Eternity

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d. 

Henry Vaughan, from 'The World'

Time and eternity are not the same thing at all, which may seem like an obvious kind of a thing to say, except that we are too often tempted to imagine eternity as an endless progression of time; rather than, as Vaughan, I think rightly, pictures it, endless, resting light.

Like Vaughan, too, I have caught glimpses, at times especially when death has seemed closer than otherwise, of a state where time has no longer any dominion, any more than what we commonly imagine as death: a state of peace and limitless love, which seemed the same thing as light, for all was light. This is a condition more to be longed for than feared, and profoundly welcoming, accepting, healing.

We sometimes seem to worry, to wonder about judgement, and about Christ as our "advocate in Heaven" (1 John 2.1), and yet Paul's words in the first chapter of his letter to the Colossians seem closer to my own heart:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together... through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 

Colossians 1.15-17,20

Christ is our peace, and he is himself the love and mercy of God (that aspect of the triune God that is all love and mercy). Perhaps the very pain of prayer is the means of that mercy in us for those for whom we pray, our own small participation in the work of the cross. But we are at the edge here of what human language can do, and I am no apostle. All I do know, and that for certain, is that his love and mercy are in all and through all, and that we can never fall out of that love - and that through that love we cannot be other than loved into eternity itself.

Wednesday in Holy Week

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. 

Romans 8:9-11

Of course we shall all die. We have this in common, tax collectors and astrophysicists, lay and ordained, good and bad, black and white, and every human possibility of birth or nurture. We are all going to die, sooner or later, and some of us much sooner than we had anticipated. Sometimes the ghostly drone of our approaching mortality is barely audible beneath the birdsong and lovers' cries; sometimes it roars in our ears like a waterfall; but it is there.

We are so frail, each of us, so easily broken. A few years and we are gone anyway, scraps of memory on the ebbing tide, that choking ache in an old friend's chest long after midnight - then only the odd printed reference, maybe, letter in a tin box under the bed, ghost link on the web.

And yet.

To have been faced with the imminent likelihood of one’s own death, as I have been blessed to be once or twice, is to know that that frailty is only one side of the coin. Reality is not what it seems. The loneliness of our human separation, our differentiation, is mere uncertainty. The light that opens in that moment is so sure, so utterly dependable - more solid and certain than the chalk and flint of Mount Olivet - that in the end, truly, it's OK, in the most absolute way possible. That in each of us which is love itself is beyond all the dimensions of time and matter, beyond the reach of thought, but there, at the centre of every heart.

We never were alone, and love is a very good name for God - for that Source and centre of all in which all things from galaxies to wood mice grow, and are held: that Ground of Being out of which, finally, we can never fall, but which will call us home to endless light, and the healing of all wounds.

The Coming of the King–the ‘O’ Antiphons

O Wisdom,
O holy Word of God,
you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care:
Come.

O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel,
you showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush
and you gave the holy law on Mount Sinai:
Come.

O Flower of Jesse’s stem,
you have been raised up as a sign for all people;
kings stand silent in your presence;
the nations bow down in worship before you:
Come.

O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel,
you [not the systems of this world] control

at your will the gate of heaven:
Come break down the prison walls of death.

O Radiant Dawn,
splendour of eternal light, sun of justice:
Come shine on those who dwell in darkness

and the shadow of death.

O, King of all the nations,
the only joy of every human heart;
O Keystone of the mighty arch of humankind:
Come and save these creatures you fashioned from the dust.

O, Emmanuel,
God-With-Us, king and lawgiver,
desire of the nations, Saviour of all people:
Come and set us free.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”

Amen.

Richard Rohr, from Daily Meditations

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

“Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.^* (1 Corinthians 15:20)

St. Paul seldom leaves the message at the level of “believe this fact about Jesus.” He always moves it to “this is what it says about you!” or “this is what it says about history!” Until we are ourselves pulled into the equation, we find it hard to invest ourselves in a distant religious belief.

Paul normally speaks of “Christ”—which includes us and all of creation—for he never knew Jesus “in the flesh” but only as the eternal Body of Christ. Christ Crucified is all of the hidden, private, tragic pain of history made public and given over to God. Christ Resurrected is all suffering received, loved, and transformed by an All-Caring God. How else could we have any kind of cosmic hope? How else would we not die of sadness for what humanity has done to itself and to one another?

The cross is the standing statement of what we do to one another and to ourselves. The resurrection is the standing statement of what God does to us in return. Today really is our big feast day!

Richard Rohr, Easter 2012

Epiphany!

The Epiphany is an ancient Christian feast day and is significant in a number of ways. In the East, where it originated, the Epiphany celebrates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. It also celebrates Jesus' birth.

