Saint Augustine are beautifully fulfilled: “Love, and do what you will.” This is the living heartbeat of life, to be grasped by a spontaneous love and childlike playfulness before God and before others. Yes, touched so deeply, ravished so totally, by the beauty of the Beloved, and cradled unceasingly in the arms of his Love, how can I do anything but dance and play and rejoice in the beauty of who he is, of all that he has made, and of all that he is doing at every moment? Such play, such joy, such spontaneity is the full flowering of the human heart—of the whole of one’s humanity—touched, healed, integrated, and transfigured by grace. This is the liberty toward which the law itself directs our hearts, but which the law itself in no way can provide, indeed, the liberty which far surpasses the law as a system or rules or an establishment of order. Yes, for this liberty is fulfilled only through the gift of living and personal relationship, through the harmonizing effect of the One who, in his tender love, attunes to me in all that I am, and, by his very touch, unseals within me my deepest desires and capacities and lets them expand and dilate to their true fulfillment in the orbit of mutual self-donation and everlasting intimacy. This liberty, this beautiful freedom in childlike playfulness and spousal ardor, is the harmonious freedom of the sheer dance of love, the sheer delight of mutual joy and self-giving, flowering between hearts who are ravished by the beauty of one another and who simply, uncalculatingly, spontaneously rejoice to love one another in the surging movements of their heartfelt desire. This is our participation in the life of the Trinity. This is the authentic law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This is the true goal and interior form of evangelical love in poverty, obedience, and chastity, as nothing but the flowering of playful rejoicing, spontaneous self-giving, and everlasting intimacy. This is the radiant newness of the Gospel itself, which shines forth clearly and harmoniously with the surpassing and yet all-permeating light of the Trinity’s own everlasting playfulness, with the sheer delight of the eternal dance of the divine Persons (and of human persons within the shelter of their embrace), with their gratuitous joy in the intimacy that is its own end, and is the meaning and consummation of all things...the perpetual kiss and shared breath, in ecstatic joy and mutual belonging, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Throughout the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the word to see occurs many different times—or rather many different variants of the word to see. As is often the case, English only has one or two words for a reality for which Greek has four or more (as with the word “love”). The first time that it appears is in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son.” The word used here is ἐθεασάμεθα, whose infinitive form is θεάομαι (theaomai). The particular nuances of this word indicate gazing upon something intently in contemplative wonder and receptivity. It is the root of our English word theater as well as the word theory. Of course, when we think of theory in modern terminology, we think of an abstract system of thought constructed in order to explain something. But for the Greeks—and especially for the Greek thinkers and contemplatives of the early Church—this was not so. Rather, for them, theoria was the highest expression of the Christian life and the ultimate human vocation.
Theoria was the crowning summit of the contemplative life, in which, meditating upon the words of Scripture, the soul is granted to gaze in and through the literal meaning of the text to behold the spiritual meaning that is contained within it, its significance for human life and the moral and eschatological meaning it bears, like the succulent seeds hidden in a pomegranate (cf. Gregory of Nyssa). On the other hand, theoria is the movement to contemplation of God himself beyond his created works, an unmediated contact made possible through faith and love, the contact of the beholding mind with the mystery of the One who is Three. This finds its classical formulation in the words of Guigo the Carthusian who speaks of lectio divina as a fourfold process of reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. The Latin terms for these are: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio. In this there is a progressive simplification and deepening of the heart’s converse with God, as it seeks its Beloved through reading the words of Scripture (lectio), then through reflecting on them in the mind and heart (meditatio), through speaking with God and listening to him in a loving dialogue (oratio), and finally in resting in the impalpable mystery of his embrace, in a beholding silence in which the heart itself is beheld and grasped by Love (contemplatio). And these “stages” are not strictly delineated, but rather interpenetrate and harmonize, for in every time of prayer, and throughout life, all four coexist, one leading into the other and then returning anew, like the ceaseless respiration of a single dance of love between God and his beloved child. There is a tendency in the spiritual tradition, however, to draw a sharp delineating line between the earlier stages and the later, between true theoria of God and all knowledge mediated by created things. Created things only exist, in this understanding, in order to be stepping-stones toward contemplation of God in unmediated contemplative awareness, or even exist as stumbling-blocks to be overcome and stripped away through a progressive purification of the heart. Now, a purification of the heart’s relationship with created things is indeed important, and the capacity to perceive God in and through created things depends upon freedom and purity of heart—but this is emphatically not a purification away from created things themselves, but only of my own disordered and possessive way of clinging to them, which blinds me to their authentic beauty and goodness. It should be clear by now that I do not believe that there is a dichotomy (an incompatibility) between contemplation of God in creation and contemplation of God beyond creation, even if they are not identical and the one leads into the other. God is found both within his creation and beyond it, and the more my heart authentically engages in true contemplation of the beauty and meaning of creation (of the “inscape” at the heart of all things) the more I am in touch with God himself; and the more my heart reaches out in faith to touch God in the mysterious darkness of loving contemplation, the more my heart also becomes capable of seeing, reverencing, and contemplating the authentic beauty of all created things. And the gift of theoria is ultimately not something bestowed upon me as the fruit of my own efforts and achievements, but as a pure gift of grace; and indeed it is given to the little and childlike of heart, already a mystery placed in our hands and our hearts from the moment of our Baptism. All that is necessary is to open ourselves to welcome it and receive it, and to let God do as he wills in our unique life journey cradled always in his perfect knowledge and love. This is clear in the texts of the Gospel. Notice the object of our theoria: it is God himself incarnate in the flesh and the life of Jesus Christ! This is the great Inscape of God’s presence and beauty among us, the space in which we can reach out and touch the very burning Furnace of the Trinity’s Love! As verse 18 says: “No one has ever seen (ἑώρακεν) God; the only-begotten Son, himself God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” Here we find a different form of the verb “to see,” the infinitive of which is ὁράω (horao). This refers more to the physical act of beholding or perceiving, though also to a beholding of the mind. No one has ever “seen” God in this way; and yet, in coming among us, the eternal Son made flesh makes it possible for us to behold God, to in some way see him, not directly with our own eyes (as we will only be capable of this in heaven and in the new creation), but to behold him in and through the mystery of the incarnate Son, who is able to say in all truth: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). I would like to share a long quote from Saint Augustine that beautifully expresses this ardent desire for unity that resides in the Catholic heart, in the heart that shares in the dispositions of the Heart of Christ himself. Before I share it, I would like to mention a scene from the recent movie on Saint Augustine, Restless Heart, which, for all its imperfections, portrays well the difference between two attitudes: one that divides and condemns, and one that seeks to unity within love and truth.
