At the start of this week’s post, I think I should confess something: I forgot that with this coming week including Thanksgiving, I wouldn’t be able to follow my usual schedule for drafting posts. I posted last week’s entry and went on to other writing projects, glad that I had published my most recent post earlier in the week than I had the one that came before it. Only just now did I realize that with Thanksgiving coming up, I’m not ahead. I’m behind. So who knows how many mistakes I will leave behind in this post. Who knows how many things I’ll get wrong? I commend this post to God as I begin it, and to anyone reading it, Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re celebrating this week, and thanks, in advance, for your understanding.
November 20th is the last Sunday before Advent this year. Advent will be the time of spiritual and practical preparation for the Christmas season. The Christmas season traditionally begins on Christmas Eve and continues for three weeks after that.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to November 20th. It’s the Solemnity of Christ the King. The name of this Sunday got me thinking about what kind of king Christ is. He certainly doesn’t fit some images that come to my mind of earthly kings. He came to earth in a place that was a far cry from a sprawling palace. He did the opposite of keep his distance from all that was and is subject to Him. Instead, he shared his image with us. And bearing the image of God has far more to do with qualities of the spirit, heart, and mind than with the body alone, though he did and does have a human body and knows all the needs and challenges that come with having one. His hands and feet helped him carry out his mission here on Earth and helped to show us how to do the same, so that we could be his hands and feet once his earthly mission was complete.
He’s close to us not just because He became human but because He comes to us appearing like bread and wine and invites us to take his body and blood into our own. Though in Him “all things hold together,” He surrenders Himself to us in this way and in so many other ways through material gifts and the gifts of creation (Col. 1:17). He is not about gaining wealth.
He’s not about dominating others either. His message is that power comes, not in dominance, but in service and in cooperation. He doesn’t force His will on us. He leaves it up to us whether to see with his eyes, and His heart, and to act as His hands and feet. He respects the freedom and dignity of each of us.
He talks about a “kingdom” or a “reign,” depending on which translation of the Bible a person uses, but I can’t think of a verse where he refers to himself directly as a king. I think that’s because He possesses power in ways that human beings struggle to understand and/or to accept. He didn’t come “to be served but to serve,” “to testify to the truth,” and to show us how to live (Mark 10:45; John 18:37). Humans don’t have perfect words to describe His way of living, yet He had only words to describe it, so he used something like “kingdom” (Mark 1:15).
To me, the use of the word “kingdom” or “reign” is about characterizing that God is near and everywhere — above, within, among. And the existence of everything that gives life is thanks to God, even if we can’t always wrap our minds around this reality. To paraphrase Richard Rohr, the “kingdom” or the “reign” of God is about the Person who is the Source of and the relationship between all that’s good. Each of us plays an indispensable role in making that Source and our relationship to Him visible and active.
The Bible.The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday July, 2 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.179, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 26 Feb. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm
Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’
Luke 13:23-27
“All I can think about are the ways I don’t feel strong enough to enter.”
“I know,” Jesus replied in my mind. “That’s why you needed me to be born, to bear the weight of human existence, weakness and sin. That’s why you needed me not only to bear the burdens of being human for 30 years or so, but also to bear the consequences of all sin in a way no other person could. I had to bear it all, so none of it would have the final say in your life if you let me bear it with you. My bearing it all and letting it kill me briefly made it so that weakness and sin will only kill you if you hold onto it instead of giving it to me. Don’t hold onto burdens I have already lifted, and if it’s our Father’s will that you carry a weight for a while, don’t believe the lie that you have to carry it alone. Don’t give up when you fall under the heaviness. Not giving up is what it means to strive. That’s why I said to ‘strive to enter the narrow gate’ (Luke 13: 24). The keyword is ‘strive.'”
“But you said ‘many will not be strong enough’ to enter (Luke 13:24).
“It takes a lot of strength to maintain hope — assurance that Good has had the final victory over Evil — in the midst of suffering. It takes a lot of strength not to try to save face, to practice the humility of sharing your burdens, and/or to make the sacrifice of admitting you’ve been wrong and done wrong. And the more you fall into the traps of pride, the easier it is to believe the lie that you always will. It takes a lot of strength to let go of the illusion that it’s best for you to control everything in your life. It takes a lot of strength to keep hoping and striving in the face of life’s uncertainty and its obstacles. You know all this as well as I do.”
“Yes, I do know. I also know I don’t have the strength for any of that.”
“Come to me, and you will,” he said. “Trust that I’ve given you the strength, and when your trust wavers, keep daring to trust again. Keep seeking me, and you’ll find me” (Matt. 11-28-30; 7:7).