The Western Church began celebrating the Epiphany in the 4th century where it was, and still is, associated with the visit of the magi (wise men) to the infant Jesus when God revealed himself to the world through the incarnation of Jesus. According to Matthew 2:11 they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

BBC – Religions

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A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter…

TS Eliot, ‘The Journey of the Magi’

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Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?
The sleeping Child you're holding is the Great, I Am…

Mark Lowry & Buddy Greene, ‘Mary Did You Know?’

In Epiphany we begin to glimpse who this Baby is; we start to realise that the Angel of the Annunciation was speaking no less than the sober truth when he said, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1.31-33)

Lord God, open our eyes to see your Son as he truly is, Lord of all, Saviour of the world and all creation (Romans 8.21), your Name and your Word who is exalted above all things (Psalm 138.2)…

St John, Apostle and Evangelist

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was in the beginning with God.All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

(John 1.1-5; 14)

Today we celebrate the feast of St John, Apostle and Evangelist. The Lectionary reading today focus on his letters—but it is the sheer, staggering metaphysics of his Gospel prologue that gets me every time. The mere existence of anything, let alone our ability to perceive it, relate to it, be at all in ourselves, sometimes gives me attacks of vertigo just thinking about it.

I remember, when it was first beginning to dawn on me that there might be something in the Christian faith after all, reading this passage for the first time in a modern translation, and thinking, “Why does no-one teach this at school? This changes everything!” It answered at a stroke all those aching questions that kept me awake in the early hours: at last all the wonderings and speculations and fretful study and inadvisable experiments were superseded by 96 words that were as solid and true as a steel bolt… In a sense, the rest of my life has been an outworking of that moment.

I didn’t then read the opening of John’s first Letter (if letter is what it was supposed to be) but after the immediacy of his Gospel, which I read right through after that experience with the prologue I somehow knew what he meant. If what he had experienced with Christ those three years in Judea and Samaria meant anything, they meant just what he said, and that meant there was no going back, no matter how I struggled:

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true;but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

(1 John 1.1-10)

Christmas night…

Sometimes people assume that ‘good’ Christians have no doubts, never ask questions, never experience a sense of bewilderment in the face of cruelty or disaster. That is demonstrably untrue. To be a Christian is surely to live with uncertainty, relying on the gift of faith to bridge the gap between our understanding and our questioning…the God we seek is not a God afar off, but God-with-us, one who has shared our humanity and calls us to share in his divinity…

There in a nutshell is what Christmas is about. In his compassion and love, God wills to take our human flesh and blood and redeem us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Our salvation is very near. It began with Mary’s generous-hearted consent to be the Mother of God. It will take physical shape with the birth of Jesus on Christmas night. It will be completed only when all are one with Him in the Kingdom. Truly, this is ‘a mystery hidden from long ages, a secret into which even angels long to look!

from Digitalnun’s iBenedictines blog

Each Christmas might be our last on earth. There is such a glorious fragility about this season, when we celebrate the birth of a tiny, vulnerable baby—who just happened to be the Son of God—to a young Jewish girl far from home in the middle of occupied territory, Her faith, the loyalty of her husband Joseph, the kindness of strangers, opened the door to eternity in the person of that little new-born lad.

Christmas night is holy. Of all nights of the year there truly is an uncanny glory about this one. This is no myth, no fairy-tale to hold back the dark. This is God, touching all that he has made with the most tender love, the most glorious power of mercy—with his saving grace made Mary’s Son…

O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

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Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7.14)

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I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
              Is immortal diamond.

('That Nature is...' Gerard Manley Hopkins)

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Don't say goodbye (I know you can save us)
Don't wave goodbye (and nothing can break us)
Don't say goodbye (I know you can save us)
You can bring us back again
You can bring us back again

('Save Us', Feeder)

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(2008’s post, slightly reheated)

Saving sinners…

God is the life of all free beings. He is the salvation of all, of believers or unbelievers, of the just or the unjust, of the pious or the impious, of those freed from passions or those caught up in them, of monks or those living in the world, of the educated or the illiterate, of the healthy or the sick, of the young or of the very old. He is like the outpouring of light, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes of the weather which are the same for everyone without exception.

Abba Pambo said, “If you have a heart you can be saved.”

From: The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers ed. Benedicta Ward SLG, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988.

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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now;and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8.18-27)

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The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1.15-17)

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Then Jesus cried aloud: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me…” (John 12.44-50)

The Bread of Life

When Jesus says he's giving himself to you as the bread of life, and if you eat this bread you will live forever (John 6:51), he’s saying, "Find yourself in me." Eat this food as your primary nutrition, your primary food, and you are indestructible, because you live in what Thomas Merton would call the True Self - who you are in God.