It portrays a debate between Augustine and a Donatist Bishop, Sidonius. Donatists were a heretical (or schismatic) sect that caused Augustine much grief, as they rent the garment of the Church’s unity; if I understand correctly, they are also those to whom Augustine refers in the quote that I will share below. They condemned Catholics for apparent laxity, whereas the Donatists themselves were rigorists, claiming that the clergy, if they had fallen away from Christ (for example in time of persecution), could not celebrate valid sacraments, and the Church itself as a whole must be a congregation of saints, of “the holy,” and not a community of sinners. In this debate, as portrayed by the movie, the two sides each have a representative who will speak on their behalf before an “impartial” judge. Sidonius steps forward first and spends the entire time attacking Augustine for his past sinful life, for his betrayals of God. In philosophy we call this kind of argument an ad hominem, in which we try to disprove another person’s position not by showing the faultiness of his reasoning or the weakness of his vision, but by attacking the person himself. This is not a good way to argue. Sidonius says: “I could talk about religion, sin, betraying the Scriptures, or the fractured history of our Catholic brothers [sic], but today I want to speak of only one man, a priest, who has been the greatest sinner of us all: Bishop Augustine.” There is applause on one side of the room and protestation on the other, then Sidonius continues, “Have I not stayed silent long enough? It’s time that we pulled back the veils that have hidden the truth of your beloved bishop, of a man who was driven to represent murderers and individuals with the most base morals. He was a slave to an ambition that drove him to seek success through the skill of his rhetoric. A man of God consumed by lust, avarice, and ego—a narcissism that drove him to worship no greater God than himself. This debate was to be about truth, but that truth has been eclipsed by one man. There is no greater sinner than Augustine. The fact that he became a priest is proof that Catholics cannot be trusted.” Then Augustine himself steps forward and says: “I have chosen not to participate, yet from the moment that I became the topic of discussion, it is my duty to speak. Sidonius is right. Ambitious, lustful, narcissistic—I was all of these things. God gave me a mother; she showed me that nothing in this material world is worthy of our ambition. God gave me a woman; she showed me that loving means renouncing oneself. God gave me a son; I started to believe that he was created in my image. God took him away from me to show me that he was created in his image. Ambitious, lustful, narcissistic—I was all these things, and still am, as we all are. As we all are. But not one of us is alone—ever. Not even when we are in desperation, bitterness, darkness. God is close to us. God is more brother than any brother... He is more friend than any friend... More lover than any lover...” Suffice it to say that the judge was moved by Augustine’s impassioned defense of the love and mercy of God, and sided with the Catholics. So much for the movie. Now I would like to share Augustine’s own words, from a discourse on Psalm 32 (one of his favorites), in which he speaks about the desire for unity that burned within his own heart, and which he tried to share with those who listened to him. We see in these words a true expression of the gift of prophecy, of the capacity to speak in the name of truth in the service of unity: We entreat you, brothers, as earnestly as we are able, to have charity, not only for one another, but also for those who are outside the Church. Of these some are still pagans, who have not yet made an act of faith in Christ. Others are separated, insofar as they are joined with us in professing faith in Christ, our head, but are yet divided from the unity of his body. My friends, we must grieve over these as over our brothers. Whether they like it or not, they are our brothers; and they will only cease to be so when they no longer say our Father. The prophet refers to some men saying: When they say to you: You are not our brothers, you are to tell them: You are our brothers. Consider whom he intended by these words. Were they the pagans? Hardly; for nowhere either in Scripture or in our traditional manner of speaking do we find them called our brothers. Nor could it refer to the Jews, who did not believe in Christ. Read Saint Paul and you will see that when he speaks of “brothers,” without any qualification, he refers always to Christians. For example, he says: Why do you judge your brother or why do you despise your brother? And again: You perform iniquity and commit fraud, and this against your brothers. Those then who tell us: You are not our brothers, are saying that we are pagans. That is why they want to baptize us again, claiming that we do not have what they can give. Hence their error of denying that we are their brothers. Why then did the prophet tell us: Say to them: You are our brothers? It is because we acknowledge in them that which we do not repeat. By not recognizing our baptism, they deny that we are their brothers; on the other hand, when we do not repeat their baptism but acknowledge it to be our own, we are saying to them: You are our brothers. If they say, “Why do you seek us? What do you want of us?” we should reply: Your are our brothers. They may say, “Leave us alone. We have nothing to do with you.” But we have everything to do with you, for we are one in our belief in Christ; and so we should be in one body under one head. And so, dear brothers, we entreat you on their behalf, in the name of the very source of our love, by whose milk we are nourished, and whose bread is our strength, in the name of Christ our Lord and his gentle love. For it is time now for us to show them great love and abundant compassion by praying to God for them. May he one day give them a clear mind to repent and to realize that they have nothing whatever to say against the truth; they have nothing now but the sickness of their hatred, and the stronger they think they are, the weaker they become. We entreat you then to pray for them, for they are weak, given to the wisdom of the flesh, to fleshly and carnal things, but yet they are our brothers. They celebrate the same sacraments as we, not indeed with us, but still the same. They respond with the same Amen, not with us, but still the same. And so pour out your hearts for them in prayer to God.i ********************** i. Saint Augustine, Discourses on the Psalms (Ps. 32, 29: CCL 38, 272-273). Quoted in The Liturgy of the Hours, Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time. I think a scene from the life of the Prophet Ezekiel expresses the true role of a prophet very beautifully—the ministry of unity through the truth. The passage is as follows:
The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the children of Israel associated with him;’ then take another stick and write upon it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him;’ and join them together into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not show us what you mean by these?’ say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (which is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him; and I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand. When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them to their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves any more with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions; but I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. They shall dwell in the land where your fathers dwelt that I gave to my servant Jacob; they and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there for ever; and David my servant shall be their prince for ever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I the LORD sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is in the midst of them for evermore.” (Ez 37:15-28) This passage is incredibly beautiful and deserves prolonged and thorough pondering; but I shall leave that to the reader. Let us only note here a few things. The parallels between this passage and the high-priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper are striking. Indeed, in many different places in the Gospel of John Christ is explicitly referring to this passage and claiming to be its fulfillment. For example the Good Shepherd discourse in chapter 10 refers to the fulfillment of this promise: “My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall have one shepherd.” The work of Jesus is precisely to gather together those whom sin has scattered—separating them from God and from one another—and to draw them back into unity within the reconciling space of his own Crucified and Risen Heart. This is the work of the Good Shepherd, the Minister of Unity, the Atonement for our sins. This is the “great mystery” of which Saint Paul continually speaks, and of which he can never say enough: the mystery of universal reconciliation within Christ, in which all the division and estrangement caused by sin are overcome within the space of unity made possible within the embrace of Trinitarian Love incarnate in this world through Christ, until all is made one definitively in the new creation where the marriage will be consummation between God and his people. There’s a long sentence for you! That’s Saint Paul’s way... Whenever he speaks of the “great mystery” he waxes eloquent and seems to forget the rules of grammar, so enthralled is he by the inexpressible beauty of God’s saving plan to unite all of humanity as one within the intimacy of his own Trinitarian embrace. Let me give two examples which express what I have been speaking about here: May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:11-20) Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Eph 2:11-22) This is the mystery of the Church: she is the space of reconciliation and unity in which human hearts are incorporated into Christ himself, in whom and through whom all things were created in the beginning, and in whom alone all can become one again. This is the promise of “recapitulation” in which humanity, sundered from its head and the fountain of its unity and therefore exiled in estrangement and aloneness, is drawn back together into harmony and communion through being grafted anew into a living and life-giving intimacy with the Incarnate Son, and through him, with the entire Trinity. To live and serve the mystery of the Gospel is to live and serve this mystery of unity. It is to offer one’s own heart as a space in which the “two sticks” can be held together as one, thus bridging over the distance in order to twitch the threads anew into unity-within-the-truth. And this truth which effects our unity and reconciliation is not an abstract truth, merely a set of propositions or ideas—though the dogmas and doctrines of the faith are essential for preserving, safeguarding, and expressing this unity!—but this Truth is essentially a Person, or rather three Persons, living a life of endless Unity-within-the-Truth: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yes, as I have said before, this Truth which effects unity is identical with God’s uncreated Love present and at work in the world. And this Love is the Origin and the Foundation of the three “transcendental properties” of all being: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. All that exists, all that is truly real—and in its very reality draws human hearts together into unity with one another on the basis of what is real—is inherently beautiful and good. In other words, it strikes our hearts with its attractiveness, with its ravishing and heart-wounding radiance, such that we fall in love with it and desire to be united to it: Beauty. And this very beauty awakens our hearts to recognize that this reality is our deepest and most authentic good, what alone can fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts and bring to fulfillment the capacities of our being created in the image and likeness of God: Goodness. And what is this Beauty, this Goodness, but the Truth of all things taking their origin from and remaining always cradled within the single and indivisible Love of God? Yes, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth are Love, and Love is beautiful, good, and true. Indeed, in the end, Love alone is beauty, goodness, and truth. I would like to say one last thing before bringing these reflections on prophecy and unity to a close. And that is to explore the relationship between unity and martyrdom.
