DARTON - LONGMAN + TODD, 2006

Faith

Faith - what does it mean? You don't see Christ or even feel him very much, but you carry on anyway, you still go forward. Is that faith? Or you notice that something is terribly wrong with the world and with your own life. But you go on anyway, even though something is wrong. Is that faith? I like the clear and objective definition of faith from my theological training, which takes St. Paul's expression "the obedience of faith" (Rom. 16:26) and explains it then as a submission of intellect and will to God who reveals himself. This is an elegant proposal if given half a chance. It proposes a risk in using unpopular words, especially the word submission. Yet it remains my choice to submit or not, and it is a choice to conform my mind and heart to something bigger. That's not a bad risk, nor a stupid one. But how do I know what it is that God is revealing? Well, I find it in the witnesses, those who tell the story; and I put my trust in what the Bible tells. I try it out to see if it fits the world I experience. The content of this revelation is amazing. It is too good, and I am too small. I cannot come up to it. So, in the end my faith is the uttering of a question which is also the invocation of a name. Under my mood - God? Beneath my heart - God? After the reach of my eyes God? Before or after the stars - God?

False Impression

It is a false impression, that easy sense we have that we know or can quickly find out about other parts of the world, other cultures, other peoples. This false impression is created by the media and the internet and rapid and comparatively effortless travel, given all the places we go and how quickly we get there. We should perhaps concentrate more on knowing and understanding better the place where we are. For example, I am here: Mount Angel, in Oregon, in a wide valley, on a hill, near the Pacific coast and the big ocean. It is today, only today; and I am here, only here. Things are happening, unfolding - bad things, good things, circumstances. Nothing I try to do or think can be abstract from where I am now. I must begin from here and from here search for the rest of the world.

Famous People

I was once asked to write a short essay on the most famous person I had ever met. Of course, I had no choice but to say that the most famous person I've ever met is Jesus Christ. I have also had the privilege of meeting a number of other famous people, likewise justifiably renowned: Duke Ellington, Alvar Aalto, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, even, years ago, Senator Robert Kennedy. But I have to say there is a qualitative difference to my having met and even managed to sustain a relationship with Jesus. Unlike all the others, Jesus is - just to mention a few of the qualitative differences - invisible, and he began to live his life on the earth centuries ago. In other words, he is not a mere contemporary of mine, usually a requirement for meeting another person.
How was it that I first met him? Well, I was raised a Catholic, and the story begins there. I know if I want to be taken seriously, I'm meant to denounce this fact and express my bitterness about it. But I have none. I'm meant to say that nuns and priests were mean to me, but for me that would be a colossal lie. In fact, it was my parish priests and the nuns who were my teachers in parochial school who first introduced me to the famous Jesus, and I shall for ever be grateful to them.
The priests and nuns passed on to me what has passed in an unbroken chain through believing communities of Christians from the time of Jesus, 2,000 years ago, to the present - the very presence of Jesus as a person still alive, albeit in a different form. This is a consequence of the claim of resurrection. Christians believe that this Jewish teacher, crucified under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, has been raised from the dead by the one whom he called God and Father. The life he once lived does not fade away in a grave, its effects lessening with the passage of time. All that he ever did and said rises with him in the very body in which he once lived and died. Risen body is a new form, filled with divine glory, spiritual - which is more, not less. It is a qualitative difference.
My priests and nuns believed in such a Jesus and began to introduce me to him in a way that suited a little boy. I was taught that by coming into church I carne into his presence, and I was told I could speak to him there. I tried it, and it worked. I met somebody - him. The church presence taught me his presence everywhere, and wherever I was, I could address him. Of course, as I said, he is invisible and doesn't speak back in any ordinary way. But my first teachers in the faith made me aware of a presence. That was how I first met him, and the relation has stayed alive ever since. Certainly, decades have subsequently passed, and I have had many opportunities to renounce all this. But my faith, begun as a boy, grew alongside me. In every phase of my life, I have examined again and tested the faith that was first proposed to me. lì is still mine no longer a boy's faith but probably only mine as a man because it was given me as a boy.
It doesn't have to work this way. People who have never known Jesus in their youth come to know him in adult life. As with all famous people, Jesus is met in different ways. I am recounting how it happened for me.
I mentioned that the relationship has stayed alive. So, this is not just a famous person I've met - like the others mentioned above - but a famous person I've come to know. This has been a great adventure, and it coincides with the adventure of my life. My whole life centers now around knowing him, around the desire to understand how it all works. I wonder, how can it be? Is it really he? Is this really God? I don't pretend that I don't doubt. But one thing keeps me thinking that - improbable as it all may seem - I am in contact with Jesus because he is risen from the dead and because he is God come among us in this completely unexpected way. That one thing I began doing as a boy. I come into his presence - aware that this requires my attention to a qualitative difference - and I speak to him. It works. Mysteriously, I have thus met him and continue to do so. I don't hesitate to say that I love and adore him.