And who you are in God is who you are. In fact, that's all you are. Everything else is passing away. The world of fame, the world of titles and roles, the world of who we think we are is precisely what we're not. It's precisely what will die when we die.

But who we are in God will live forever.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Eucharist as Touchstone (CD)

I couldn't resist posting this, just before I pack the PC away. All this: this moving, this rearrangement of lives and locations, these hopes and fears, griefs and longings, will somehow be wiped clear, or at least changed and purified beyond anything we know here, so that only what is true remains, in that one perfect longing, for Christ's love and mercy, for our beloved Bread of life himself.

I'll be back as soon as I can...

Love...

Let us keep this truth before us.

You say have no faith?
Love - and faith will come.

You say you are sad?
Love - and joy will come.

You say you are alone?
Love - and you will break out of your solitude.

You say you are in hell?
Love - and you will find yourself in heaven.

Heaven is love.

Carlo Caretto, In Search of the Beyond, with thanks to inward/outward

Hanging on...

Jesus is the Blessed One. When Jesus was baptised in the Jordan river a voice came from heaven saying: "You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you" (Mark 1:11). This was the blessing that sustained Jesus during his life. Whatever happened to him - praise or blame - he clung to his blessing; he always remembered that he was the favourite child of God.

Jesus came into the world to share that blessing with us. He came to open our ears to the voice that also says to us, "You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter, my favour rests on you ." When we can hear that voice, trust in it, and always remember it, especially during dark times, we can live our lives as God's blessed children and find the strength to share that blessing with others.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

Clinging to the blessing through thick and thin, good and bad... how I long for this simplicity of trust! But how on earth can this be done?

I don't know how it works for anyone else, but for me, instinctively, it's about clinging to the Cross. Literally. When I am praying to hang on, by the skin of my teeth as it feels, then I do physically hang onto my little olive-wood holding cross.

I've tried to think what might be happening here, spiritually or theologically. I know it's very crudely expressed, but it seems to me that perhaps when we "cling to the Cross" we are in our hearts acknowledging that it is only through Jesus' death on the Cross that we are saved; and no one and nothing can break his hold on us through the Cross.

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand.

(John 10.27-29)

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.'

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8.31-39)

A new home…

To span the infinite gap between the Divine and the human, God’s agenda is to plant a little bit of God, the Holy Spirit, right inside of us! (Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 14:16ff.) The Spirit then operates like a homing device or a divine pace maker, driving us toward life.

This is the very meaning of the “new” covenant, and the replacing or our “heart of stone with a heart of flesh” that Ezekiel promised (36:25-27). Isn’t that wonderful? God gives us the answer, and we are it!

Richard Rohr, from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 97

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.

Jesus, from John 10.27-29

Nothing will ever be the same again—the Christian’s life is different, irrevocably so. No wonder we are sometimes persecuted—we just don’t fit in any more, and the ruler of this world (John 14.30) has no power over us (John 17.14) since we belong to the world no longer.

Empty hands, empty heart...

When someone gives us a watch but we never wear it, the watch is not really received. When someone offers us an idea but we do not respond to it, that idea is not truly received. When someone introduces us to a friend but we ignore him or her, that friend does not feel well received.

Receiving is an art. It means allowing the other to become part of our lives. It means daring to become dependent on the other. It asks for the inner freedom to say: "Without you I wouldn't be who I am." Receiving with the heart is therefore a gesture of humility and love. So many people have been deeply hurt because their gifts were not well received. Let us be good receivers.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

Christianity is precisely a liberation from every rigid legal and religious system. This is asserted with such categorical force by St. Paul that we cease to be Christians the moment our religion becomes slavery to "the Law" rather than a free personal adherence by loving faith to the risen and living Christ: "Do you seek justification by the Law... you are fallen from grace... In fact, in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or its absence is of any avail. What counts is faith that expresses itself in love" (Gal. 5:4, 6).

Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration

Do you see the connection? It is the gift of grace, the gift we celebrate with increasing force over these days leading up to Easter, that we must receive with open hands, and an open heart. It's probably a cliché, but our hands cannot receive if they are clenched in possession or defence, and our hearts cannot receive if they are full of stuff. It is the empty hands, the empty heart, that will receive the priceless gift of love that Christ has for us at Easter. It is to the anawim, to the helpless poor, that Jesus was sent, as he described when he quoted from Isaiah 61 at the start of his ministry, as Luke records (4.16-21).

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...

(Matthew 5.3)