Category: Theology

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The Cloak of Bartimaeus

The cloak of Bartimaeus is a curious detail in the Gospel of Mark (see Mark 10:46-52).  The blind man throws it aside as he springs up and rushes to Jesus. He never goes back to retrieve his cloak. Healed of his blindness, he joins with Jesus and his disciples as they leave town.

What ever became of that cloak? How did he come by it in the first place? How long had he had it? Why did he leave it behind as he followed Jesus? And why does Mark even bother to mention it? Little details like these matter – especially when reading the shortest of the four Gospels. Mark mentions the cloak as a detail because he is trying to teach us something.

“Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”

It is intriguing that Bartimaeus cries out “have mercy on me!” – in Greek, eleison me – echoing ancient liturgical words quite familiar to Catholics and Orthodox, who chant Kyrie Eleison at the beginning of our Sunday liturgy, as we call to mind our sins and ask Jesus to have mercy on us. It is interesting that many translations prefer to say “have pity on me” – which isn’t entirely wrong, but tends to reduce this story to a simple physical healing of a blind man. Rather, Bartimaeus’ healing is far more comprehensive than regaining physical sight. Whatever the cause of Bartimaeus’ physical blindness may have been, Mark wants us to know that this man was deeply wounded by sin and its effects.

He is a beggar in Jericho, a city readily associated with sin. It was the city in the Old Testament that Joshua had conquered and annihilated because of its depravity. It was the city chosen by Zacchaeus as his base of operations when he was a shameless and shiftless tax collector exploiting the poor.  It gains mention in the Good Samaritan parable, which many in the early Church saw as telling the story of the Fall and Redemption. The “man” in the story represents all of humanity – choosing to distance himself from God’s city of Jerusalem and descending the slope towards Jericho. Already on a bad path, he is then beaten by robbers, who leave him for dead. In that interpretation (almost universal among the early Church Fathers) Jesus is the Good Samaritan who is moved with compassion and hoists up our hurting humanity, anoints our wounds, and entrusts us to the care of the inn (i.e., the Church!) until he comes again to make all debts right.

The cloak of Bartimaeus is so much more than a cloak. It represents a way of life for him – how he had learned to cope and survive in an existence devoid of intimacy, connection, kindness, or care. He was a beggar, yes, but (one can easily imagine) a highly manipulative and cunning beggar who knew how to take advantage of people and get what he wanted without making any actual connections or commitments.

Instead of real relationships, Bartimaeus had his cloak. It kept him warm – warm enough anyway. It wasn’t the warmth of hearth and home, but it was enough to survive and endure. More importantly, he could hide himself in his cloak, staying isolated physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I imagine that, most of the time, he did not want to be seen. Whatever scraps of pleasure he could manage to carve out for himself, he could then indulge in secretly. His cloak was perhaps the closest thing he had to a friend. His life was not one that knew much by way of nurture of soothing. In his cloak, he managed to find fleeting moments of comfort and safety.  I can only imagine, over time, how dilapidated and disgusting his cloak became. But up to that day, it had been his most loyal companion. How many times had other people betrayed him or harmed him, rejected him or abandoned him? His cloak would not do that! It was predictable, even if it was only a surrogate – even if it was providing less and less authentic comfort or warmth.

How astounding it is that Bartimaeus cries out – repeatedly – “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!!” He makes himself so vulnerable. He risks more mocking and rejection.  Apparently he had decided that he had nothing more to lose. He was ready to risk it all.

It is even more remarkable to me that he leaves his cloak behind – even before Jesus heals him. He recognizes that the cloak – his loyal and faithful companion – is actually an obstacle to real connection. It has hindered him from receiving and will continue hindering if he doesn’t change his ways. More importantly, a desire so intense and deep is welling up in his heart – so strong that it overflows and overpowers his “settling” for survival. He wants to be well!  He intuits that Jesus can give him more – so much more. No doubt, he also hears the whispers of his cloak – warning him that he is making a fool of himself, gently enticing him to hide himself away once again and return to the safety of self-protection. But desire wins the day. Bartimaeus not only cries out all the louder; he actually casts aside his cloak and runs up to Jesus. He wants to see. Jesus heals him. He begins following Jesus.