Perhaps in our cultural situation we struggle to see the connection between truth and unity, since we live in a climate that above everything else fosters diversity and private opinion and “tolerance” of other people’s beliefs and actions. Our conception of unity, in other words, is a minimalistic one: we are united because we all tolerate one another’s differences and don’t interfere with one another by transgressing boundaries or trying to impose our own truth on others. Now, a reverence and respect for authentic boundaries is actually essential for the full flowering of unity, for we all know how trust and intimacy breaks down whenever our boundaries are crossed. But this tolerance without consideration of the truth is something very different. It is not a reverence that makes possible the flowering of relationship—of a true mutual communication of hearts within the truth that unites us—but rather a breaking down of any capacity to dialogue about what transcends us, and in transcending us, provides the bridge on which we may walk out to meet one another and be united. It is only in being willing to serve the truth that I can also become a servant of unity. For it is precisely in the truth, and in the truth alone, that human hearts can be given the great gift of being truly one, in a unity that nothing can tear asunder. And even if such speaking and living of the truth can create temporal conflict (as I said earlier about the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer) it is ultimately ordered toward preserving and making possible a true communion of heart and life between persons—for truth is ultimately identical with love, and love with total and enduring intimacy. We see this in the prophetic witness of John the Baptist, who became a martyr because he was not afraid to speak the truth. We see this in Christ himself who, on the evening before his Passion as he prepared for his own martyrdom, speaks extensively of unity and communion. Indeed, in the Last Supper discourse recounted in chapters 13 through 17 of John’s Gospel, there is a profound and total interpenetration of the concept of truth and the reality of communion. The truth of all things is communion, intimacy, a participation in the eternal intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And thus, to serve the truth is to serve communion, and to serve communion is to serve the truth. In other words, here in this sacred space where we are admitted into the intimate embrace of the Heart of Christ, we realize that all things find their meaning only as an expression of the Trinity’s outpouring Love and his creative and redeeming plan to incorporate all of his children, and indeed all of creation, into his own innermost life of communion, into the eternal embrace of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And here the realities of witness, of truth, and of unity come together inseparably. As Jesus says: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (15:15). In other words, Christ has witnessed unreservedly to the love that he has received from the Father; he has spoken to us the truth that he has heard from the Father, and, in so doing, has admitted us as friends into the most intimate space of his own loving embrace. Here we can rest against his bosom, deeply united to him, as he rests eternally in the bosom of the Father. And then he speaks of our capacity to witness from this same place, from the love that we have first received and in which we are unceasingly held: “When the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning” (Jn 15:26-27). And the fruit of this witness? The fruit of our belonging to the truth? Unity. As Jesus says when he prays to his Father, expressing in the presence of his disciples the deepest and most intimate aspirations of his heart: Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. [I pray] that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world. (17:17-24) Here we see how truth, unity, love, and glory all intermingle as a single and indivisible mystery of participation in the life of the Trinity, an expression of the intermingling of hearts—the mutual indwelling—within the embrace of a single uncreated Love, a single Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. But what does all of this have to do with what I mentioned at the beginning of this reflection: with martyrdom? This final prayer of Christ is the expression of the love that led him to lay down his life for the salvation of all, to give himself to the end in order to draw all of the scattered children of God back together into unity (cf. 11:51-52). It is therefore the “interpretation” of the meaning of his martyrdom—his Passion and Resurrection—the truest and most perfect witness to Love, and the very revelation of divine Love itself within the limits of creation. All martyrdom throughout the history of the Church—whether red or white—springs from the Paschal Mystery of Christ and returns to it. It is a perpetuation, throughout space and time, of the saving mystery of the Trinity’s Love present and active within the reconciling Heart of the Crucified and Risen Jesus. As Saint Paul himself writes of his own martyrdom—realized both in his life and in his death: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is yet to be realized in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his Body, that is, the Church, of whom I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for generations but now made manifest to his holy ones. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Col 1:24-27) It is the ministry of universal reconciliation to which Saint Paul devotes his entire life, and for which he pours out his blood. He gives his life, just as does his Lord and Friend, for the sake of the unity of humanity in the communion made possible within the Body of a single Church, within the sheltering embrace of a single Love. And if we, too, desire to serve the unity of the Church, to help in some way to draw estranged human hearts back together into unity, then our hearts must be willing to “span the distance” between one heart and the other, in order that, through the cruciform love of our own hearts, the reconciling Love of God may be made present, twitching all together into unity and intimacy within the single embrace of the Trinity once again. I have tried to express in the last reflection that true “prophecy” is not a reality that creates divisions or factions within the Church, not a criticism which seems to tear apart the unity of the Church, but is rather ultimately nothing but a service to that truth in which authentic unity and intimacy alone can flower and be safeguarded. This is also what I meant earlier when I spoke about how prophecy inherently strives to speak, not from one’s own personal perspective or from a merely intellectual standpoint (even if it makes use of both), but from a living contact with God himself in contemplative love and virginal receptivity.
John the Evangelist is a beautiful—and probably the best—example of such authentic prophecy, of the ability to speak from a direct and intimate contact with the throbbing heartbeat of the Trinity made incarnate within the Heart of Jesus Christ. As he writes: “What we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have communion with us, and our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3). Is not everything I have said until this point contained here? A living contact with the truth, and speaking from this contact as a service of that communion which can flower and be safeguarded only within the space opened up within this truth? And in this respect, true prophecy is manifested, not in pitting one “camp” against another—e.g. the laity against the hierarchy, the traditionalists against the progressives—but rather in returning to the wellspring of all Love: to the ravishing fullness of all Beauty, the perfection of all Goodness, and the undivided light of the single Truth. And thus a truly living prophecy brings together the three “forms” in which the prophetic office is made manifest within the life of the Church, and it spontaneously deepens and harmonizes all three—even if at times it must pass through conflict in order to do so. These three forms are as follows: 1) the prophetic office entrusted to the successors of the Apostles, the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him, and, in a secondary degree, the priests who are associates and coworkers with their Bishops; 2) the prophetic sense of all the faithful, which tradition calls the sensus fidelium or sensus fidei (sense of the faithful or sense of faith); this refers to the way that those who have been baptized and are truly living the life of grace have a supernatural and intuitive awareness of what accords with the truth of God and what does not; 3) the prophetic vocation itself, which is not given to all, but to certain persons entrusted with a “word” to speak within and to the Church at a particular time and place. (For example Saint Francis or John Paul II.) This “word,” if authentic, is nothing but a living contact with the truth of the Gospel in its radicalism and fullness, even if it is made concrete in a particular way according to the needs of the Church and the intentions of God. And this “word” is often directed both to the faithful and to the hierarchy of the Church—in other words to numbers 1 and 2—in order to call them back (or more deeply) to fidelity to Christ and to the fullness of the truth entrusted by God to the Church. A true living of prophecy—which is manifest and active not only in words, but in actions, in prayer, and in the very fabric of life—always works to build up the Church in her fullness and to bring these three elements together into ever greater harmony and unity within the single, undivided light of the Trinity present in the world through Christ and his Church. And thus it is a way of being and speaking, a “life-become-word,” which speaks not for itself, but for the Other—for the One who has loved the human heart so passionately and grasped this heart so deeply that it becomes transparent for the outpouring of his light and love into the world. As Jesus himself says, “I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak;” and as he says of the Holy Spirit, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak ” (Jn 12:49;16:13). The same is true for us: “do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt 10:19). In this, too, we are to be like Mary and the beloved disciple, who live at the very wellspring of all intimacy, which is the open Heart of Christ, which is the reconciling space of his own Crucified and Risen Body. Thus we are to speak of “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 Jn 1:1). I have been speaking about the nature of prophecy, and I would like to go a little deeper into this reality in the coming reflections. I would especially like to clarify some of my earlier words in the context of the current ills afflicting our world so deeply. How does this understanding of all-enfolding meaning of intimacy and love, and the voice of prophecy that can arise truly only from the womb of this intimacy, cast light into the anguish and confusion of the current cultural and ecclesial situation in which we find ourselves? I am referring especially to the deep rifts that exist in the very fabric of human relationships, and in our understanding of truth—of the true nature of the Gospel and the salvation it brings—within the Body of Christ. Indeed, these are often much more than merely rifts, but veritable severances of communion, veritable conflicts filled with slander and accusation and dismissiveness. They exist between the laity and the hierarchy of the Church; they exist between the so-called “right” and “left;” they exist even between the different states of life and “ministries” in the Church, insofar as roles and states take priority over the gratuitous intimacy and togetherness of persons. And yet underneath the divisions experienced in the Church is the greatest loss of all: the loss of the sense of the Church as our true Mother, as the true Home in which alone we can find complete serenity in the truth, and abiding intimacy can flower in its deepest and purest form, as a living participation in the eternal intimacy of the Trinity.
