Abandonement - Abiding In Love and Truth

Authentic fatherhood is a sharing in God’s Fatherhood, a manifestation of it in the flesh. Loving fathers don’t seize power for themselves, but exercise their God-given authority for the sake of lifting others up, helping them to be secure and confident in their own identity as beloved children of their heavenly Father.

Whether we speak of dads or or priests or other spiritual fathers, we saw last time how damaging it is when earthly fathers are absent or severe or emotionally enmeshed with their children. All three deviant behaviors cause damage to the children’s identity. Those children become wounded in their capacity to receive and give love.

In John 10, Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd. He leads his sheep into a relationship with the Father. He does not abandon his sheep to the wolves, like a hireling (cf. fathers who are absent or who abdicate their authority). He does not steal like a thief or devour like a wolf (cf. a chummy father who uses the children to meet his own emotional needs). He does not beat or abuse the sheep in severity but – as we read in Luke 15 – tenderly places the lost sheep on his shoulders and brings it with joy into the feasting of the heavenly banquet.

We who are called to be fathers are called to imitate Jesus, to be loving shepherds. To the extent we have authority, it is only for the good of the sheep, never for ourselves. It is ultimately a celebration of and with God the Father, who invites us all into the heavenly feast.

But how?

I am myself so weak and wounded. I am poor and needy. I am insecure and unconfident in my identity as a beloved child of God. How can I pour into others when I regularly feel like I have nothing to give?

Here is where we must look to Jesus, who he is and what he actually teaches. He is from the Father. His entire identity is in the Father. He is one who receives.

Jesus embraced poverty. He allowed himself to be totally and radically dependent upon his Father. In his human existence, Jesus reflected his eternal identity of being “from the Father.” He then invites us to receive from him, as branches on the vine, just as he himself has received all as gift from the Father.

I love the way Jacques Philippe connects fatherhood with the Beatitudes, especially the first Beatitude of poverty of spirit. The Beatitudes are all promises of Fatherly blessing, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. If we acknowledge and embrace our poverty, if we open up in humble receptivity, the Father blesses us and confers a Kingdom upon us. If we grieve and mourn, we will be comforted (“paracleted”) by the Holy Spirit.

We men who are wounded in our identity can only be healthy and holy fathers if we are willing to grieve and mourn the ways that we ourselves have been wounded. I can only be a loving father to the extent that I am secure as a beloved son. Many of us were ourselves abandoned or abused or used (or possibly all three!). We spend much of our lives avoiding just how painful that was for us rather than grieving it and seeking healing and restoration. If we are willing to walk that path, we experience a dying and rising with Jesus. We discover his secret of relying totally on the Father. We meet God again for the first time, discovering him to be a Father who never abandons, is never harsh, and only desires to pour blessing into us. We become secure as beloved sons.

This spring, I had the joy of returning to the John Paul II Healing Center in Tallahassee, assisting as chaplain on the “Holy Desires” retreat for priests and seminarians. There Bob Schuchts invited me, three days in a row, to play the part of God the Father in a “human sculpting” exercise. Another played God the Son, another the Holy Spirit, along with several human and angelic (and demonic) characters. We followed our intuitions and interacted with each other in a visual scene. We first depicted the sweet intimacy of the Holy Family – Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus abiding in the love of the Father and the Holy Spirit. We then rearranged ourselves to sculpt a contrast: a scene of strained marriage and a wounded child. As God the Father, I felt such an ache for all three humans in the sculpt! The next day we sculpted the baptism of Jesus and the Father’s utter delight in him, followed by the baptism of someone else, who was struggling to be secure in his identity. The third day, there was a character struggling with the same sin over and over. Someone else, representing shame, began covering the person’s eyes so that he could not see my loving gaze as God the Father. Jesus and I were there, deeply desiring to love him, but he knew only shame. In my ache to love this child of God, I whispered into Jesus’ ear and asked if it would be okay for me to take the hands of shame and place them over his eyes. He willingly agreed, even though it would cost him. I moved the hands onto Jesus’ eyes, and immediately I sobbed and wept. I weep again just remembering it.

Something shifted in my heart at that moment. So often I have turned to the Father with my deep and intense longing to see his face and to receive his blessing. This time I experienced his longing for me, for you, and for all his beloved children. I know it was just a glimpse, a taste, a small measure – and my chest felt like it was going to explode. What an intense desire! It brings to mind the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est that God himself has “eros” – a passionate and intense longing as he seeks out his people in love.

When I return to that experience, I find myself having moments in which I can more fully surrender with peace into the Father’s hands. When my own call to fatherhood feels overwhelming or exhausting, when I feel powerless or feel like I am failing, I can enter the Father’s desire that is infinitely bigger than my own. I can be reminded that all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. God’s fullness will prevail.

