Daily Virtue

This verse from John’s gospel that we reflect upon today speaks of joy. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the most demanding asceticism, this practice of the denying physical or psychological desires to attain a spiritual ideal or goal within life is the discipline of joy. Rarely is this recognized. For most of us, the word joy itself rings superficial. It speaks of empty victory celebrations, mindlessness, lack of full awareness, naiveté and lack of depth. There is a cynical adultness in our reaction to joy: “If you knew better, if you were fully awake, you wouldn’t be this happy!” Former Christian spiritualities tended to focus on the incompleteness of life…We live “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” There was great strength, and some real wisdom, in that. It gave people permission to cry, to taste life’s bitterness without feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with them, and it helped people accept the truth that in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished. Other current spiritualities, at least as they are frequently lived out, affirm the equation between joy and superficiality by emphasizing anger, indignation, righteousness, and an undue sense of purpose and urgency about everything. These last words – grim, humorless, joyless and bitter – describe to some degree the church and secular circles we move in. Most frequently, these circles are somber, anxious, over-burdened, cynical, humorless, heavy places, hard untender places. There is an undue sense of urgency and precious little childlikeness, freedom and simple joy. As Christians, we need to be reminded that real asceticism lies in joy itself. It is far easier, and it takes infinitely less discipline, to be heavy than to be light. Heaviness, resentment, anger, grudges, moroseness and lack of joy come naturally; light-heartedness, forgiveness, long-suffering, humor and joy have to be worked at.

In today’s reflection verse from Luke’s gospel, we hear Jesus saying that he “wills” to do the good. But many in this world are trapped by a God they see as angry, bitter, and vengeful. How are we supposed to “see” God and the attributes of God that Jesus incarnated? Fr. Ron Rolheiser, who taught a course entitled The Theology of God for fifteen years, writes that it is not easy to reflect God adequately, but we must try to reflect better the God that Jesus showed us. So, what are the marks of that God? Fr. Rolheiser writes that first, we must understand that God has no favorites. No one person, race, gender, or nation is more favored than others by that God. All are privileged. God is also clear that it’s not only those who profess God and religion explicitly who are persons of faith but also those, irrespective of their explicit faith or church practice, who do the will of God on earth. Next, God is scandalously understanding and compassionate, especially toward the weak and sinners. God is willing to sit down with sinners without first asking them to clean up their lives. Moreover, God asks us to be compassionate in the same way to both sinners and saints and to love them both equally. That God does not have preferential love for the virtuous. In addition, God is critical of those who, whatever their sincerity, try to block access to him. God is never defensive but surrenders himself to death rather than defend himself, never meets hatred with hatred, and dies loving and forgiving those who are killing him. Finally, and centrally, God is, first of all, good news for the poor. Any preaching in God’s name that isn’t good news for the poor is not the gospel. Those are the attributes of the God who Jesus incarnated, and we need to remember that aspect of God in all of our preaching, teaching, and pastoral practices. We must also be sensitive to proper boundaries and the demands of orthodox teaching. The truth sets us free and the demands of discipleship are, by Jesus own admission, harsh. However, with that being admitted, the compassion, mercy, and intelligence of God still need to be reflected in every pastoral action we do. 