For the faith of many in the Church has been severely shaken, for a multitude of reasons. This radical rupture of confidence has been aggravated and for some even caused by the sexual abuse crisis and the way that it has alienated many of the members of the Church. But it is due also to the application of “political” categories to the Church, rather than a truly spiritual understanding of her mystery born of faith and contemplation. It is due to an emphasis on fitting into roles, rather than on the gratuitous togetherness of human hearts on the basis of their simple identity as God’s beloved. It is due to the distance of so many pastors from their flock, who approach ministry in a way more businesslike than personal; and this is usually not their fault, but rather precisely because they feel compelled to live in this paradigm of the role, the mission, and the task, rather than in the gratuitous beauty of human life, playfully lived in the orbit of God’s love. It is due to the loss of the sense of fatherhood, and of motherhood, and the suffocation of the very image of God in us in masculinity and femininity—such that the Church is often felt to be the place where these beautiful mysteries are narrowed and hemmed in with rules and regulations, even though in all truth she is the one place in the world where they are free to blossom fully to their radiant abundance in the plan of God. But whenever priests are more “officials” and “functionaries” than fathers—and they can only be fathers when they first know themselves to be simply beloved sons, gratuitously desired for their own sake!—then the tender breath of Christ is not felt as clearly as desired. Whenever celibate persons, whether men or women, are formed and trained more in fear than in the confidence of love, such that they experience their choice of virginal love more as a renunciation of intimacy for the sake of mission and service than as a privileged way of even deeper intimacy, then the sweet heartbeat of intimacy that throbs in the heart of the Church seems suffocated. Yes, often it seems that the priestly office of the Church, represented by Peter, has forgotten about the mystery that it is ordained to shelter and serve, and from which it is invited to ceaselessly drink, as does the beloved disciple, John, in the most intimate way. It has forgotten gratuitous intimacy. It has forgotten the primal call to intimacy with God that is the heart of reality; it has forgotten the pure embrace of persons in a communion that is sought, desired, and lived for its own sake, simply because it is beautiful, because it is the very purpose of our existence, because it is the foretaste of our eternal destiny in the embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this gratuitous intimacy has a name, for it was lived first by a single person, in whom each one of us is, as it were, held and contained: Mary. But whenever Peter and John forget about Mary, terrible consequences follow, as the Marian heartbeat of the Church, the vulnerable heart of love, cries out in its nakedness to be seen, sheltered, and held, and also to give life to all the other members of the Church. And this is sadly too often true. Yet this is in no way a criticism of the structure of the bishops and priests of the Church. That is in fact the opposite of what I intend to say. For it is rather more accurate to say that Peter and John themselves—the true and good men who live the authentic heartbeat of the Church—have been nearly forgotten since the treachery of so many “Judases” has been made visible. But it is a temptation to lose sight of Peter and John—who, in their very frailty, try to remain faithful to Christ—because the infidelity of Judas is so horrendous. They were all three priests and apostles of Christ, and we can learn from all three: those who betray, those who deny in frailty and then repent, and those who, reposing against the breast of Christ and remaining close to the Virgin Mother, are granted the grace to remain faithful. But we are feeling right now an almost overwhelming and irrational wave of criticism directed at the shepherds of the Church, as if it is up to the laity to fix the Church whenever the pastors fail. And because these criticisms are grounded in a certain amount of truth, they can be very believable and convincing—for example, a desire for doing away with the clericalism which separates pastors from the people, with a lack of transparency in the exercise of office, or with a certain authoritarianism that does not first listen to and reverence the people whom authority is meant to serve. Essentially, this crisis is being played out as a division, even an animosity, between the Petrine dimension of the Church (the apostolic office entrusted to Peter and the apostles) and the wider community of the faithful. Because we have heard, or directly experienced, that there are some shepherds who “feed themselves, and not the flock” (cf. Ez 34:2), we are tempted to paint a picture of what actually happens in the lives of the shepherds of the Church as a whole—a picture which is inaccurate, colored not by objective facts but by our own anger or disappointment. There is a push-back among the faithful against an imperfect exercise of authority in the Petrine office (and how could it ever be anything but imperfect?), which really goes so far as to caricature or even demonize the pastors of the Church and to expect from them something that they are incapable of giving. It begins to interpret all of their words and actions in a negative light, as if looking for signs that the hierarchy is truly corrupt after all. I am not referring to the need for transparency in the matters of sexual abuse, and a vigorous denunciation of any hiding in this area; nor am I minimizing the veritable agony caused in so many persons by the failure of members of the Church (and not only priests) to truly see them in their unique dignity, in which they become a mere task or project, anonymous as a number to be added to the parish books or to be answerable for on the day of judgment. But I am referring to the way in which this lack of clarity has caused many people to feel betrayed on a “global” scale (i.e. betrayed by all of the shepherds of the Church in every way), and therefore to interpret the very frailty and “humanness” of the Church as if it were a terrible betrayal of the gift entrusted to her by Christ. Their attitude toward the pastors of the Church, therefore, becomes, not one of humble listening and tender cooperation—which they themselves demand from the pastors!—but one of constant judgment and criticism. Yes, it can at times be true that they do not receive an adequate answer to their objections and concerns from those in authority, and this causes such things to fester until they become a real fever that then spills out in vitriol and anger. But the result of this is that both sides of the divide are in danger of ceasing to listen to one another, and come to listen only to their own perspective, only to their own self-made securities, only to their own anger or fear. This divides the Church and rends the garment of her unity. I cannot help, in this situation, but think of other schisms that have occurred throughout the history of the Church: for example the so-called Schism of 1054, in which the Orthodox East was separated from the Latin Catholic West, in large part because of miscommunication, cultural differences, and ecclesiastical politics. I think also of the Protestant Revolt in which a true complaint against corruption and brokenness within the Church led not to seeking healing from within (on the part of the Protestants) but rather to a tearing of the garment of the Church’s unity which persists even to this day, and has continued to splinter further and further