Category: Saints

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Standing in the Gap

Holy Week invites us into Hope.

Hope sounds lovely, until you actually get into the hoping. There is an often painful gap between what is and what is yet to be!

Jesus literally stands in the gap. He is the one mediator between the human race and God, who eagerly desires all men and women to experience his fullness (1 Timothy 2:4-5). Jesus burns with desire to celebrate the heavenly Passover and so share God’s abundance with his beloved children (Luke 22:15). He suffers intensely in his longing – because God’s chosen children so often do not desire what he desires for them, causing him to weep over our hardness of heart (Matthew 23:37).

Jesus stands in the gap between heaven and earth, He stands especially with the poor, the outcast, the abused, and the abandoned. In his Passion, he willingly plunges into the depths of human misery, uniting himself with all the agony that any of us have ever experienced.

My understanding of the Passion shifted significantly over the last decade as I began experiencing the healing love of Jesus. I used to focus more on how much Jesus suffered physically, how hard he tried, or how much he sacrificed. Looking at the Cross would sometimes cause me to feel that I needed to be better or do more. Without realizing it, I was restlessly striving to be “good enough” so that I could be worthy of love.

Jesus reminded me how his Passion is much more about union. He brings his love and truth into all the darkest and most chaotic moments of human existence. He willingly unites himself with the particular sufferings of each member of the human race. He brings the perfect communion of his eternal Love into each and every one of those places. We are no longer alone in our misery. Love wins.

Little by little, he’s shown me how he was always there in my most agonizing moments – not only my worst sins but also all the moments in which I ever felt terrified, ashamed, powerless, alone, abandoned, neglected, or unprotected. Some of those moments were quite early in my life. And then they’ve been reinforced again and again in no shortage of agonizing situations. It’s a very familiar story to me to feel misunderstood, abandoned, and left alone and unprotected in the face of a massive threat. In those moments, it feels not only like I’ll be alone and unprotected in the face of overwhelming chaos, but that my very lovability is on the line as I walk on the edge of that knife. Impossible pressure. Exhausting to try so hard. But so familiar to me.

On any given day, present-day struggles can still elicit embodied memories of all the times I have felt that way. In comes the seduction of the evil one for me to seize control of my life and manage things for myself. That may come in the form of a restless pressure to produce or accomplish. When that gets unbearable and exhausting, then I am prone to escaping and avoiding and self-soothing. And if I begin to feel violently tossed around in that spin cycle, I am even more prone to isolate and not want to be seen and known by others (how could they love me now?). Unchecked, that isolation and fragmentation become a living hell.

I’ve learned from neuroscience that these initial reactions happen automatically and instantly (in a fraction of a second). I’d so much rather not have the reaction in the first place. But that’s not how the brain and nervous system work. God hardwired us so that our bodies can remember, adapt, anticipate, and react for survival – before the rational brain even gets involved.

What has changed in me, little by little, is a growing gentle awareness of reactions as they start happening, and a growing invitation from Jesus to be one with him in his Passion – even when I can’t just shake it off. On retreat this summer, he showed me what it was like for him when every one of the apostles forsook him and fled (Matthew 26:56). He showed me the union between him and me in every moment of abandonment in my life. He didn’t stop these moments from happening, but he was always there, loving me and choosing me. If he and I are one in the Passion, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well (even if it feels awful in the tension of the present).

The good fruit of this invitation is most obvious to me when he invites me to stand at the Cross of others. In those moments, I get to weep with those who weep, and to witness what it’s really like for them. I get to stand with them in the gap. I know this has been a great gift to many abuse survivors, who often feel like they are unwelcomed and unwanted in our churches. The community and/or the clergy often don’t want to be burdened with the full truth, the messy symptoms, or the painful tension of what it is like for some of the suffering members of Christ. There are times in witnessing the suffering of others that I simply feel the ache of the love of Jesus on behalf of that beloved child of God. Sometimes there are no words, but only tears or groans. They know the difference between someone standing at the foot of their Cross and someone forsaking them and fleeing.

Jesus invites us as beloved disciples to stand with him at the Cross on Good Friday (and to stand with others who are painfully united with him as members of the suffering Body of Christ). He invites us to stand in the gap of Holy Saturday – trusting in his promise of goodness and resurrection and perhaps having no idea how all will be well.

Few do. In the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” We prefer to flee from the tension of Hope.