As is so often the case in the Gospels, we don’t hear “the rest of the story.” I am enough of a student of human nature (including my own) to know that Bartimaeus’ following of Jesus in “The Way” was very likely NOT a linear journey, nor a “one and done” moment of salvation. Rather, it was likely a long and arduous transformational journey of conversion, including shining moments of freedom and triumph as well as plenty of other moments of stumbling and shame. We need only look at Peter and the other disciples to appreciate how long and complex the journey of conversion is.

If you are like me, I imagine that you can relate to the cloak of Bartimaeus! Like Adam and Eve with their fig leaves, it sometimes feels safer to isolate and self-protect rather than to surrender ourselves totally into the hands of the living God.

The invitation to Adam and Eve, the invitation to Bartimaeus, and the invitation to you and me is the same invitation captured beautifully in the erotic love poetry found in Song of Songs Chapter 5. The bride has cast off her cloak and pursues intimacy with her beloved. She will not put her cloak back on when he is inviting her to be one flesh with him! These images of vulnerability and intimacy are mere foretastes of the ultimate invitation God offers to each of us in Jesus. He desires to heal every rupture and restore true intimacy and eternal communion with him and with each other, in a way that will satisfy every ache and longing of our hearts.

What does your cloak look like and feel like? Where in your life do you find yourself hiding or isolating, pulling away from relationships, or preferring the predictable comfort and safety of self-soothing or self-protection? How do you feel about casting aside your cloak and running vulnerably to Jesus to be healed? Do you want to be well?  Do you trust that the healing, love, and communion offered by Jesus will be enough?

Perhaps we need time to grapple with these questions. The Lord honors our freedom, and does not arouse our desire until we are ready (cf. Song of Songs 8:4). When we are ready, we can cast aside our cloak and run to the bridegroom!

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Learning to Saunter

Have you ever had that experience of always assuming you knew what a word meant, only to discover that it actually bears quite a different meaning?

I had one of those moments with the word “saunter.” I had encountered it often in books, usually with the same phraseology: “He sauntered in.”  To me, in context, it always felt synonymous with “strutted,” and I never bothered to look the word up.

But one day I was on vacation, a guest at the home of friends, reading one of those life-coaching plaques in their home (I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess which room of the house it was in).   The plaque gave dozens of tidbits of advice for joyful living.

One of those sage counsels was “Saunter aimlessly.” It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the phrases on the plaque. “Strut aimlessly”??  I suddenly found myself hearing the admonition of Inigo Montoya:

“You keep using that word – I do not think it means what you think it means…”

So I got out my dictionary. Actually, let’s be honest – I got out my smart phone, which is ironic, because the smart phone is quite possibly one of the greatest disrupters of sauntering in all of human existence.  But it gets the job done as a dictionary. The scales fell from my eyes as I read the following:


saun·ter
/ˈsôn(t)ər/
verb
1. walk in a slow, relaxed manner, without hurry or effort.

It was so much more than an “aha!” moment. It was one of those divine taps on the shoulder. Perhaps I had misunderstood this vocabulary word all my life because I am not so skilled at sauntering.

Well actually, that’s not entirely true. Deep down, my heart LOVES to saunter. Have you seen those Family Circus installments that trace little Billy’s meanderings with a dotted line? I definitely have a little child inside that absolutely delights in sautnering – exploring the nooks and crannies of God’s creation in a spirit of curiosity, awe, and adventure. But many other parts of me rise up to squelch that childlike longing.

My workaholic and perfectionistic tendencies don’t tend to leave space for little Derek to saunter. I experience restless urges within me – an urge to “get caught up,” and urge to be constantly productive, and an urge to meet the impossible expectations of others. My inner critic warns me that there is no time for such childish pursuits. If I stop to smell the roses, an inner alarm goes off, warning me to move on to the next thing or raising my internal level of guilt about being selfish or lazy.