in those communities resulting from the Protestant movement. On the other hand, in both of these situations, there was also a counter-movement of authentic reform. And it did not happen either through those who left the Church (like Martin Luther) nor by those who vigorously denounced the corruption in the hierarchy, but rather through the saints—through those who simply engaged themselves wholeheartedly, not in criticizing one or other element within the Church, but rather in simply living the mystery of the Church in her fullness, and thus tapping into the authentic wellspring of all reform and renewal. To illustrate this, let me speak more about another contemporary struggle. A kind of “schism” has also threatened to emerge—and in my opinion in a certain sense it already has, even if it has not become an institutional break—following the Second Vatican Council. After (and already before) Vatican II there was a so-called liberal swing in some members of the Church—fueled by the clericalism of certain priests or theologians and the psychological and spiritual unhealthiness of a large number of laity. And this in turn generated another camp—the so-called traditionalists, the “fundamentalists of tradition”—who rejected most if not all of the movements and directives of the Council as heretical or as a falling away from the true intentions of Christ for his Church. These two extremes have threatened to tear the unity of the Church, with each side defining their own concept of “Catholicism” as the true one, while both sides are really falling into narrowness and sectarianism, which is always a deep temptation for the fallen human heart. What is the answer? The key, as in all things, is to have a heart and mind expansive enough to embrace the fullness of truth, to get beyond the paradox of two partial truths which are difficult to harmonize by entering into the space where they are united, made one, in the Truth that enfolds and unifies all. What is this truth? It is the simple truth of the living and breathing Church of today, the Church of which all ordinary Catholics are members, in the ecclesial unity of the Pope and bishops as successors of the Apostles and celebrating to this day a single sacramental, liturgical, theological, ethical, and evangelical life! Yes, here we feel, as we have always felt, the true and central mystery of the Church, which surpasses the supposed rift between pastors and people, between shepherds and sheep, between “right” and “left,” and harmonizes them in a deeper reality. It is the reality of communion in the truth, of intimacy in the embrace of God, as hearts are made one within the sheltering embrace of God’s own Love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We were created for love and intimacy, for an embrace in which our minds and hearts and bodies come together as one within the single Truth of the God who is Love. Yes, this Truth is not an abstract idea but a Person, the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, who alone fully reveals God to us, and who, in revealing God to us, also reveals us to ourselves. Yes, this Truth is three Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity, who is a perfect Family united in an eternal dance of love and a perfect communion of mutual understanding and sheltering embrace. And the Trinity has created us for no other reason than to share in his own life of intimacy and joy, already in this life and perfectly for all eternity. And this unity is incarnate and brought to flower most perfectly within the Catholic Church, the Bride and Body of Christ, whom he has redeemed for himself through the Cross, born from his opened side as the first-fruits of the new creation, as the spouse for which his heart has longed! But this unity is precisely what is being torn asunder by human sin. Do we not see how much we are hurting our Mother the Church, how much we cause her heart to ache by our criticisms which obscure for so many the beauty of the Bride of Christ? The objection is: But isn’t it up to us to fix the Church? If we don’t do it, who else will? Ah...no... No one can “fix” the Church, especially through slander and attack and division-causing, all supposedly in the name of truth. Yes, the Church is torn through failures on both sides to listen, to reverence, and to foster intimacy-in-truth above all things. She is torn when we turn away from the attitude of humble faith, of childlike listening, of simply living the heart of the Church rather than turning it into a polemical tool. For we have been created to live intimacy in truth. And the truth is love, love is truth. This is the truth that the Church has always preserved, and which to this very day still lives inviolable and intact in the universal teaching of the Church and her episcopal college, incarnated in the hearts and lives of all the “ordinary saints” who cling to their Mother the Church, and to Christ within her, to this very day. This “factioning” of the Church, therefore, goes directly against the true nature of Catholicism, which in its inmost essence is the fullness that harmonizes distinction in an all-encompassing embrace of perfect intimacy, which is ultimately identical with the embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word Catholic itself expresses this reality, since it literally means “according to the whole” (kata-holos). And only the whole is the truth, only the deep mystery burning at the heart of the Church, which can draw together the strands of truth in every perspective, however apparently opposed they may be on the surface, and make them one within the single and undivided light of the Trinity’s Love. For example, on the one hand, there is the desire of the pastors to relate to the faithful of the Church in such a way that the office entrusted to them by Christ is respected, and that their authority (which when exercised truly is but the authority of Christ) may truly meet with humble obedience and the attitude of listening cooperation. On the other hand, there is the desire of the faithful to be listened to, and not to have an arbitrary authority imposed on them from the outside without a prior reverence for themselves and their true situation—in other words, the desire to be truly sheltered by the Petrine dimension of the Church. For the office of the apostolic ministry exists, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the Church, as a ministry to all of the children of God: that they may encounter the saving and reconciling love of God and may be drawn together into the unity made possible in the bosom of the Church, a unity with God and, on the basis of God’s love, a unity with their brothers and sisters. And precisely to define the Petrine ministry in this way harmonizes it immediately with the desires of the faithful—as they both come together in the single reality of love and intimacy, of a humble and wholehearted surrender to the Truth and Love of Christ. Thus we come to the “whole,” to the truth in which all the disparate strands can again become one, and, rather than being rent through criticism or anger, the Church’s aching body may rather be healed by the unifying love of Christ at work in the hearts and lives of all her members. And here the great conflict is unveiled, which is not between one “member” and another, but between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and error. It is ultimately the great contest between love and lovelessness—between vulnerability oriented towards intimacy, openness to the truth that is greater than all of us and precisely in this way unites us, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, distance achieved through power. These are the two radically different forces at work throughout history until the end of time: the powerless love of