This world of ours, this temporal place where we live, is in a bucket which God is carrying in His hand. We are contained in the bucket, where there is time and space, or perhaps for your personal world view, call it time and place. We realize the handle which God is carrying is outside the bucket, yet the handle is clearly attached to the bucket. Outside the bucket, in His heavenly realm, there is no time or place, for paradoxically, God is in all places at all times, in and outside the bucket. Outside the bucket, He is in what we commonly call the eternal now. Since there’s no time in the eternal now, everything is happening for Him all at once. We are made in His image and likeness, and Christ Jesus is both man and God. The point being, we also have a human and temporal condition as well as a connection to the divine nature. We are certainly not God, yet our bucket’s handle is surely in His hand and in His realm.
Tag Archives: spirituality
Choosing a Model
Much has been said about the eighteen century “Age of Enlightenment” as a world phenomenon as well as it’s impact on American history. Let’s (for the moment) accept this historical movement in it’s entirety as a credible passage into a new era of understanding, including the hidden gems and also the down side of it’s assumptions, dead ends and shallow rhetoric. At the same time, let’s give ourselves credit for being in another era of enlightenment one of equally serious world beginnings and consequences.
Let us be cautious that we are not misled by our assumptions or the claims of pop culture. Let us have the wisdom to look through a lens of enlightenment, through what seems to be obvious into the truly obvious. A disturbing feature of today’s society and perhaps a long-standing feature of any era is our vulnerability to be misled by those who exercise power and control for the sake of pride and prejudice. These powerful people can be identified when they are engaged in their well ordered and effective effort to build empires and spread their influence. A tried-and-true method of claiming essence without substance paves the way to what they declare is common knowledge in an attempt to replace common logic. Their mass media rhetoric is designed to replace historical events and to use metaphors to replace an investigation of a case-by-case inquiry. These titans would have us believe that ambiguities lead to imagination, basic research or breakthrough innovations; they do not. They do demonstrate deceptive intentions and foster confusion, frustration and apathy. These titans believe once the focus is centered on the clash of conflict the serious consideration of the issues will be ignored.
As an answer to these titans of empire, we turn to wise commentary which tells us there is no political solutions to spiritual problems. As believers we will engage in a critical examination of what we are being told and shown by our pop culture versus what we know to be true in our hearts. This is not an exercise of spiritual superiority, a train we never want to get on. This is not a drill in relativism because the truth is not predicated on circumstances. This is a trajectory of orthodoxy, the moving under the action of a given force, that force being the Holy Spirit. Using this lens of enlightenment is in actuality praying for guidance, never assuming we are doing God’s work, only God can do God’s work. We are, however, praying that our actions are done with love and humility, appealing to everyone’s highest ideals and best intentions and we have considered all the attributes of the divine virtues. For us laity this is a monumental task, a venture which needs a model to follow. I am suggesting this model is the Catholic Church, the body and bride of our Lord. I am suggesting the metaphor for this Church is a finely cut diamond, seen through any of it’s facets depicts it’s fullness, brilliance, life and truth of itself. This allows each of us to view the Lord in ways we can understand. Through the facet of the magisterium, or the Bible itself, the homilies of our pastors and priests, the podcasts of our scholars, the ministries and charities, or the adoration and the prayers of our more contemplative moments and a host of other inspirational, devotional and sensational considerations we come to a deeper and richer understanding of ourselves and our Church.
Of all these possible facets it is Vatican II which is inviting us into a age of innovation established upon the traditions of orthodoxy: which makes the path from the past, the path into the future. The innovation is built upon this past trajectory. For example, a society is always operating at the top of the technological curve. What is currently being developed may, and in many cases does see beyond the immediate horizon. It is not farfetched to theorize what advancements could be coming, however, the next step is still bound by the workings of current technologies. This illustrates the accumulated culminations of technologies passing through the “lens of enlightenment” and into tomorrow’s future. This applies as well to Vatican II. The innovations are not tomorrow’s unrealized expectations, they are the well ordered and logical next step in the development of the Church.
With Science
To paraphrase Bishop Barron, we know the language of the ancient world was Greek. It was the language of commerce, philosophy, theology, mathematics and the natural sciences. Today English is that language, the language of commerce, science and technology. Bishop Barron offers us this; the simplest translation of logos would be tongue, logic and pattern. However, no one in the ancient world would have missed the idea of logos being the word of God. No one would have missed the idea of logos being the principle of divine reason and creative order. Realizing the Bible was not written to us as the audience, it is written to us as believers. So, what have we come to believe? We believe what Bishop Barron has illustrated so thoughtfully for us, that there is an intelligibility of all things and in all things. The Greeks knew this, even if they mislabeled the source, they understood the divine nature of all things which produced the natural conditions in all things. Even in ancient times our tradition took this idea a step further as the Catholic Creed states, He created all things, the visible and the invisible. Therefore, all things have their foundation in the created goodness of love itself. Today, we have allowed ourselves to separate the definition and description from the experience. By not asking “why”, we rely on the so-called definitive answers of “what” and “how.” This obviously releases us from the infiniteness of “this and that and this also”, all the while ignoring the ancient’s understanding that having the book does not negate the author.
We also believe in the objective experience of human life. Because creative intelligibility is built into the very fabric of all that is, even in our human condition we can see this intelligibility in all things. A beautiful sunrise over an ocean of wind, sea and mist is not subject to our frames’ of references; it is beautiful in itself, it is a standalone phenomenon, recognizable to all witnesses, not resting in their interpretation; it is alive and living in the moment as we are being created in this same moment. As we shall see next, this sunrise is as beautiful as all the God given virtues. Moreover, as with all of God’s gifts, they are more than the mystery of knowing.
Just for a moment, just for an exercise of exploration, let us unite the visible and the invisible. Let’s not separate ourselves from the author, let us become imitators of Christ, doing what we were shown to do, whether we understand or not. Let us consider all that is known, all that is witnessed, all that is rationally perceived, passes through the gift of the Holy Spirit, our conscience. The modality of our tradition allows us to understand this phenomenon as passing through our soul, or as part of the natural God given law, or as an experience beyond our unique life histories. It is a unique life experience subject to His divine nature as it is made manifest in our human condition. We are His children and like children we are maturing, yet this does not prevent us from experiencing the excitement and splendor of the moment. It is our conscience which filters all that is, first and foremost. This filter reflects essence, all that is, our ethics, morality, integrity, all the untouchables which have no atomic weight, yet are as real and intelligible as all of creation. Albert Einstein was looking for the “law of unification” an equation which could unite all of the natural phenomenon at any level, in any world of physics, chemistry or biology. I suggest this equation is, God is greater than the sum of infinity, the equation is God himself. It is not a coincidence that conscience literally means, “with science.”
In Time
Contemporary believers certainly realize the Bible was not written to us; it was written for us. We have never lived a sacrificial temple life, few of us have grown up on a farm and none of us are from a primarily agrarian society. So, it’s no wonder we often have difficulties drawing parallels between what was spoken thousands of years ago, to what’s happening in our modern technology driven culture and society of today.
I would like to take a moment and unpack Mark 7:1-13, our reading from February 9th. Jesus is talking with the Pharisees and their entourage, the skeptics in the crowd, as well as those standing in the presence of the Lord. As usual the Pharisees can’t see through their human condition, what they called the traditions of the elders. Jesus, on the other hand, sees through their world view straight to the heart of the matter. He invokes Isaiah as He warns them against putting themselves ahead of God as they teach their “human precepts” as if they were God’s doctrine. Jesus clearly tells them, “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” A clear result of the ‘fall’ as witnessed in His time and in the tragedy of today’s society where the priorities of God, family, community, and career has been replaced with what is simply good for me is the best there is. The parallel can be drawn from the central idea of how the first century Jews neglected their responsibilities to their parents by shifting the support to some greater good. This same example can be seen in our societies today, as parents are warehoused in facilities for their own good, as the children who are parents of children attend to more important duties. This is just one facet of a multidimensional dilemma. As Jesus said Himself, “And you do many such things.”
Today’s consequence of this ‘me first’ world view and those who have succumb and subscribe to it, is a world where individuals have garnished for themselves huge quantities of money, their god, literally tens of billions, and in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. They have extracted this money from our economy while others languish in sorrow and poverty. Jesus’ contemporary example of how the inconsistencies of the human condition, what He referred to as the traditions of their time, distorted and deluded the divine Word of God given to the peoples and more particularly, the Jews of the time. He was showing them how the written words of God, delivered to them through Moses as the Ten Commandments, were corrupted by man as they created the god man made. We too, in our ego driven world have created many gods for our own gain. Is it any wonder Albert Einstein made the astute observation that the most powerful force in the universe is “compound interest.” This simple logic leads me to believe, that things will get worse before they get worse. At least the pagan of biblical times put their gods before themselves, not so in our times, nothing is more important than what is convenient at the moment, not even life itself.
Perhaps we should consider Jesus’ example of how the first century Zionist skirted the duties to their parents under the watchful and approving eye of the powers in charge. This surely is an example they could recognize since it was being lived out in their time and place. We, as twenty-first century Christians understand that Christ Jesus was not bound by time or space. The very notion that He died for our sins is not a rhetorical statement or a symbolic feel-good idea. For Him, everything which had ever happened, everything which was happening, everything that would ever happen, and everything that would never happen, was all happening at the same time. He could see in each of us, the thoughtless sins of our youth, the manipulations and ambitious jousting as we positioned ourselves for personal profits, the transgressions great and small which turned us away from right worship interrupting the free flow of His grace. We know He spoke those words to the Pharisees so long ago, but perhaps what was breaking His heart were the words written in our time. Just maybe He was seeing how we put ourselves ahead of God, just as Adam and Eve had done, just as the Pharisees were doing. Just maybe, He was reading the words of our Supreme Court, which are “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” We know He was speaking to the Pharisees in ways they could understand just as He is speaking to us in ways we can understand.