Early in my healing journey, I thought that healing would make the pain and tension go away. Had I known that I would suffer even more, I may have fled! Healing is not always the elimination of tension or pain.  It’s an ongoing encounter with God’s love and truth. It shatters our loneliness and brings you and me ever more deeply into love and communion. If we look at the Saints, we see that this lived communion actually brings more suffering, even as it brings more joy and peace.

One suffering I never anticipated was seeing with ever greater clarity what is diseased and unwell in Christ’s Church. The more I heal, the more clearly I see unnamed abuses, an unwillingness to let go of power structures (not just among clergy but also in parish communities), an unwillingness to be with others in big and intense emotions, a preference to spiritualize or intellectualize, and a contempt or marginalization of people who don’t fit the culture of our comfortable club.

I know very few Christians who are really great at standing at the foot of another’s Cross. Sometimes I’ve felt judgment or contempt on this point, but more and more I realize how much it makes sense. This is where the Church was during Holy Week, when Jesus willingly entered his Passion. All of his chosen priests forsook him and fled – just as I often have. One, apparently, came back on Good Friday to stand with the three Mary’s at the foot of the Cross. Mary Magdalene and a few of the faithful women came to the tomb Easter morning (amidst agonizing tension and loss), while the chosen leaders of the Church cowered in the upper room, and most others were nowhere to be found.

I have huge Hope and imagination for what the Church could be like, as I and others begin to embrace the invitation to stand in the gap. This gives me a sense of what Martin Luther King, Jr. must have felt when he gave his “I have a dream” speech. It’s exciting to see Hope surging in the hearts of some. But it’s agonizing and paralyzing when others exhibit hostility, passive resistance, or apathy when invited to the wedding feast.

Meanwhile, you and I are invited to stand in the gap – just as Moses stood between the stubborn and hard-hearted Israelites and the God who was leading them into so much more. No amount of rational arguments or meticulous strategic planning will change people’s hearts. You can’t coerce someone to give up their precious self-preservation and survival tactics. I was so struck on retreat this summer at how Jesus lovingly chose the disciples and told them repeatedly how much they were worth in his Father’s eyes (Matthew 6:28-30; 10:31), even as he told the truth to them about their fear and their turning away from him. He knew that they wouldn’t be ready until they were ready, and that some of them would never want it.

Mother Mary is the ultimate model of Hope. At each moment of her story, she stands in the gap, waiting for God’s promises to unfold. She sees with clarity the flaws and resistance of the apostles, and stands patiently in their midst, trusting and waiting for the divine goodness she knows will ultimately emerge. And it does.

Jesus invites you and me as beloved disciples to join her and the Saints of every age, to stand in that gap, to abide patiently in the tension of already-but-not-yet, to taste and see how good God is while waiting together for so much more.

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Embracing Paradox

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Even in turning to God, we are likely – in our urge to escape the pain of this paradox – to engage in yet another form of irritable grasping or controlling in the face of eternal mysteries that are never for sale, and will repel any attempts as seizing or sieging.

I’ve been reading the comments of a few thousand participants in the listening sessions I facilitated for my diocese this fall. You can feel attempts at grasping among many of our longtime parishioners who (in a world where everything has changed so much and so rapidly) expect their parish church to be the one place where nothing changes – only it already has, many times over. You can feel the grasping in the comments of hundreds of others who expect everyone else to adopt their political or liturgical ideology. If only we all thought this way, or all did things this way, our pain and suffering would go away. They forget the flaming sword that will not permit us to return to Eden (Genesis 3:24).

I empathize with their fear and restlessness because I know those movements in my own heart! I have my own versions of grasping or striving or hiding when the tension feels unbearable.

The real invitation is go deeper into the paradox without trying to escape it, nor to escape the tension found therein. This is exactly what Jesus and Mary do on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Jesus, true God and true man, does not erase or eliminate the dreadful consequences of our human freedom. Rather, he brings eternal love into the depths of our humanity, loves us to the end, and invites us back into relationship – with his Father and with each other.

His mother Mary does not do what so many churchgoers do when feeling the powerlessness of this paradox. She offers no fixing, no advice, no comparisons with others who have it worse, no backing away from his Cross. She stands with and witnesses.