God that conquers through the weakness and vulnerability of the Passion, or the supposed power of sinful man, which tries to gain security and sovereignty through its own efforts, rather than relying on what can only come as a gift. For the truth does not operate through power but through vulnerability. It lays itself bare in love, to be hurt and crucified if necessary, for the sake of the truth, love, and communion that can only be born of true vulnerability. And yet it can do so because it already knows itself to be held by the greater security which is the vulnerability of the Trinity, which is undying Love—Love that is stronger than all evil and death, and brings to birth in this very place the radiant beauty of redemption. The “paradigm of power” is precisely the greatest pain rending the Church today. Very often, people know of no other way to interpret the events of history, and the ills of society and the Church, except as a power struggle. Power is the great threat and deception of the human heart, which seduces it with lies of success and security and well-being only to leave it naked and exposed to a power greater than its own. The only security lies in casting our vulnerability upon Christ, who will carry and care for us in our nakedness. Only in this way, in fact, is it possible to remain close to his Heart, to his aching and Crucified Heart as he gives himself in the Cross, and to be open to the outpouring joy of the Resurrection, to the victory of the Love which is stronger than death. And this is not some “task” for the powerful, for the great and exalted. It is a gift for the littlest and the least, poured out into poverty and vulnerability, and sweeping vulnerability up, through the tenderest embrace of Jesus, into the very orbit of the intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this leads us full circle, again, to this deepest reality, this undivided light: to the reality of love and communion in the truth that unites us all. It directs our gaze anew to the true heart and deepest mystery of the Church, which enfolds and gives meaning to all of her other dimensions: the Marian mystery. And with this I close. This is the mystery of Mary perpetuated within the Church until the end of time. This is the mystery of the one who is intimately united to God as a child and a spouse, and who, in this way, is opened to clasp sinners to her bosom as a true mother. And each one of us bears this mystery within us through Baptism; each one of us participates in this same reality, this reality of gratuitous intimacy with God and with our brothers and sisters. Here at last we come to rest in the answer. What does God desire of us during this period in history, when the Church is aching and bleeding so profoundly? To truly live for the authentic good of the Church, for her true reform and renewal, the essential thing is to live the Marian mystery at the heart of the Church. Yes, and it is also to shelter, love, and cradle the hearts of others as they seek to do the same. And this sheltering of the Marian mystery in others has a name. It is the Johannine dimension—the dimension of John the beloved disciple, who, standing at the foot of the Cross of Christ, is entrusted with sheltering, loving, and caring for Mary. Is this not where we find ourselves today? We are standing at the foot of the Cross as the Body of Christ is being torn and rent by sin and division, even apparently dying before our very eyes. But if these eyes can truly contemplate and receive, can truly rest against the welcoming bosom of Christ and within his embrace, then we can recognize that the gift of love is still alive even here, as the words never cease to sound: “This is my Body given for you... This is my Blood poured out for you...” Yes, and we receive the Mother of our Savior—the Mother of all the children of God—who is simultaneously Mary and the Church, and we are asked to shelter and care for her with every ounce of our love. Christ has asked this of us, and this is our greatest act of obedience, and also the greatest gift. John the Baptist describes his own vocation by invoking the words of Isaiah:
Ego phone bontos en ta eremo, euthanate tan hodon Kyriou. I am a voice crying out in the wilderness: make straight the way of the Lord. These words beautifully bring together a number of themes from our previous reflections until this point. They speak of a voice, of the way of the Lord, and of the desert of contemplative intimacy with God to which we are all invited. And these realities are all woven together as one in a single reality. John the Baptist, because of his contemplative immersion in the mystery of God, is granted to “see” what others do not see, and from this seeing he is able to speak, to be a “voice” which heralds the coming of the Word; and his speaking as a voice opens up a space of receptivity in his hearers; it carves out a way for the gift of God’s Word to pour forth into the receptive hearts of his people. This is a great gift spoken at the heart of the life of John the Baptist, and it is also the true meaning of Christian prophecy. Prophecy flows forth from a deep receptivity to God in my own heart, in my own life, in which I allow myself to be drawn into the orbit of the Trinity’s love and united to him. And from this intimacy a word is born, a voice sounds, which hollows out space in the hearts of others for the same gift of love and for the same intimacy. Touched by God’s love and by his beauty, other hearts, who once stood “outside” the orbit of this intimacy, will find themselves drawn ever closer, until they too rest, dance, and rejoice in the shelter of the divine embrace. The mission of the Church is therefore an irradiation of intimacy. It exists in order to serve intimacy: the intimacy of every human heart with God, with other human persons, and with the whole of reality. The whole mission and prophetic activity of the Church is therefore nothing but the twitching of the threads of living relationship and lasting communion which were torn asunder by sin. It is nothing but the grace of reaching out, from within the shelter of the Trinity’s love, in order to embrace those who are far away, who are isolated in fear and sin, in order to welcome them into this shelter and the intimacy of this embrace of truth and love. Mission, therefore, is born from communion, serves communion, and leads back into communion anew. This is because communion—true and lasting intimacy in the embrace of God—is the only ultimate meaning of human life, since it is the true nature of all things as a reflection of and a participation in the eternal communion of the Trinity. We can say, therefore, that intimacy is the beginning, middle, and end of the Christian life—the cradling arms of tender Love in which the whole of our existence in this world can unfold in childlike confidence and playfulness, even as we reach out to embrace and accompany our brothers and sisters on their journey from darkness into light, from falsehood into truth, from sadness into joy, from loneliness into the happiness of deep union with God and with one another. I spoke in the last reflection of the “place” in which true prophecy springs forth: the place of childlike intimacy with the heavenly Father, in which I let myself be drawn back into the undivided light of his eternal Love as it pours forth into this world. This movement into God’s love, in the words of John the Baptist, is expressed as the movement into the “wilderness” or the “desert,” in Greek eremos, ἔρημος (from which come the terms hermit and eremitic). The voice of John the Baptist cries out “in the wilderness,” as Isaiah prophesied, and his voice calls people out into the wilderness in order to open up the space in which they can encounter God and his reconciling love.