I apparently did not know the meaning of the word “saunter” during my four years living in Italy, but it was often right there in front of me. I recall feeling frequently annoyed at the locals, stuck behind them as they strolled aimlessly down the sidewalk – on those few Roman streets that are actually wide enough to have sidewalks. Somehow one Italian could effectively block an eight-foot wide space, always walking down the middle, often smoking a cigarette, and veering randomly to the left or the right as they sauntered along without a care in the world. Italians are not exactly known for efficiency or industriousness, especially the further south one goes. There I was, descended from neurotic Northern Europeans – and even among my own people bearing a legendary reputation for productivity and overachieving. Needless to say, I did not blend in, nor did I try to. I found ways to beat the system and accomplish the tasks I felt driven to do – but not without resentment and frustration. I could have learned some lessons from those Italians.

In truth, we cannot live as humans without sauntering sometimes. Our ultimate purpose in life is to abide with the Lord forever. Each one of us carries deep within us a yearning for rest. If we do not honor that yearning, it will find ways to express itself – often in fruitless fantasies or mindless escapes that do not actually refresh us.

Desiring our happiness and wellbeing, God commands us to engage in Sabbath rest. He rests on the seventh day and invites us to participate in his rest. Easier said than done!

I remember the summer of 1995, at the end of my freshman year of college. I felt a conviction that, as a student, my labor was academic – which means observing Sunday as a day of rest from my studies. I made the decision not to do homework on the Lord’s Day. I thought it would be incredibly hard to “get my work done” without utilizing Sunday. I was wrong there. Those adjustments proved easy to make, and helped me be more intentional about my time the rest of the week. There was no challenge academically. Rather, what surprised me was how exceedingly difficult it proved to spend the newly found time on Sunday in real rest and rejuvenation. I found my heart restless as it tried to indulge in various kinds of entertainment or pleasure.  My prayer felt scattered and distracted. It surprised me that rest could be so hard!

I remember a similar restlessness on many of my retreats over the years – worrying about “doing it right.” I eventually learned that the Lord would bless me regardless, and now I cherish my retreat days each year. They are one of the rare times in the year that I seem to feel greater freedom to saunter. At so many other times, there is something inside of me that seeks to sabotage authentic rest. It doesn’t feel safe to be blessed and to receive. There is a vulnerability in it that is so wonderful and so terrifying at the same time.

I think “sauntering” can be even harder for me, because sauntering still includes a certain sense of movement and purposefulness, albeit in a more carefree manner.  I tend to set myself up with impossible tasks and then always feel in a hurry, always under stress. I walk fast. I drive fast. I plow through tasks. I am disciplined and driven. In that setup, there is little permission to move at a slower pace, to welcome interruptions as opportunities to receive, to wonder at and delight in the amazing beauty that surrounds me.

These moments of sauntering, puttering, meandering – whatever the right term is – are so essential for me to feel safe, to be open and receptive, to notice and to care, to be in awe and to wonder, to learn, to grow, to be generous, to appreciate, to be grateful, to affirm and encourage others, and to praise God. I am so much less human if I do not allow space for sauntering in my life.

Thankfully beauty often breaks through in spite of my defenses. It sneaks in the back door and catches me by surprise.  At those moments I have a choice to make. Will I rush on to the next thing and miss an opportunity to abide with the one who loves me so much? Or will I be kind to myself, allowing myself to take in the goodness and beauty, to savor it, to delight in it, and to praise the God who gives such good gifts?

Jesus, teach me to “saunter aimlessly” and to learn to be at peace when I do so.

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The Descent of Jesus

We enter another Holy Week. Jesus’ hour has come. Although he begs his Father to allow the cup of suffering to pass, in the end Jesus freely and willingly plunges into his Passion for our sake. He drinks the cup to the dregs, descending fully into the depths of human misery, indeed into the very hell that our misused human freedom has “created.”

I love this quotation from Charles de Foucauld (taken from André Daigneault’s The Way of Imperfection):

“All his life, Jesus only descended: descending in his incarnation; descending in becoming a small child; descending in obedience; descending in becoming poor, abandoned, persecuted, tortured; descending in reaching the last place.”