The challenge today that Jesus speaks of in loving that which you don’t want to love, is a similar challenge that faced the prophet Isaiah. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that for him, it was not enough that the Messiah should usher in a time of peace and freedom for good people. Along with rewards for the good, he felt, there also needed to be a “day of vengeance” on the bad. Interestingly, in a curious omission, when Jesus quotes this text from Isaiah to define his own ministry, he leaves out the part about vengeance. There are too many of us in the church and the world today, in both conservative and liberal camps, who, like this man, have the same burning need. We want to see misfortune fall upon the wicked. It is not enough that eventually, the good should have their day. The bad must be positively punished. All ecclesial camps today agree that justice demands that sin and wickedness be positively punished. We only disagree on what constitutes sin and wickedness. To my mind, this desire for justice (as we call it) is, at its root, unhealthy and speaks volumes about the bitterness within our own lives. All these worries that somebody might be getting away with something and all these wishes that God better be an exacting judge, suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing things right, but real love, forgiveness and celebration have long gone out of our hearts. We are bitter as slaves and quite outside the circle of the dance. Alice Miller, the great Swiss psychologist, suggests that the primary task of the second half of life is grieving. We need to grieve, she says, or the bitterness and anger that come from our wounds, disappointments, bad choices, and broken dreams will overwhelm us with a sense of life’s unfairness. It is because we are wounded and bitter that we worry about God’s justice, worry that it might be too lenient, worry that the bad will not be fully punished, worry that there might not be a hell. But we should worry less about those things and more about our own incapacity to forgive, to let go of our own hurts, to take delight in life, to give others the sheer gaze of admiration, to celebrate and to truly join in the dance. To be fit for heaven, we must let go of our bitterness. Our problem is that we have never fully heard or understood God’s words: “My child, you have always been with me, and all I have is yours, but we, you and I, should be happy and dance because your younger brother who was dead has come back to life!”

Our story begins with a young man who had been having an affair with his girlfriend, and she became pregnant. For a variety of reasons, marriage was impossible. The pregnancy would have an irrevocable impact on a series of lives, his girlfriend’s, his own, and their families, not to mention the child that would be born. The story ended on a note of despair: “I was irresponsible and this has, forever, hurt some people because even God can’t unscramble an egg!” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that for him, it now seemed, there would always be a certain skeleton in the closet, a past ghost to haunt his happiness. The cross of Jesus reveals that we can live, and live happily and healthily, beyond any egg we have ever scrambled. That is the central message of the cross. How does the cross tell us this? The cross of Jesus tears apart that veil and lets us see inside the holy of holies, the heart of God. And what do we see there? Unfathomable love, unfathomable forgiveness, compassion, and tenderness beyond understanding. In the cross, God tells us: “You can do this to me – and I will still love you!”  An elderly nun, whom I love and respect, is fond of saying: “I’m a loved sinner!” The secret to spiritual health is to acknowledge both parts of that equation in the roots of our souls: We are sinners without any need to rationalize or excuse ourselves, even as we have the sure knowledge that God loves us, deeply and irrevocably, in our weakness. The cross gives us that assurance by telling us precisely that God doesn’t stop loving us, even for one second, irrespective of weakness. The cross of Christ is a rich reality. Among other things, it tells us how God loves and redeems us even when we are unfaithful, and our lives are broken. It is not surprising that hundreds of millions of people, young and old, wear a cross in some form. The cross of Jesus is everywhere evident. We see it on hillsides, on church spires, in cemeteries, and almost everywhere where anything special, love or tragedy, has happened. Rightly so. The cross is the ultimate symbol of love. It shows what love is, what love costs, and what love does for us.

A question often posed by those searching for life meaning and confused by the phrase “God is love,” have often come back with the following statement: “If God loves us no matter what we do, then why keep the commandments? If we are not to be punished or rewarded for our efforts, then why make sacrifices?” Fr. Ron Rolheiser responds by telling us that we don’t try to be good so that God loves and rewards us. God loves us no matter what we do and heaven is never a reward for a good life. Are these glib statements? No. As Jesus assures us, God’s love is always both unmerited and unconditional; nothing we do can ever make God love us, just as nothing can stop God from loving us. God loves just as God does everything else perfectly. God loves everything and everybody perfectly. In fact, part of Christian belief is that God’s love is what keeps everything in existence. If God stopped loving anything, it would cease to be. Then why be good?  Why keep the commandments? What difference does our response make? Our response makes a big difference, but not in terms of giving God offense, driving God away, or making God punish or reward us. It makes a difference in how we stand and feel in the face of love. We cannot offend against God, but we can offend against others and ourselves. We can, like Satan, live in bitterness and unhappiness right within love itself, and we can deeply hurt others. As Martin Luther once said, the desire to be good and to keep the commandments follows from genuine faith and love the way smoke follows fire. The intent is never to earn love or reward but to respond properly to them. This is true in the case of mature love and faith. However, for those of us who are still struggling to be mature, the spiritual and moral precepts of the faith are meant as a discipline – precisely as discipleship – that helps teach us what it means to be a spiritual and sensitive human being. Trying to be good should still not be an attempt to earn love or heaven somehow, but rather a humble acknowledgment that one still needs a lot of help in knowing how to live in the face of love. Ethics follow naturally when truth, beauty, and love are properly appropriated.