Fear of the Lord

"Fear of the Lord" is a virtue highly prized in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, it is a kind of basis on which the other virtues can be constructed. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," the Bible often repeats. And, "Only a fool despises wisdom." But what exactly is meant in the Bible by "fear of the Lord," and is there anything about it that can "scare the hell out of us"?
I know that "scaring the hell out of" is just an expression, but here I want to take it to its roots, take it a little more literally than an offhand remark. Most good expressions that have entered the language usually carry a forceful meaning which we hardly refer to anymore. That is the case here. And the point is, there is some "hell" in each of us and it doesn't come out very easily. Something really big is needed to scare it out. In the Bible, fear of the Lord will do that.
But what does it mean? It's not as simple as being scared of God. Biblical wisdom is not that simple-minded. Basically it means we take the measure of the difference between God and ourselves. Re is big, and we are small. Re lives for ever, and our lives are like a flower that blooms in the morning but by evening is gone. There seems to be a fair amount of "hell" in us; in him there is none. Taking account of these differences is not meant to give us a neurotically negative image of ourselves. It just helps us to avoid a neurotically positive one, not based on reality. Becoming wise - and in the Bible this means living gracefully in reality as it is - begins with our taking the measure of the difference between God and us. Doing so, in fact, can cause a certain amount of being scared of God; but more than that, what it does cause is awe and reverence for God to rise up in the heart. For it is marvellous that despite the infinite distances that obtain between him and us, we are the object of his regard, the beneficiaries of his love.
So I find myself in contact through prayer with the Lord of the Universe. He draws near to me, of is own initiative. He reveals to me a little of his "mind" and "heart." And I am completely amazed, for all the while I feel at one and the same time his overwhelming infinity (fear) and his sweet and bearable closeness (wisdom). God comes close to us by means of what we might describe as a divine act of humility. From his high place he stoops down - so the biblical metaphors speak. There is an inverse proportion between how much God has humbled himself for our sake and his ability to be present to us in his being/essence despite our limited and sinful condition.
I know that not many people talk and think this way anymore. God is so humble that he doesn't force our recognition of him. But I, for one, want to witness to the fact that biblical wisdoms help me to live. Entertaining the proposal of biblical faith - that there is a Divine Somebody around bigger and far more worthy than I - lets me step into reality in the place and with the tone that is appropriate for me, who am not God, not in charge of the world, and only here for a while. I step in amazed and grateful to find myself here at all. I want to bow down in adoration before the One to whom I owe this gift. I fear offending his majesty, his goodness, his truth. And I fear this not because he'll turn around and smash me but because he is good with a goodness I could never match, and I don't want to presume upon it, take it lightly or for granted.
Presuming upon life, taking God lightly or not at all, thinking myself the centre of reality - this is some of the "hell" that is in us. What really scares me is the prospect of an eternal hell. I know, it's not believed in anymore. But it's not as simple as our declaring it to be or not to be. The very possibility should terrify us. For what is hell? Not a vengeful, almighty God punishing us for ever for having slipped up, but rather our living for ever with the consequences of our choices. How easy it is to pretend that we will not be judged for what we do. And yet if we are? well, this possibility frightens me.