All this descent of Jesus is “for our sake” – as we profess in the Creed.  He desires to redeem us and save us. The redemption he brings is so much more than standing in our place and paying the price on the Cross. Some Christians have a rather narrow or distorted view of atonement that almost paints God as a vengeful and petty deity whose wrath can be appeased only by blood. Jesus reveals our Father to be eternally kind. To be sure, there is a great sense of justice in Jesus paying the price, but that standing in our place says much more about God fully respecting the gift and dignity of human freedom (and its real consequences) than it says about him being in any way demanding.

Jesus tells us why he has come from heaven “for our sake” – to seek out and save what is lost (Luke 19:10). I wrote last time about the great dignity of our human nature, even after the fall. We all have deep and dark places in our hearts in which we feel broken and shattered, marred and disfigured, unlovely and unlovable. Jesus reveals to us that there is no place too deep or too dark for him to enter. His desire to descend is unlimited – or rather, limited only by our resistance to receiving him.

There is so much that is comforting in this message. Jesus is not deterred by how seriously and how often each of us has turned our backs on him. He prays for his persecutors. He does not flinch when his closest companions misunderstand him, abandon him, deny him, or betray him. At Peter’s third denial, Jesus turns toward him with a gaze of kindness that incites Peter to rush outside and shed bitter tears.

The deeper truth of Holy Week is that Jesus desires to descend fully and deeply into the worst of our human experiences in order to rescue us, heal us, transform us, and exalt us. Hebrews 5 tells us that Jesus not only offered prayers and supplications for us, but did so with louds sobs and tears. It was not simply a matter of paying a price. Rather, he freely and willingly united himself with every human experience of misery and suffering – every loss, every betrayal, every rejection, every abandonment, every single moment of darkness. Jesus descended.

Philippians 2 describes the dynamics. Jesus, though truly divine, freely chooses to descend, to empty himself completely and totally for our sake. He is therefore exalted and raised above every other creature. He does this, not for his own glory and exaltation (he had no need of it!), but “for our sake” – in order that where he is, we also may be (John 14:3).

Nor does Jesus descend in order to rescue and exalt the “good” people or the “good enough” people. We are all the lost sheep, the lost coin, his lost sons and daughters. Remember whom he chose to hang around with the most – the poor, the lame, the crippled, and the outcasts – including those considered to be the worst of sinners.

I know in my own life I have often vacillated back and forth between a puffed-up confidence (as though I “have it all together”) and a deep discouragement. In both cases, I am somehow trying to be my own savior. Meanwhile, I need only allow Christ to complete his descent into the places of my heart in which I feel the most desperate and discouraged, and his love begins to transform all.

True Christian humility always brings with it a twofold conviction: (1) My own radical poverty; and (2) unshakable confidence in God’s eternal mercy. This is the humility we see in the Virgin Mary and her Magnificat – her song of praise to God in the presence of Elizabeth (Luke 1:46-55). She deeply understands that all is gift, proclaiming God as her savior – AND she eagerly praises the amazing things he is doing in her and through her, so great that all generations henceforth will call her blessed.

At the Cross, Mary freely shares in the sufferings of her Son, having compassion not only on him, but on every lost child of God who stands in need of mercy. Her Son loves us, and therefore so does she. The fact that many of us keep messing things up does not for a moment cause him to falter in his descent, nor her to falter in her deep motherly compassion on those who suffer with her Son.

How many of us attempt (in our prayers or piety) to try to “go up” to God? How willing are we to be truly vulnerable, to let him see us fully, and to love us where we most need his love? Do we not sometimes take the lead of Adam and Eve in the fall, hiding ourselves from God and covering our nakedness?  Toxic shame is one of the devil’s favorite tools to convince us that no one would ever love us as we are.

The descent of Jesus says otherwise. He desires every piece and fragment of our broken hearts. There is no limit to his desire to descend.

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Prayer as Desire

Lent is a sacred time in which many of us resolve to be deepened in prayer. Joining Jesus in the wilderness, we are invited to allow our heart to be captivated by God the Father, growing in our identity as beloved children of God, and claiming as our own Jesus’ victory over the evil one.

The prophet Hosea describes God’s invitation beautifully: “Therefore I am now going to allure Israel; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14).

God the Father awakens desire in our hearts. Deep and authentic prayer happens to the extent that we allow ourselves to experience and grow in that desire.

Have you ever considered prayer as an experience of desire?