The apostle Paul describes this fullness, and our security in the Father’s love, when he names all fatherhood as deriving from God’s Fatherhood. Let us conclude with those beautiful words of Scripture (Ephesians 3:14-21):

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or imagine, according to his power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

When I ponder the final words of Jesus on the Cross, I feel intrigued by the word “abandon.” Matthew and Mark recall Jesus’ anguished cry to the Father, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34). But Luke recalls Jesus “abandoning” himself into the Father’s hands in trust and surrender, as he breathes his final breath (Luke 23:47). How can two so drastically different human experiences be expressed with the same English word?

I feel a personal connection with both experiences. The one is so full of anguish, sorrow, or panic – even fury. The other is touched with tenderness, intimacy, trust, and security. The one screams out from isolation; the other approaches in sweet intimacy.

During my college seminary years, I drew much consolation from reading Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751), a French Jesuit. His words spoke into my orphaned heart that struggled to trust and surrender in vulnerable relationships – even though I couldn’t have named the experience at the time.

During that same time, I went on my first ever silent retreat. I look back with a smile on the “me” of a quarter century ago. In my willful heart, there was both a tender longing for intimacy with God and a pharisaical legalism. Like young Saul, I threw all my zeal into the retreat. My 21^st birthday came and went; a few friends even sang for me at breakfast. I smiled and blushed, but dutifully kept my silence.

I felt a longing as I recalled our high school chaplain describing the importance of his annual retreats. He had once testified to how God began speaking to him when he stayed in silence long enough. This must be how it works, I thought. So I spent a full three hours in the chapel each afternoon – mostly kneeling. But I didn’t conquer God; he conquered me. On the third day, abruptly and unexpectedly, it was as though a massive wave pulsed through the room and me. I suddenly and intensely felt the the strength and security of his providence – a sense that truly (in the words of Julian of Norwich) “all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.”

Amidst that peace and an intense desire for more of that peace, I felt convicted of all the times that I was “pushing through” the present moment. I was either enduring that which was unpleasant or devouring that which was pleasurable. Either way, I wasn’t opening myself to the gift that can only be received in the present. He helped me see how often things that felt confusing or overwhelming in the present moment actually led to abundant blessing. He flooded my mind and heart with the image of looking back down the mountain at the twisting path already walked – including steps that made utterly no sense at the time – and marveling at how no other path would have worked. He gave me some felt sense of how he sees all of these things simultaneously; all the moments are one in him; all are “now” for him. He invites me to surrender to him in the “now” of the present moment. I resist. When I left the chapel and felt the throb of circulation as the blood returned to my knees. I paused in the hallway to gaze on a copy of a Pinturicchio painting of the Crucifixion (see above). I felt a jolt of awe as I gazed upon the “now” of Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice on the Cross. Beneath him lay death dismantled, overcome by his love and his shed bled. Behind him was paradise restored, and a felt sense of God’s eternal rest sustaining him in that moment of surrender. I felt Jesus’ trust in his Father and an intense desire to share in that trust.

In the twenty-five years since, I have felt both senses of “abandonment” many times over. Perhaps the most distressing situations for me are those in which I feel left alone by those I thought I could trust – suddenly facing an overwhelming and dangerous threat by myself, when I thought I would have protection and security. That feeling of abandonment is so ancient for me and so familiar. The lies can race through my head at lightning speed: They don’t understand; they don’t care; they can’t be trusted; I am all alone! In some cases, I flee and isolate myself; at other times I attack with an angry outburst and hold others to impossible expectations, as if they are supposed to revolve around my needs. The more I mature in Christ, the more quickly I notice, and the more frequently I choose a different path – or repair if I repeat old patterns.

Again and again, God has also invited me into trust and surrender, reminding me to live in the present moment and look for his gift. If I abide and gaze and receive, the gift is always there, including in those moments in which I am invited to take up my cross with Jesus.

I can only receive the gift of the present moment to the extent that I let down the defenses of my self-protection. Otherwise I limit how much I can receive, and ultimately how much I can give.

The English verb “to abandon” comes from the French abandonner. The French verb has multiple senses, which one way or another are ways of untying, releasing, or relinquishing a band that ties something together. When we do so with a committed relationship or a grave duty (e.g., parenting, governing, leadership), other humans experience abandonment in the first sense (“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”). But there is also an untying or letting go when we encounter beauty, when we forgive harm, when we dance, or when we connect with another person.

Jesus, in his Passion, enters fully into both human experiences of “abandonment,” and reconciles them. Those of us who have experienced abandonment in the first sense tend to have spectacular defenses against ever letting anyone close again. Jesus cries out to the Father on our behalf. Jesus also “abandons” in the second sense. He cancels the debt of our sins, releasing all claims to make us pay. He meekly surrenders himself like a lamb, even in the face of contempt, violence, and powerlessness. He releases every merely human solution and entrusts all of it to his Father. He freely submits and becomes the seed sown into the earth that bears abundant fruit. May we claim his victory and allow him to reconcile in our hearts all that impedes our own surrender.

Tag: Abandonement

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