Her with-ness and witness continue on Holy Saturday, a day of Sabbath – a day of stillness and rest. “Be still, and know that I am God” – these words sound so pleasant and peaceful in other settings. Not so much on a day of Sabbath rest in which your Son is buried in the tomb, and you are utterly powerless. Even then, rather than grasping or escaping, Mary embraces the promises of Jesus and waits in Hope amidst the paradox, not knowing how he will fulfill these promises until it actually happens.

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, when so many questions remain unanswered, when the disciples are still downcast and doubtful, she abides with them and prays with them for nine days (Acts 1:10-14). They learn from her the capacity for passion and compassion that she exhibited so beautifully at each earlier moment of her discipleship, a capacity which grew and deepened as each mystery unfolded.

Yes, prayer and liturgy and Church are all part of our human response to this painful paradox – not so much being the answer itself, but the context in which The Answer can be encountered, again and again, stretching our capacity to receive – which also means stretching our capacity to suffer! The suffering of the Saints does not diminish as they grow closer to God. The greater their longing, the greater the gap feels between them and the living God. The greater their willingness to stay connected to others, the greater their capacity to suffer with. Show me even a few such saints, and I’ll show you a church community that is thriving on mission!

I find Brené Brown’s words both comforting and emboldening: “Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist. The longer we can hold that paradox, the greater our capacity to see and honor one another in our fullness AND in our contradictions.”

Faith and Christian community are essential, not as an escape from the tension of this world, but as a shared receptivity of the eternal, and of the mystery of each human person. It is in abiding relationship and receptivity that we can glimpse and taste the goodness of the Kingdom of God, and can persevere in our sojourning until this world definitively passes away, when Jesus comes again with full righteousness, wiping every tear away and abolishing death forever.

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Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a fascinating human experience. It can be playful or delightful, as when old friends reunite. Suddenly they are in tears or side-splitting laughter as they recall long-forgotten songs or jokes or shared antics. Their recalling of story after story rekindles old connections, and everyone feels gratitude and joy. Alternatively, nostalgia can evoke a deep and wistful longing for what once was or what might have been. I have written before about the Welsh word Hiraeth. In its darker forms, nostalgia can also evoke rage or blame or contempt toward those who allegedly ruined the good things that used to be – even to the point of scapegoating and violence. If you study the history of any genocide, you will find nostalgia in the mix.

Not all nostalgia is helpful, and not all nostalgia is truthful. As Brené Brown suggests, “Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”

It’s not uncommon for me as a priest to hear a resentful rant about how America used to be the greatest nation on earth, but now…those people…

Sometimes, I will kindly and playfully ask, “Do you think that’s the story Jesus will tell us when he comes again? Is he going to assemble all the nations and every human who has ever lived to sit and listen to how much greater America was than all the other nations?” That usually gives some pause to the person. It reminds me of the school kids modifying their story when they realized that my friend (their principal) had been viewing the entire incident on the security camera.

The truth is that our American story is quite a mix of greatness and darkness. It includes some of us living privileged lives at the expense of others. Nostalgia becomes a drug to distract our notice from what it is really like to be downtrodden and oppressed. God never forgets his little ones. Judgment Day will uncover the full truth of how we choose to love and serve the poor (Matthew 25:31-46). G.K. Chesterton wrote a century ago, during an age in which nationalism was also running high. As he explained then, genuine patriotism is not loving your nation as better than all the others. It’s loving your nation because it’s your home.

Whether we realize it or not, we tend to edit our stories. Day and night (including in our dreams), our brains are at work, trying to make sense and meaning of our human experience. If it’s not safe to feel grief or hurt or anger or intense unmet desire, we are prone to tell a more pristine story about how things used to be. We will play up the beautiful and happy memories and hide away the dark or disturbing ones. We will bury our deeper longings and settle for a superficial nostalgia.

I’m nearly finished reading Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance. All his writings invite a healthy asceticism that helps reclaim and re-order the intense longing of the human heart. These longings are “very good,” and can only truly be satisfied through God’s plan to have us share in his divine life and become truly like Him. Our deepest nostalgia is for our heavenly homeland, which leaves its traces everywhere in this creation. We are homesick for the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.

Nostalgia that only looks backwards will ultimately leave us disappointed, disillusioned, empty, and embittered. It will sap our Hope. This world and all the things in it are passing away. Nothing here can ultimately satisfy our intense and unquenchable longing.

Varden reflects on Jesus’ seemingly random reference: “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). Lot’s wife looked back, and turned into a pillar of salt. As Varden explains it, we are prone to sacrifice a good future by turning back to what is left behind. Therefore, Jesus goes on to explain that we will lose our life if we try to save it, and find our life if we are willing to give all.

This fall, I’ve been reminding people of those words of Jesus, as I travel the nineteen counties of my diocese. I’ve been facilitating a few dozen listening sessions as we launch our renewal efforts, inviting a pivot from maintenance to mission. I’ve tried to avoid the equivalent of a Pawnee Town Hall Meeting, successfully in every case but one. In order to allow everyone a voice (especially Jesus!) we’ve included silent time to reflect and write. Of course, that leaves me reading through the written reflections of over 3,000 participants.

In my reading, I am finding no small amount of nostalgia for an “amazing” past that was probably not as flourishing and carefree as the person remembers. Nor is the nostalgia limited to one political or theological ideology. Many people, understandably (but unrealistically) just want things to go back to the way they used to be. Or they just want to hold on to some small scrap. Or they blame “those people” for wrecking everything. Or they are simply resigned to ongoing decline. Can you hear the grieving process here (denial, bargaining, blame, depression)? Neither our culture nor most of our church communities know how to grieve well these days. I am noticing a palpable proportionality: the more intense the nostalgia for a supposedly glamorous past, the less imagination there is for a hopeful future.

Nostalgia that gets stuck in the past enables us to bypass our grief. It becomes toxic and ultimately lethal. It will kill our Hope. It is only when we are willing to enter together the pain of the Cross and the Tomb that we can be surprised with the Hope of the resurrection.

The Mass allows us to experience genuine nostalgia. We remember the saving events of Jesus’ death and resurrection in a way that makes them truly present. But the Mass is also a memory of the future. We gain a foretaste and anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb. We become again and again what we one day will be – each of us individually and all of us collectively in a one-flesh union with the Bridegroom.

There is a reason why words like hiraeth or saudade or Sehnsucht have provoked endless reflection from poets and mystics. We were created for eternal communion with the living God. We ache for a homeland that we cannot yet fully receive.  For most humans most of the time, it is easier to bury or avoid or escape that longing.  To desire and not yet possess is perhaps the greatest suffering – known and embraced by all the Saints. The more they desired, the more they joyfully received, and the more they joyfully received, the more they suffered in their desiring.

This, perhaps, is why the Saints were so often unwelcomed and persecuted, not only or even chiefly by this world, but by the very Church they loved and served. The witness of the Saints awakens longing and invites conversion from a merely human nostalgia. In the presence of the Kingdom of God, there is no standing still, no comfortable plateaus to settle on. Any earthly power or privilege will be turned on its head, and exposed – not as evil – but as inadequate for answering our deepest questions or filling our deepest longings. Idols are often the beautiful work of human hands. We don’t like to remove them from the holy place of longing in our heart that belongs to God alone. Waiting with empty hands is scary.

What are your idols? What are the idols of your civic community or of your church community? Where does most of your nostalgic energy go?

As we celebrate another All Saints’ Day, may we feel their invitation to embrace our deepest longings and renew our trust that God is faithful and true to His promises. Come, Lord Jesus!

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Emotions and Moral Virtue

What is virtue?

When I ask that question among Christians, the conversation typically turns to shoulds and have to’s. Virtuous people do the things they are supposed to do. The job of parents and Church leaders is to make sure we do the things we are supposed to do. What is most needed in this view is moral clarity about the rules. The world is full of unvirtuous people because parents and the Church haven’t been teaching clearly enough. If only we have more clear and distinct ideas about morality, all will be well (can you hear the influence of Descartes here?).

When I ask similar questions about emotions as they relate to virtue, at best emotions are named as “neutral.” More often, they’re viewed as a threat or obstacle. We can’t trust our emotions. Morality requires us to subjugate and control them.

“Love is a choice, not a feeling,” I’ll hear Christians say. Or they will even misquote Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) as teaching that “love is willing the good of another.”

Thomas does say something like that (Summa Theologiae I-II q. 26, a. 4). But he’s actually talking in that passage about love as a desire or an emotion, not yet love as a theological virtue.  He says that when we experience love as a desire, we want good for someone – whether ourselves or another. That desire for good may be rightly ordered or disordered. It is quite possible to want good things for others while trying to manage or control them (just look at the helicopter or Zamboni parents of my generation!).

Thomas actually sees these core human appetites as fundamentally good, and needing the direction and guidance of faith and reason. We desire pleasure and goodness; we are zealous for difficult goods. Often enough, that desire for pleasure is disordered, with a willingness to use or consume or manipulate. Often enough, our anger becomes a weapon used to harm ourselves or others.

I was blown away during my silent retreat last month. I spent much of the time praying with Matthew’s Gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about anger and lust (Matthew 5:21-30). Occasionally, I glanced at the original Greek as well as the Latin Vulgate translation that was familiar to Thomas Aquinas. In the Vulgate, Jesus speaks of one who is angry (irascitur) or one who views another with lustful desire (ad concupiscendum). It was one of those “aha!” moments for me – this is where Thomas Aquinas gets his seemingly technical names for the “irascible appetite” and the “concupiscible appetite.” All humans have these two core appetites: a passionate zeal for righteousness and an eager desire for pleasure and delight. Fundamentally, these two inner drives of the human heart are VERY GOOD, even though, as Jesus teaches, they are in need of integration and re-ordering toward the Kingdom of God.

Thomas Aquinas uses the word “passions” to describe what we would call emotions. The word “passion” literally means something that happens to us. We passively experience it. The word “emotion” suggests an interior movement in our body as a reaction to what we are experiencing. Every emotion, in his view, is an expression of one or both of these core human appetites. True, these desires and emotions are often disordered because of the Fall – but so is our will!

Oh, how interesting it would be if Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas were alive today. They curiously and keenly observed human nature, without the benefit of contemporary neurological research. Today, I am convinced, they would be fascinated by our insights into the brain’s limbic system and prefrontal cortex. Thomas observed that humans have a “common sense” – a part of our brain that blends all of our sensory input into one unified impression. This is how neuroscientists today understand the thalamus (with the exception of the sense of smell). Thomas observed how humans can behave like hunted deer, who have an embodied memory causing them to flee at the sight of a human form. This is how neuroscientists today understand the amygdala. It’s our brain’s security system. Before any sensory input reaches our rational brain, it runs through the amygdala, which sometimes launches us into a fight, flight, or freeze response. These reactions happen automatically, within ¼ of a second. They are pre-rational.

I recall a decade ago, driving home from a Friday night football game. I suddenly sensed a large spider rappelling down an inch in front of my face. Somehow, I found my car pulled over to the curb and myself seated in the passenger seat in less than three seconds. Only then did my rational brain register the situation, with no small amount of astonishment at what I had just achieved. Imagine if it had been a bat! 

I find that so very many Christians (myself included) attempt to grow in “virtue” by no longer having emotional reactions. That approach is dishonoring of the inherent goodness of our bodies. It’s also impossible! First comes the reaction of our limbic brain. Only a few seconds later does it register in our prefrontal cortex – unless our reaction is so intense that we stay stuck in a trauma response. With time and training, our reactions can be received and redirected. But they still happen. Developmentally, this type of training takes years. It’s what is “supposed to” happen in childhood.

Virtue is not a matter of eliminating emotion, nor of subjugating or controlling it. The virtuous person habitually, calmly, and skillfully gives rational guidance and direction to emotions. That is where the prefrontal cortex comes in – the highest and most developed part of our brain. It allows us a calm noticing, which in turn allows what today is called “affect regulation.” Our emotions settle down when they feel the acceptance and calm rational presence of the prefrontal cortex. They are then willing to accept direction – just like a child who truly trusts her caregivers.

Classically, this is exactly what moral virtue is – giving calm rational guidance to our emotions so that they can be ordered toward the good. Our emotions will not authentically accept rational guidance if they are not first received with curiosity and kindness.

Here is where emotionally intelligent parenting comes in. Rather than shaming children for feeling how they feel, mature parents are able to receive the big emotions of their children. They show a curiosity and compassion for what is happening in the bodies and hearts of their children. They help them make sense of it all. Every time that happens, neural pathways are formed and reinforced.

At least 70% of the information in our nervous system flows from the bottom up – as sensory input coming from our body to our brain. When that information is received without judgment, then calm and consistent direction can be given.

Many of us literally lack the neural circuitry for virtue to happen. Sure, we can suppress or subjugate our emotional reactions. We can flog them with “shoulds.” We can exile them or lock them up. But that is not virtue. That is external compliance (perhaps even 90-95% of the time). It leaves us feeling unfree, or even living a double life.

Many people come to priests asking, “Why do I keep doing that???” I gently invite them to notice the tone of voice in their question. We can ask the same question with intense self-contempt or with childlike curiosity (or somewhere in between). Only when there is curiosity and kindness does virtue begin to be possible.

What does this mean? I would suggest that most of us Christians today are not yet in the realm of moral virtue. We have a lot of pre-moral work to do, kindly accepting and patiently integrating our emotions – all the things we needed to happen earlier in life, but did not (and probably have not for multiple generations in most of our families). When you are in survival mode, there is less space for curiosity and kindness.

That is why, when people ask me, “Where did you grow up?” I am barely joking when I respond, “Oh, I’m still growing up!” I am still coming to accept that daily reactions will happen inside of me – frequently and sometimes rather intensely. I am coming to appreciate that it is precisely my capacity to be impacted by others, to receive them vulnerably, and to be moved by their uniqueness and their beauty, that allows me to love them with honor and delight.

May we all become again like little children, allowing ourselves to be moved anew by goodness and beauty in the world around us, and especially in other humans. May we all receive the patient nurture and care that we always needed. Then it becomes possible to become truly mature and wholehearted in virtuous living.

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“Mission” is a Way of Being

Greetings friends. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared any writing. A heartfelt thank you to those who have gently encouraged me to write! It brings out the best in me.

Just over a year ago, my diocese received a new bishop.  From the get-go, he has indicated a desire for our diocese “to pivot from maintenance to mission.” We began by extending that invitation to our priests, but are about to expand it to everyone in the diocese.

When you hear the word “mission,” what first enters you mind?

I find, both for myself and for others, our thoughts immediately race into tasks that we do. Historically, we recall the perilous voyages and arduous labors of Saint Paul or Saint Francis Xavier. In our present-day context, we think of all the problems needing fixing and how we can accomplish more. We form a task list and begin checking off boxes. We set measurable goals and objectives to ensure that we don’t “fail” in our mission.

It’s easy to miss the deeper truth: “mission” is a way of being, and we are already assured of victory. Mission begins with our shared identity in Christ, who is “from the Father” while abiding in perfect union with the Father.

In the Nicene Creed, these truths flash like fireworks. This very month, we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the closing deliberations of the great Council of Nicea, which promulgated the first draft of the Creed we profess every Sunday.

Jesus Christ is “begotten, not made.” He is eternally in a relationship of equality with his Father, even though he is “from” the Father. He was not produced or achieved by the Father. He and his Father are one, in a relationship of mutual delight. The Holy Spirit is that eternal bond of love, that shared delight, that shared glory.

The bishops at Nicea borrowed philosophical terms like “consubstantial” (in Greek, homoousios) in order to express with greater precision what was always there in the Gospels. The bishop Arius and his followers were outraged at this new terminology, insisting that Jesus could not be from the Father unless “there was once when he was not.” They were not thinking of God as an abiding relationship. They were thinking in terms of before and after, greater than and less than.

The Arian heresy actually gained momentum following the Council of Nicea. Five decades later, Saint Jerome lamented the situation: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” In 381, the bishops of the Church convened again, this time in Constantinople. They expanded the wording of the Creed, now drawing from the brilliant contributions of Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa – all of whom understood God as an eternal relationship.

It’s hard for us humans to imagine what eternal relationship is like. Even if God never created us or any universe at all, God would be just as good and just as great. “God is love” even without any creatures to love. And Jesus is eternally sent forth. “Mission” is his way of being in relationship.

“Mission” literally means “sending forth.” When we live in a state of felt threat and felt scarcity, we gravitate to a militaristic understanding of mission: important or powerful individuals send forth less important ones, who achieve objectives under obedience to orders. It’s a partial truth that obscures the larger reality.

Indeed, heresy causes the most damage when it is almost true. It’s more seductive that way.

In the fullness of time, the Father actually does send his Son on a rescue mission. Jesus enters this occupied world in stealth, born in an obscure town in the dead of night. Only social outcasts like the shepherds witness his birth. He lives a hidden life in Nazareth for three decades. But when he is baptized and anointed by the Holy Spirit, and audibly claimed as the Father’s beloved, the devil is clearly concerned. He tempts Jesus in the desert. He probes Jesus throughout the Gospels, seeking to unravel the identity of this divinely anointed man. Like Sauron in Lord of the Rings, the devil cannot fathom God’s actual plan. He cannot envision the eternal Son of God emptying himself and willingly sharing in all the suffering of every human. So the devil sadistically delights in the darkness of Good Friday, realizing – too late – that his kingdom has been overthrown and the human race has been rescued by the blood of the Lamb.

Yes, Jesus obediently “does” these things as one who is sent on a rescue mission. But as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) reminds us in his Eucharistic hymn (Verbum Supernum Prodiens), Jesus enters his Passion without ever leaving the Father’s bosom. Any earthly “doing” of Jesus flows from his secure identity as the eternally begotten Son of God. His mission is primarily his way of being, how he relates to the Father, how he relates to us, and how he invites us into relationship. Being “on mission” means abiding in abundant connection, which overflows into fruitful self-giving.

I know this core truth, but I so easily forget. I get sucked into survival mode and familiar feelings of scarcity. I feel the expectations from without and from within. I feel that old and familiar fear of failure – beneath which is an even deeper fear that no one will love me. It’s so easy in those moments to feel the suffocating pressure of “I don’t have time for that!” Then I flop back and forth between a pressurized doing and mindless escaping, neglecting what matters most, what would actually bring my relationships alive.

Writing is not what matters most for me, but it is truly good for me. It connects me with my emotions and needs, opening my imagination and childlike playfulness. It helps me abide. In this renewal project, I will bring more joy and creativity to my labors if I allow myself to abide and receive.

Part of the problem is that we in the West have been swimming in toxic waters for at least 500 years. The misguided exaltation of doing over being has become so normalized that we barely notice it. Little by little, it has infected not only our cultures but our churches as well, alluring us with its seductive power while robbing us of joy and peace.

The Gospel is indeed liberating “Good News.” As my bishop once preached, “It doesn’t depend on you – and it never has.” We get to share in the fullness of Christ, who always shares in the fullness of his Father. Secure in that love, we go into the world as Christ did, not with fear of failure or grasping for power, but with full confidence in the unshakable Love of the Kingdom. Mission is a way of being.

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Desire

Human beings desire.

Depending on who you listen to, you will hear how desire is one of the very best dimensions of being human, or how desire is at the root of evil and misery. What is the deeper truth?

Throughout history, across cultures and sects, there have been many movements seeking to eliminate human desire. In Greek and Roman culture, the Stoics taught a path of detachment from human emotions and desires. They only trouble your soul and cloud your judgment. Moreover, desiring what is beyond your station in life leads to restlessness, conflict, and misery. Solution: detach from emotion and desire. In Buddhism, the “Four Noble Truths” teach that suffering comes from human desire attaching itself to that which is unstable. The “Eightfold Path” allows the cessation of desire and opening up to nirvana. In the sunni Islamic tradition, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350) described how human desire fits into the divine plan: “Allah created angels with reason and no desires, animals with desires and no reason, and man with both reason and desires. So if a man’s reason is stronger than his desire he is like an angel, and if his desires are stronger than his reason, then he is like an animal.”

Within Christianity, if you study the greatest mystics and saints, you will discover an intensity of desire that is indeed far stronger than reason, without denigrating reason. In those holy women and men, we see that their desire is at one and the same time their greatest consolation and their greatest agony. We will see why in a moment.

Unfortunately, many Christians over the centuries have found it easier to cast suspicion on desire. A dualisim easily emerges, separating soul and body, viewing spirit as good and flesh as bad. Such movements have plenty of Scriptures to appeal to as proof texts! The apostle Paul speaks often of a battle between flesh and spirit.

In New Testament Greek, the word for desire is typically epithumía (as a noun) or epithuméo (as a verb). The noun form shows up in 37 passages, and the verb form in 16. In terms of sheer number, the passages overwhelmingly describe desire as something negative that we should flee from – except when they don’t. And those exceptions are well worth looking at!

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins the conversation at the Last Supper by declaring, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). To a Hebrew ear, the double expression of “desire” speaks of an intensity or abundance. Jesus has been pining for this moment. A long-anticipated and long-swelling desire is now reaching a crescendo. Compare it with Jesus’ words ten chapters earlier, when he describes his intention to cast fire upon the earth, and his anguish in waiting until all is accomplished (Luke 10:49-50).