I would say it took me a long journey with many detours before I really began appreciating the invitation to experience prayer as desire – and this was not for lack of pursuit on God’s part! If I take the time to reflect on my life, I can recall with gratitude many moments in which God sought to woo my heart in prayer – in childhood, in adolescence, and throughout my adult years. Sometimes the experiences were profound, intense, or astounding; other times simple or subtle or sweet. There were often obstacles impeding my response.

It turns out that deeply allowing the experience of desire is not so easy as it might sound! Feeling an ache that only God can satisfy can actually be painful – not unlike the experience of intense hunger or thirst. I used to laugh at the line in Matthew’s Gospel about Jesus fasting and being tempted in the desert: “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” I always used to think to myself as I read those words, “Well, duh!” But the spiritual combat of the desert – whether in Jesus or in me – is not mainly about physical hunger or bread – it is about the deep desire of the human heart that can be satisfied by God alone. We are created with an insatiable longing for him – one so intense that we rarely let ourselves experience it in full depth.

Augustine of Hippo perhaps put it the best when he prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” We spend much of our lives, as he did, plunging ourselves in unlovely ways into the lovely things God has created – good things which would not even exist had God not created them. But they hold us back if they diminish our thirst for God.

Jesus allowed himself to go into the depths of human hunger and thirst – both physically and spiritually. He invites us to share in his experience: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; for they will be satisfied.”

Have you ever felt a thirst for God, and allowed yourself to abide in that longing? Or to seek and receive a taste of him, only to long for him even more? This is the invitation prayer offers us.

Even now, at a season in my life in which I understand the invitation at a much deeper level, I still notice myself avoiding it. Sometimes I numb out or keep myself distracted with lesser pleasures and lesser desires. Other times I stay plunged into busyness or activity; if I don’t let myself slow down, I won’t feel the ache. Still other times I try to make things happen my own way – as though “getting it right” will somehow bend the will of the living God.

Thankfully God has substantially eased my frantic urge to “get it right” – whether with daily prayer or on retreats. I can think of a few retreats in my young adult years in which I felt much anxiety over whether I was spending the time rightly – as though God is stingy or particular about awakening love or showering his blessings! Thankfully he often surprised me and – at least some of the time – I let myself be surprised.

One of the benefits of being Catholic is also one of our greatest pitfalls – we have thousands of prayers and devotions we can turn to. Often, instead of slowing down and just being with God, we can easily pile on more prayers. We can begin to think of holiness as a matter of being strong enough, disciplined enough, or doing all the right things. In this posture, prayer becomes something we “do,” rather than time spent receiving, and the more we receive, allowing the desire of our heart to be expanded even more.

Experiencing prayer as desire includes an invitation to engage with all our human faculties – our thoughts, our imagination, our emotions, our memories, and even the very sensations in our bodies. Again, Augustine captures what the experience is like, describing how all five of his human senses were transformed by his desire for and encounter with the living God:

You called and shouted and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I ache with hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I burn with desire to attain the peace which is yours.

There are moments in which we have no doubt we have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord. Yet we resist! I know that I sometimes do. Sometimes it feels safer to put surrogates in God’s place, predictable comforts that don’t involve waiting or trust or surrender.

I find it helpful at times to pray slowly the opening words of Psalm 63, words deeply familiar to anyone who prays the Liturgy of the Hours. I like to emphasize the words “you” and “your” in each line to remember Him whom I truly desire:

O God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory.

I am grateful for the experience of God awakening desire in my heart, even though it can sometimes be intense. It is good to long for the living God. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing that it took me a long time to experience a thawing of the desire he had placed in my heart. Scripture suggests that God waits until we are ready: “I adjure you, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not awaken or stir up love until it is ready!” (Song of Songs 8:4).

Hopefully, this Lent will be a season in which you and I can join with the Psalmist in praying, “My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready!” (Psalm 57:7).

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God Will Be Enough

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

These opening words of Psalm 23 are familiar to most. But each of us can ask ourselves honestly: Do I really believe that?