“If that’s true,” I asked, “Why does the Master lock the door in the parable? Weren’t the people he locked the door against seeking him?”
“Had they striven to do as the master does?” he asked. “Did they act on what he taught in their streets, or did they only hear the sound of him teaching? Did they ever have a one-on-one conversation with him, or did they hide in the crowd, like a movie extra? Did hiding feel safer than greeting the host, or were they simply content to linger in sight of the house rather than crossing its threshold while the door was open? Did they greet the host when they accepted the food he offered? Did they receive his offerings? Did they have gratitude? Did they open themselves up to him, and did they allow him to open himself up to them?”
He continued, “Who doesn’t want to protect the peace of his or her household from disturbance and from strangers who might harm the household? Who wants to let in someone he or she doesn’t recognize, especially when it’s dark and hard to see who or what the stranger has with them? Who wants to let in a stranger who seems to want the master’s help, but might want to use gaining entry to harm the master and his loved ones?”
This master knows the intentions of all who knock on his door,” he reminded me. “This master knows who and what they’ve brought with them, and he knows whether they are prepared to leave outside anything he doesn’t want to in his house. He knows whether they are ready to make peace with him and work with him for the good of his household. If they aren’t, they aren’t ready to enter it, which is not to say they can get ready by themselves. As I said before, it takes strength to surrender to purification, the purification that’s necessary to embrace and to be fully embraced by Presence and Loving Relationship (“The Pain of Disconnection”; “Images of the Trinity”). I look out for for myself and for the good of my family and all that belongs to me. I think even someone with more limited knowledge and resources will usually do the same.”
“I think so too.”
Works consulted
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
We often hear about the Trinity, but what does the Trinity mean? In “The Mystery of the Trinity,” Father Richard Rohr explains it like this:
“Christians believe that God is formlessness (the Father), God is form (the Son), and God is the very living and loving energy between those two (the Holy Spirit). The three do not cancel one another out. Instead, they do exactly the opposite.”
In “Images of the Trinity,” he adds,
“[T]he three Persons of the Trinity empty themselves and pour themselves out into each other. Each knows they can empty themselves because they will forever be refilled To understand this mystery of love fully, we need to “stand under” the flow and participate in it. It’s infinite outpouring and infinite infilling without end. It can only be experienced as a flow, as a community, as a relationship, as an inherent connection.”
All of creation reveals this relationship—”from atoms, to ecosystems, to galaxies,” The shape of God, Father Richard writes in “The Mystery of the Trinity,” is the shape of everything in the universe! Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
“Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
Father RICHARD ROHR
I’d say the first reading (Proverbs 8:22-31) and the psalm (Psalm 8:4-9) from this past weekend reflect this understanding, especially Proverbs 8:27-31 and Psalm 8:4-9. The psalm excerpt begins with:
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place— What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?
Psalm 8:4-5
The psalmist marvels at all the wonder his senses can take in, and he’s in awe of his experience that despite being reflected in all that grandeur, God also cares about the smallest components of the natural world and every single human being, too.
I love the way Proverbs assures us that God does, indeed, care about aspects of our lives that may seem to us to be insignificant. In that book, wisdom speaks about itself, saying:
I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, Playing over the whole of his earth, having my delight with human beings.
Proverbs 8:30-31
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
When setting up this blog, I chose one of the templates available in WordPress, and I kept the default cover photo associated with the theme called MistyLook. It’s a name that fits character of my spiritual experiences, most of our spiritual experiences this side of death, actually. Most of the time, we get only misty looks at God and at the path that lies before us, hence the misty photo with the winding path flanked by numerous trees that remind me of all those times I couldn’t see the proverbial forest through them.
But the readings for The Baptism of the Lord are not about those misty looks at God that we usually get. They’re about God working in human experience in bodily form and announcing that that’s what’s going on. Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized, just as all the other people waiting on the banks had been, and when he comes up from the water, the Holy Spirit came down “in bodily form, like a dove” and everyone present hears a voice that says, you are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21-22). Many people on the banks and early readers of this account would recognize that “with whom I am pleased” is a phrase used in Isaiah to describe the Messiah, but it stands out to me that the voice says, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”[emphasis mine] (Isa. 42:1). This verse stands out because it doesn’t say what the voice says in the Transfiguration scene later in the Scriptures. It doesn’t say, “This is my chosen Son; Listen to him” (Luke 9: 35). The onlookers are privy to a declaration of love and approval from a parent to a child. There is intimacy in being present for such an affirmation, made concrete, not only through a voice, but through touch, the touch of a dove. Yes, the dove is a symbol of peace. The people of Jesus’ time and place would have known this too. But God could have just sent a rainbow to signal the same thing. Except Jesus wouldn’t feel it the way He would feel a dove landing on Him.
It’s a dove that prepares Jesus for what lies ahead and definitely points him out to the crowds on the banks, but is the affirmation meant only for him? More than one person more knowledgeable about theology and Scripture than I am says no, that this voice speaks to other children of God as well. Here’s an example of this understanding of the scene. The reflection I just linked to parallels the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of a follower of Jesus. Meanwhile, Pope Francis goes so far is to remind us that the love between the Father and the Son is “imprinted” on us the moment we come into existence. This meditation from Professor Heidi Russell includes a quotation from the pope about this subject. What I take away from these sources is that we don’t have to be baptized to be loved by God. We get baptized to receive the grace to love ourselves, other people, and indeed, all of creation the way God does.
With these insights in mind, it stands out to me that, unlike in the Transfiguration scene, even though everyone present seems meant to hear what the voice has to say, no direct instruction, no “Listen to Him” is included. This moment of baptism is all about affirming who Jesus is and who the onlookers — we— are.
What does Jesus do with the affirmation, and the “Holy Spirit and power” He receives from His baptism (Acts 10:38)? Acts tells us that “he went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil” (10: 38). “Doing good and healing.” These are active words that convey having a positive impact on the lives of people as they are at a given time, not just in a future context that the people can’t describe. These words also tell me that no one is his or her wounds or the ways he or she distorts the unique combination of positive qualities that he or she has the potential to reflect. These are the qualities of God, who, to paraphrase the Rev. Father Richard Rohr, is love as a verb, love as in “pour[ing]” into someone or something else.
No matter who we are or what we struggle with, we are created in the image of God (Gen. 1-26). I find it helpful to think of my struggles and of the ways I’ve fallen short of reflecting God as injuries and grime that may make it harder for me and for others to recognize the ways I reflect God. These grimy wounds need to be brought to God for washing and healing. Who knows how long the washing and healing will take? It is a process that I believe began when I was conceived and won’t be complete when my soul separates from my body. Over and over again, I will “forget” who I am, as the Rev. Father Terrence Klein writes, and I won’t— at least not as clearly as I would like—reflect the qualities of God that I have. This distortion of my true image, while beloved, will shape how people see me as will the imperfections they carry when they look at me, and over and over again, I’ll have to acknowledge how my frailty and choices have contributed to the distortion of my true image, and this acknowledgment will help me heal and grow more into the person I’m meant to be.
While I go through growing pains, I take comfort in having faith in a God who helped people carry wounds by living a human life, a life that included, we are told in the Gospels, taking part in a baptism of repentance that He didn’t need. That means that everything the people baptized before Him carried—sins and everything else—was in that water when he went into it. Everything the people would like to dispense with touched him, as it did throughout his life and would most violently on the cross. I know I’m not the first person to see this in his baptism, but I don’t remember where I encountered this insight first.
His humanness also meant that he didn’t heal everyone with his physical presence. That happening depended on a lot of factors — a person having the courage to approach him, to name just one factor. Some people had the opportunity to approach him; others didn’t. There were times when people wanted him to stay and help, but he moved on to the next town. (See Mark 1:35-39 for an example.) Because I’m a human being, who wants concrete solutions and would prefer to receive them now, I won’t pretend to fully understand and accept this response — even though I’m getting the message that His mission was to spread the spiritual wealth. Still, faith tells me that He always cared about the people he left “looking for” Him during his ministry (Mark 1:37). He always cares about whatever mars the beautiful images of his brothers and sisters, whatever makes it more difficult for them to feel connected to and by Love — so much so that he took upon himself —to the point of torture and death —everything that isn’t light, peace, community, and dignity. I believe that when he did so, he experienced in ways I cannot comprehend every form of human suffering, whether physical, mental, or spiritual.
But none of it could defeat him. And because it couldn’t, He is no longer limited by the confines of his human life and is able to accompany anyone of us who reach out to him, as generation after generation, new hands, and feet, and hearts heal and do good in heaven and on earth. I recognize and have gratitude for daily glimpses of beauty and love. Yet as I write this, more than one mass shooting, genocide, famine, and natural disaster comes to mind. I long for the world he saved from these, and I don’t know when salvation from these sufferings will come or precisely what it will look like. However, not knowing is better than not believing this kind of salvation will ever come. And while I journey down this misty and tree-obscured path of life, not knowing so much, I relish the “ordinary” gifts, and I trust that God, wounded by living all of our sufferings, is beside me, here and now.
Works cited (but not linked)
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 