There are several places in scripture where Jesus assures us that if we ask for something in his name, we are guaranteed to receive it. Why doesn’t this always work? Sometimes we pray for something, pray for it in Jesus’ name, and our request isn’t granted. Sometimes we literally storm heaven with our prayers and heaven seems shut against them. Did Jesus make an idle promise when he assured us that God would give us anything we ask for, if we ask in his name? Perhaps our prayer was answered, but at a deeper level, and only in time will we understand that answer. C.S. Lewis once quipped that we will spend most of eternity thanking God for those prayers of ours that he didn’t answer! Karl Rahner, in commenting on Jesus’ promise, offers us this reflection: “To ask for something in Jesus’ name does not mean that we invoke him verbally and then desire whatever our turbulent, divided heart or our appetite, our wretched mania for everything and anything, happens to hanker for. No, asking in Jesus’ name means entering into him, living by him, being one with him in love and faith. If he is in us by faith, in love, in grace, in his Spirit, then our petition arises from the center of our being, which is himself, and if all our petition and desire is gathered up and fused in him and his Spirit, then the Father hears us. Then our petition becomes simple and straightforward, harmonious, sober, and unpretentious. To pray in Jesus’ name is to have one’s prayer answered, to receive God and God’s blessing, and then, even amid tears, even in pain, even in indigence, even when it seems that one has still not been heard, the heart rests in God, and that-while we are still here on pilgrimage, far from the Lord-is perfect joy.” Until we have prayed like this, Jesus can truthfully say to us: “Up to now, you have not asked for anything in my name. You may have tried to, you may have meant to, but you have not yet made me the strength and burden of your prayer.”

The Christmas story is surely one of the greatest stories ever told. It chronicles a birth from which the world records time as before or after. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that inside its great narrative, there are multiple mini-narratives, each of which comes laden with its own archetypal symbols.  One of these mini-narratives, rich in archetypal imagery, is the story King Herod and the wise men. We see this in the Gospel of Matthew when he tells us how various people reacted to the announcement of Jesus’ birth. Matthew sets up a powerful archetypal contrast, blessing, and curse, between the reaction of the wise men, who bring their gifts and place them at the feet of the new king, and King Herod, who tries to kill him. The real point of this story is the contrast between the wise men and Herod: the former sees new life as a promise, and they bless it; the latter sees new life as a threat, and he curses it. This is a rich story with a powerful challenge: what is my own reaction to new life, especially to life that threatens me, that will take away some of my own popularity, sunshine, and adulation? Can I, like the wise men, lay my gifts at the feet of the young and move towards anonymity and eventual death, content that the world is in good hands, even though those hands are not my hands? Or, like Herod, will I feel that life is a threat and try somehow to kill it, lest its star somehow diminish my own? To bless another person is to give away some of one’s own life so that the other might be more resourced for his or her journey. Good parents do that for their children. Good teachers do that for their students, good mentors do that for their protégés, good pastors do that for their parishioners, good politicians do that for their countries, and good elders do that for the young. They give away some of their own lives to resource the other. The wise men did that for Jesus. How do we react when a young star’s rising begins to eclipse our own light?