This movement into the desert is a movement away from the many immediate lights and sensations which, because of their closeness and their insistence, often blind us to seeing the light that is deeper. Only with a trusting withdrawal from this mode of seeing can my heart be opened to see the mystery that is more profound and more central, and indeed to see these secondary things themselves in their authentic truth. The movement into the desert is therefore like the movement away from blinding city lights into the open country in order to see the stars. At first one is aware primarily of the darkness, of the movement out beyond the immediate lights to which one has become accustomed. And yet even this movement into darkness has been awakened by a “sense” for the light, by the experience of already being touched by the light—which awakens an awareness that something beautiful awaits me in this darkness, which can be seen in no other way. And thus the movement through the darkness not only leads toward the light, but it also springs forth from the light to begin with. And it remains enfolded in this light at every moment. For example, I glimpse a few stars dancing in the firmament while I am in the city, and their beauty captures my heart. I wish I could see more, and see them more clearly. And then I am told that it is possible to see many more stars—more than I could possibly imagine—if only I leave the city and go out into an open field far from any artificial lights. And when I do this—yes, when I do this, my heart is truly ravished by a light of an entirely different kind than I have ever experienced before. The starry firmament, which before seemed so dull and so distant, has now become so radiant that it feels close, like a blanket of love enshrouding the earth and pouring forth its beauty into the beholding heart. It is this encounter with beauty that truly gives birth within the human heart to the gift of prophecy. For as long as I speak merely from intellectual conviction or rational dialectic, my words, while communicating the truth, remain on the level of natural humanity—they speak from the heart of man. But whenever beauty grasps and ravishes the heart, then it bestows the ability to speak from the Heart of God. Or more accurately, in this way God is able to communicate the “beyond” of his mystery within and through the very limitations of human speech. This is what is called in common parlance the gift of inspiration. This does not mean that a human being becomes a kind of “mouthpiece” for the divine, as if they lost their individual personality and the unique nuances of their perspective, nor does it mean that everything they say adequately or perfectly expresses the truth. But insofar as they surrender themselves unreservedly to God and yield their hearts up to this gift of prophetic inspiration poured into them by the Holy Spirit, then what they say and do springs forth from that place of intimate contact between the human heart and the Heart of God. And the effect of such words or actions or works of art is phenomenal. We can think of the great masterpieces of Christian culture, which approach us not as the mere artifice of a human imagination, however brilliant, but as a kind of “divine conception” in which a mystery given by God himself becomes incarnate within the flesh of human life. In other words, true prophecy is not created. It is conceived. It is not made. It is born. It is but the fruit of a living contact with the impregnating power of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, which are nothing but the uncreated Love of the Trinity radiating out in a ceaseless outpouring of generosity, which in turn seeks to sweep all things up and to carry them back into the bosom of the Trinity’s eternal embrace. In this sense, we can say that prophecy—united with the gift of kingship and priesthood—lies at the foundation of the true growth and flourishing of a Christian culture. True works of prophecy—as we see for example in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or in the Theology of the Body (and in the very life of John Paul II himself)—have a deep and lasting effect for generations to come. They abide because they express, not merely the partial perspective of one individual voicing his personal viewpoint. Rather, they are an irradiation of the very light of God, in which and through which we can touch something eternal and universal, something that transcends the limits of time and space and allows us to make contact with the very foundations of all being. And the world is desperately in need of this kind of prophecy, since the culture in which we live is founded, not on this humble transparency to Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, on this loving and heartfelt obedience to the awesome gift of what is real, but on the isolated self-affirmation of the individual, who wants to “create” a masterpiece, or even just something worthwhile, without first opening wide his or her heart to welcome the gift of Love. But this gift, gratuitously given to any heart that is willing to step into its orbit, alone can impregnate the heart in such a way that it may speak, act, and live in a way that manifests the enduring truth of Being-as-Love. |
Joshua ElznerI am a humble disciple of Jesus Christ who seeks to live in prayerful intimacy with the Trinity and in loving service to all through a life devoted to prayer, compassion, and creativity. On this blog I will share the little fruits of my contemplation in the hopes of being of service to you on your own journey of faith. I hope that something I have written draws your heart closer to the One who loves you! Archives
February 2026
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