Fifties

Fog

Forces

I feel so many different forces in and around me. Some of these forces are conflicting, others simply different, yet in need somehow of being calibrated. There is the force of who I am, the man I have become and am still becoming. A direction is certainly set, a momentum carries me along. And yet, so many other forces make it unclear just how it will all turn out, forces in and around me.
I feel power and beauty in my body. This is new. New because it is not the power and beauty of youth. (I am over 50 now.) Like most in my culture, I suppose I have been the victim of unconsciously thinking that youth's strengths were the only ones. But slowly I have awakened - God knows how - to a power and beauty in me that comes from age, from my age. I am this person who feels these forces, and I wish to use them, not for anything in particular but for whatever I do. My body: precious, vulnerable, lifelong instrument of my soul! That's one force.
Another force - among many, many, too many to count and describe is the force of my monastic vocation. It has been a long time now (more than 30 years) and it is always moving me along in generally rather rough-mannered ways toward some new point of arrival from which I must shortly thereafter depart again.
Some of what appears in sharper relief recently is a band of detachment that cuts through a large middle of my life and leaves me now unconnected to much of what I was once strongly connected to: many people, family and friends, places I love, things I love to do, the monastery itself and the brothers. It is a desert place in which I hope for the visit of God, but I sense the wait may be a long one. Even so, I am also detached from much emotion about this. But I describe it as a wide band; it does not cover the whole of me. I am still connected, and I do have emotions about the visit of God. But these are not the middle, not the main thing.
Is there a main thing? I don't see one right now. I am aware that this may be dangerously close to being unhealthy. One can quickly lose one's bearings in a land like this. But it is equally and perilously close to a new kind of health and a firmer grasp of the denser realities, of the spiritual realms. So this desert too is a force, and the force drives me more deeply into it.
Power and beauty in the age of my body and the constant interior movements brought on by the monastic way - I sense I am caught up in a great adventure, rather like being an explorer of places seldom frequented anymore. And it is not for myself alone that I go there.

Friends

Many treasures are tucked away in the words of Jesus, "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's mends. You are my mends." (Job. 15:13-14) Jesus' death is an act of friendship for me, and inside this realm, it is the greatest act of love possible. If I think about my own mends and how I would feel about giving my life for them, I see that I would be willing to do it, even if my having the strength to do so may be doubted. But I am willing. And I see from this how much tenderness for me there is in Jesus, how much desire in him for me to live, to succeed, to continue in my mission. I think of different mends and imagine the particular feeling attached to giving my life for each, wanting each to continue living, to thrive, to be well. But Jesus' attitude toward me is like this! Only it is fuller, more complete, more tender and generous still. He no longer calls me a slave; he calls me a mend. In this love for me he makes known to me all that he has heard from his Father (Job. 15:15) and he makes it known by laying down his life.
This is the same context in which Jesus says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." (John  15:12) This commandment is different from the command to love our enemies and perhaps greater in significance. It concerns friendship which is given by Christ. When I love mends in Christ and love them as Christ loved me - willing to lay down my life for them - and those mends know my love in this way and love me in return, then a tremendous circle is created, a communion which is nothing less than communion in the Trinity. This kind of loving creates a tremendous light for the mind and a speed in advancing in the understanding of divine mysteries; it creates a vision of all things cohering in a wonderful simplicity; it produces a power, strength, and energy to do good and an atmosphere in which things unhoped for can happen.
When we think of our intimate, personal relationship with God, we tend to think of that kind of relating which comes in private prayer, in our rooms with the door closed where the Father sees in secret. (Matt. 6:6) Of course, that is true. But there is also a terribly intimate communion with God which creates a terrible intimacy and communion among believing mends. This is a sweet, mystic communion of intense quality. It is, as the Apostle writes, "... so that you may have communion with us, and our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 John 1:3)

Future

The Christian idea of a future already accomplished is too strong a paradox for our overly logical way of thinking. In celebrating the liturgy the paradox becomes even sharper, where we speak of "remembering the future," and believe thereby that we somehow mysteriously already enter into it. This future tasted and touched then exercises its influence on the present. In the future we are already perfectly established in union with Christ, perfectly forming one body with him. To "remember" is to bring it to some extent already into the present. Maybe some acceptance and understanding of this paradox can come from the simple experience of telling someone what I am going to do. For example, I leave persons I 10ve, and so I tell them where I'm going and what I'm going to do. This sets us both at ease for living the present.
Our culture has no account, no narration, of the future. So hope is very difficult. Christian faith does narrate a future and celebrates it now in the liturgy. This is, among other things, an offer of hope. All this applies quite directly to my own body. My actual present body does not have any completely satisfying meaning except in relation to its future transformed condition. No matter that it is virtually inconceivable: that my body is destined in Christ to share in divine glory for ever is what gives meaning to my body in the present.
I learn all this by contemplating Christ, risen from the dead, in his human body. He said, "Behold I am with you all days even unto the end of the ages." (Matt. 28:20) Earth itself is a paradise, a heaven, for him. For here on earth he walks in a kind of force field that perfectly balances eternity and time, having received back in his human body and its place(s) on earth the "glory that was his before the world began." (John 17:5) Thus also our future is not elsewhere but in the world transformed and restored. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth." (Rev. 21: 1 )