Speaking for myself, the truthful answer is both “yes” and “no.” It is one thing to know at an intellectual level that God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-loving; or to state that I believe that he will provide for all my needs. And truly, I believe these things! But I also know the bind I sometimes feel. There can be that clutch of dread or panic about impending conflict, the crushing weight of responsibility (even if self-inflicted), or the suffocating feeling that those I thought I could trust are now pulling back and leaving me unprotected. In those moments, there are parts of me that urge me to hide and isolate rather than surrender unconditionally into God’s hands. It can feel so much safer to take matters into my own hands and to feel some measure of control rather than surrendering to God – what if his love won’t be enough??

In my own case, this inner resistance I sometimes experience isn’t so much in the form of words or thoughts as bodily sensations or deeply felt feelings. One way or another, I am quite familiar with the inner cry that screams out: It won’t be enough!!

I know I am not the only one.

There is a reason why Psalm 23 is so appealing. It speaks soothing and reassuring truths to so many of us who need to hear them again and again as we internalize them. We all need to know that God is abundantly good to us. We need to know that our hunger and thirst will find deep satisfaction in him. We need to know that we will be mightily protected by his rod and always guided by his staff – never abandoned in a place of powerlessness or stuck alone in a valley of death. We need to taste and see his goodness – even in this life.

Psalm 145 offers similar strong reassurance that the Lord’s love and care will always be enough for us, and that our deepest desires and needs will be met by him:

The Lord supports all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look hopefully to you;
You give them their food in due season.
You open wide your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

If you are anything like me, you may find that you strongly believe the truth of these words, and desire to live by them – AND experience inner resistance. So… What do we do when part of us screams out, “It won’t be enough!!”?

I can rattle off the things so many of us tend to do in those moments – pull out our phones, scroll through social media, eat comfort food, binge on sugar or caffeine, fantasize about ways of getting away from it all, bury ourselves in busy work, fixate on the faults of those around us, and so many more. These days, there are no shortage of surrogates we can turn to in an attempt to replace real relationships. Then we reach a point of disillusionment and realize that these things we pursued to make sure it would be enough not only were not enough, but actually depleted us. We feel frustrated with ourselves and tend to trust God even less and to want to hide ourselves even more. A vicious cycle.

Alternatively, we can open ourselves to the kindness of God and other trusted companions, and become genuinely curious about the inner conflict. Rather than fleeing the images or feelings or bodily sensations that can be so unpleasant, we can follow where they lead us. In many cases, the reason why I am having trouble trusting and surrendering to God now is because my body is remembering what I felt like way back when. If I have past experiences in which I felt deeply deprived, neglected, abandoned, unprotected, or powerless, then it makes a great deal of sense that my body would warn me in the present moment that the same danger is immanent. The situation now is radically different – but my implicit memory doesn’t know any better; it’s doing it’s just doing its job by warning me.

The ultimate answer is to be found in an experience of genuine relationships, connection and communion, abiding in love and truth, staying present to others and God – and even to those parts of myself that try to tell me that it won’t be enough.

Ironically, I think many Christians have learned how to pray in a way that keeps God at a distance – especially from the ways in which we most need his loving presence. There have been seasons in my life in which I have looked at prayer much more as a “should” or a matter of being disciplined enough or getting it right. Rather than a close connection with God, many of us either avoid the vulnerability of prayer (and shame ourselves for being “lazy”), or we stay “busy” in prayer in a way that allows us to feel safe and in control, but hinders receptivity.

God invites us to come to him as we are and receive his blessings. I have written before about the prayer of lament, in which we open up our grieving hearts to God and seek connection with him in our pain and brokenness. Whether grief, anger, lustful fantasies, overeating, bitter resentments, panic, anxiety, or deep feelings of powerlessness – what would it look like to experience these things with God? If my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, why not tell the Holy Spirit he is welcome in my body (including where I happen to be feeling dread or shame or grief or loneliness)? Why not consecrate it all to God – giving him all the pieces? If we do not, how can we say we are loving him with our whole heart?

Similarly, what would it look like to cultivate relationships with trustworthy people in which I allow them to see and know the real me – including all the parts I’d rather hide away? Many of us were wearing masks long before this pandemic began! To be fair, we may have needed to do that for a long time. The pain of deprivation, powerlessness, or abandonment is simply too much to bear until we are in a position in life in which deep prayer and meaningful relationships are genuinely possible. When we allow ourselves to experience these relationships consistently in our lives and in our prayer, real change begins to happen.