The apostles, meanwhile, are still distracted by their disordered desires, their insecurities, and their fears. As Jesus expresses to his companions the deepest longings of his heart, as he is about to enter into the darkest moments of his human experience, they break into an argument about who among them is the greatest (Luke 22:24). Their desire for greatness is both like and unlike that of Jesus. Jesus does not shame them for having the desire, but instead resituates and reorients it within the Kingdom of God. The greatest among them shall be like the littlest children, and those with authority are to be those who serve. Moreover, he is indeed conferring on them a Kingdom and seating them on thrones of judgment (Luke 22:25-30). Their desire for greatness is inherently good, albeit disordered and thereby diminished and harmful. And Jesus is remarkably accepting of their slowness of heart! He is aware of the impending denials and betrayals. He loves them anyway. Following his Paschal victory, and especially following the gift of the Holy Spirit, they will be ready for their desire to go in a new direction.

Let’s consider the other exceptional case in which the verb “desire” (epithuméo) is expressed as incredibly positive. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus describes how intensely the prophets and holy ones desired to see what the disciples see, and to hear what they hear (Matthew 13:17). Those prophets and holy ones agonized in their desire. Again and again, they cried out, “How long, O Lord??” (Revelation 6:10; Psalm 13:1). They lived by faith, as foreigners and pilgrims who only got to glimpse the promised land from afar (Hebrews 11:13).

It would have been so much easier for those prophets or holy ones to heed the advice of the Stoics and suppress their emotions and desires. It would have been easier for Jesus, too! He cries out from the Cross, “I thirst!” and “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!” You can hear the intensity of human longing in those cries – the cumulative force of every unmet longing throughout the centuries, welling up from the deepest places of the human heart – for those who had the wherewithal to feel and express that longing, uncertain how it would ever be fulfilled.

To desire and not yet possess; to wait for the fulfillment of desire – it is perhaps one of the hardest human things to do, and the most worthwhile.

And here we can begin to see what’s really happening with all the disordered desires that Scripture and Tradition consistently warn against. The problem is not desiring too much – it’s desiring far too little! It’s allowing our desire to get stuck in this fallen world and the things in it that are passing away (cf. 1 John 2:17) – versus allowing our desires (even our petty or disordered ones) to be consecrated to the Kingdom of God.

Desire grows in the waiting. Our capacity to receive increases as we await fulfillment. Can we learn to be present to our desire, and be okay when it is unfulfilled? Easier said than done!

We speak often of distracting or binging or pursuing addictions as a way of surviving hard stuff or a way of numbing pain. Perhaps that’s partially true. But much more frequently, are we not saying “I can’t bear to feel this unmet desire any longer – I have to release myself from this tension!!”?

Plunging into addictive pleasures is one way of releasing the tension of desire. It’s the path of the younger “prodigal” son in Luke 15. But we can also be like the older brother and live in management mode – burying our desire and staying on the surface with familiar rules and rituals. When I am avoiding my own big desires (as I have been the last couple of days), I tend to ping-pong between the two. When I reconnect with what’s really happening in my body and my heart, when I let the Lord closer, I weep and reawaken in my longing.

I realize it can be a cliché, but the Kingdom of God is “already but not yet.” Hopefully we have had moments in which we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good – those Mount Tabor moments like Peter, James, and John getting a glimpse of glory from Jesus. I must be, as they say, a “stubborn Pollock” because I have had many such moments, and still revert to my game of ping pong. The deeper invitation is for me to abide in the tension, the “already but not yet” – and remember that I am securely loved the whole time. I don’t have to make anything happen.

Such is the witness of the Virgin Mary and her spouse Joseph. They obey God when he invites, but mostly wait in great tension to see how it’s all going to work out. Such was the witness of Simeon and Anna all those long decades preceding the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Such was the witness of the prophets and saints of the Old Testament who desired to see what you and I get to begin seeing.

Waiting in desire is so hard. Experiencing endings of good things, unexpected losses, or betrayals only makes it harder. It’s so much easier to turn against desire and find ways not to feel it. Without belonging in love to a safe and loving community, it’s virtually impossible to abide in desire. And God has placed nothing short of a desire for eternity into our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

We are indeed meant for connection, for delight, for honor, and for greatness. May we be kind to ourselves as we admit the truth of our minimizing, avoiding, and sabotaging of desire. May we love and support one another as we wait in hope. May our desire grow in the waiting, as we receive and are received ever more abundantly into the Body of Christ that is already real but not yet come to full stature. Come, Lord Jesus!