When Jesus was on earth, virtually no one believed he was the Messiah precisely because he was so ordinary, so unlike what they imagined God to be. People were looking for a Messiah. When Christ finally appeared, they were disappointed. They’d expected a superstar, a king, a miracle worker, someone who would, by miracle and hammer, vindicate good, destroy evil, and turn the world rightfully upside down. Jesus didn’t live up to those expectations. Born in a barn, preaching meekness and gentleness, unwilling to use power forcefully, there was little hammer and few miracles. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there was mainly ordinariness. Curiously, Scripture refuses to describe what Jesus looked like. It never tells us whether he was short or tall, with a beard or without, had light or dark hair, or blue or brown eyes. Neither does it ever assign to him anything extraordinary in terms of psychological countenance: for example, it never tells us that when Jesus entered a room, his eyes were so penetrating and his gaze so awesome that people knew they were in the presence of something extraordinary. No, Scripture doesn’t describe him because, in terms of physical appearance, Jesus wasn’t worth describing, he looked like everyone else. Even after the resurrection, he is mistaken for a gardener, a cook, and a traveler. People had trouble recognizing Jesus as God incarnate because he was so ordinary, so immersed in the things they took for granted. He was just a carpenter’s son, and he looked like everyone else. Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years. Seldom does Christ meet expectations. We desire proof of the existence of God even as life in all its marvels continues all around us. We tend to look for God everywhere except in the place where the incarnation took place – our flesh. 1 John 4:7-16, says: “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him/her.” Love is a thing that happens in ordinary life, in kitchens, at tables, in workplaces, in families, in the flesh. God abides in us when we abide there. The Christ-child is also to be found in church, in the sacraments, and in private meditations (for these, too, are ordinary). All of these are ordinary, and the incarnation crawls into them and helps us abide in God.

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes the sin of the world! That formula, expressed in various ways, lies at the center of what we believe about Jesus. What is meant by it? How does his sacrificial giving of himself take away our sins? How can one person take sin out of the world? Fr. Rolheiser writes that Jesus, as the lamb of God, does not take away the sin of the world by somehow carrying it off so that it is no longer present inside of the community. He takes it away by transforming it, by changing it, by taking it inside of himself and transmuting it. We see examples of this throughout his entire life, although it is most manifest in the love and forgiveness he shows at the time of his death. In simple language, Jesus took away the sin of the community by taking in hatred and giving back love; by taking in anger and giving out graciousness; by taking in envy and giving back blessing; by taking in bitterness and giving out warmth; by taking in pettiness and giving back compassion; he taking in chaos and giving back peace; and by taking in sin and giving back forgiveness. The incarnation is meant to be ongoing. We are asked to continue to give flesh to God, to continue to do what Jesus did. Thus, our task, too, is to help take away the sin of the world as Jesus did in transmuting the darkness by giving back the light of God’s love.

Daniel Berrigan was once asked to give a conference at a university gathering. The topic given him was something to the effect of “God’s Presence in Today’s World”. His talk, Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, surprised a number of people in his audience, both in brevity and content. He told the audience how he, working in a hospice for the terminally ill, goes each week to spend some time sitting by the bed of a young boy who is totally incapacitated, physically and mentally. The young boy can only lie there. He cannot speak or communicate with his body nor in any other way, it would seem, express himself to those who come into his room. He lies mute, helpless, by all outward appearance cut off from any possible communication. Berrigan then describes how he regularly sits by this young boy’s bed to try to hear what he is saying in his silence and helplessness. After sharing this, Berrigan added a further point: The way this young man lies in our world, silent and helpless, is the way God lies in our world. To hear what God is saying, we must learn to hear what this young boy is saying. God’s power, though, is more muted, more helpless, more shamed, and more marginalized. But it lies at a deeper level, at the ultimate base of things, and will, in the end, gently have the final say. To hear God is to sit in silence.