Do you, like me, sometimes fear that God’s love or the love of others won’t be enough? Are you willing to let go of your surrogates and experience real relationships? I cannot encourage you enough to step out in faith, to renounce the lie that his love won’t be enough, and to permit yourself opportunities to receive.

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Radiating Christ

“One can only give God through radiating him.”

Apparently this was a mantra often repeated by the French mystic Marthe Robin. It is so true! No amount of doing or striving or “getting life right” on my part will ever be able to connect others with Jesus. But if they see him shining through me, it is an entirely different experience!

Some of you may be familiar with a beautiful prayer that is recited every day after Mass by the Missionaries of Charity – the congregation of religious sisters founded by Mother Teresa of Kolkata, now serving the poorest of the poor in 139 countries of the world. The prayer is often attributed to John Henry Newman:

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me
that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine.
It will be you, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching,
not by words but by my example,
by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.

I had many Masses with those sisters early on Wednesday mornings during my years in Rome, as I worked on my doctorate. I remember this prayer speaking deeply to my heart, awakening a yearning deep within me to radiate Christ – even if I was blind at the time to some of the obstacles that I was putting in the way.

What does it mean to “radiate” Christ?

Radiating requires a relationship with Christ. It is a way of being rather than a matter of doing. That is so hard for us busy and wounded westerners, who tend to be so focused on doing or achieving or insecurely putting forward a positive image of ourselves.

If we can learn anything from the apostle Paul, we can learn that to be a Christian is to abide “in Christ.” During my doctoral studies, I learned that Paul’s letters use that phrase “in Christ,” or something very similar, 165 times! If I allow myself to be crucified with Christ, to die and come to new life in him, then it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Paul learned on the road to Damascus that Christ is not just a historical man, but one mystical person, a unity of head and members. Jesus asked him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Not “Why are you persecuting my followers?” but me. Christ and his body are one. Through faith and baptism all our own efforts are put to death and we enter a new, highly vulnerable, highly childlike existence as a co-member of the Body of Christ, together with all the other members of all times and places who likewise humbly depend upon him for everything.

Jesus invites us to abide in him like branches on a vine. It is such an appealing image of what it means to exist “in Christ.” There is a profound unity of the entire organism, and a sense in which we all thrive or suffer together, grow together, and bear fruit together. But there is no question about the order of causality. It is the vine that gives life to the branches, and not the other way around! Our heavenly Father, the true vinedresser, never ceases to graft new shoots into his Son.

Radiating means receiving. Think of a stained glass window. There are so many pieces of broken glass. An isolated pane is nothing to marvel at – particularly if all is darkness! But when assembled by a master artist, and when flooded with the gift of light, what beauty and radiance!

And so it is with Christ and Christians. We are invited to be vulnerable and receptive. That can feel so scary sometimes! It feels so much easier to carve out a familiar way of doing things, in which I can maintain the illusion of being in control. Even though I pray seriously every day, I have often prayed in a way that lacks vulnerability and receptivity, approaching prayer as a “should” rather than opening up my deep desire for God and letting myself ache for him and receive from him.

Even when we let ourselves beg God like a little child, what is our begging like? Do we not sometimes beg him to help us be strong enough so that we no longer need him? It is challenging to abide like little children who depend on him for our daily bread (and keep coming back the next day and the next day). Like those Israelites in the desert, I sure am tempted to store up a bunch of that manna in a jar so that I don’t have to keep feeling so vulnerable and so dependent upon God. Control feels like safety, even though it leaves me alone and miserable.

Little by little, God is assuring and reassuring me that his love is enough and always will be enough. I can open up the rusty gates of my multi-layered fortress and let the King of Glory enter. It doesn’t matter that I still struggle with my insecurities and sins. He will shine, and there will be no doubt whose glory it is that is shining. To be holy is not to be perfect, but to radiate Christ.

We can close with wise words from the Gregory Nazianzen, an early Church Father:

He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven.