on making Disciples and Reaching out to the World

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

You ask about making disciples and having an impact on society. Consider that when Christ charges his followers to go out and make disciples of all nations, he tells them how: baptize. He is neither establishing a sacrament nor endorsing a ritual. He is opening a door to understanding our relationship with God, a relationship immersed in a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of vision, a change of living.  And as can be said for every relationship, our relationship with God must be open to grow and mature through communication and in community.

Where do we start? We start, we always start, where God starts. First, we love—we openly accept our neighbour where and as they are. We do not judge. We do not charge with bible and creed. We merely, in Christ, respond to them. We stand open and vulnerable so they may experience, begin to experience, the God who stands open and vulnerable for all, the God in Christ whose arms are open wide. And we so stand knowing that God alone, not flesh and blood, causes one to say “Thou art the Christ”.

Second, when the time is ripe, when we are asked, we share our heritage of faith. We share it as our heritage. We do not argue it. We present it as the vision whereon we stand, whereby we are informed. We do not make of it a weapon or a threat.

Third, we must be prepared for that which this sharing may involve, catechesis. We must be prepared to answer questions, and answer them in the language in which they are given. We cannot retreat into doctrinal idioms or antique ideas if they will not speak to them who would hear and understand. We must not fear a challenge. We must not approach with dismally low expectations. Discipleship, like every other personal relationship, must with commitment be worked at and worked for. It must be a personal relationship, not the submission of a person to a program.

Fourth, we must be prepared that as the relationship develops it will need to be enfolded in mystagogy, an interiorizing of the basic truths and values, in living, in prayer. We cannot hide our sound and truthful tradition of the contemplation of and meditation upon the mysteries of our faith. Here, indeed, is the portal through which God confronts and communicates heart to heart. In a time when many are turning to spurious practices, to hide our own spiritual wealth is wickedness. We must teach that the heart of prayer and the true dignity of being human are to give thanks to God for what we have. All else will flow from that in its due time.

Fifth, we must keep in mind that we are not in the business of preserving any given culture, language, or set of theological or philosophical terms. If parts of our cultural heritage fail the proclamation of the gospel or obscure the love of God for this world, we must know ourselves to be free to put them aside. We cannot for the comfort of our own tastes hide the light of the world under a bushel, a book, a translation, or a tradition.

Sixth, we must keep in mind that the liturgy, the public rites of celebrating God’s word, the ritual enactments of the good news of God in Jesus Christ, cannot be an act in and for itself. Liturgy exists for humanity—to open us up to God and to the world, to strengthen us in faith and service. It is our public spiritual exercise not an object to be gazed upon.

You speak of making an impact. Consider this. If we take seriously that God lives and dwells within us and that through prayer of body, mind, and heart we are in communion (in communication) with God for the sake of the world, then we know that through us Christ still acts to redeem and heal humanity in our every move, transaction, breath, and step.

There are some who are want to argue that media coverage does not matter today any more than it did two thousand years ago when Jesus took a band of disciples to the edge of wilderness near Caesarea Philippi to ask them what the world was saying about him, that church is always a creature invisible to the public eye, apart from the wisdom and opinions of the world. There is some merit to this position. But at Caesarea Jesus is making inquiry about the world, the impact of his work in the world. The truth has, as does discipleship, many facets. The existence of Christ incarnate means we, like Christ, need to be in the world, in the media in which the world operates. We can, however, only truly, realistically, effectively be in the world in a way comprehensible to that world. That world does not speak or any longer understand the cultic terms of the church, it does not comprehend talk about divine humans, miracles, trinities, transcendent deities, efficacious sacraments. If we intend to reach out to the world and be understood, we must speak a language that can be understood and not our own, our beloved, our cultic tongue. 

In our being in the world we cannot exist as an enclave unto ourselves. We must work together with whomsoever is willing, be they another church, another faith, a government or a business. We need to put our money, time and energy where we say we have put our heart. We must be strong in advocacy to engage and en-courage government and business alike to move toward the radical changes for which the people around the world ache. We need to do this wisely. We need to be flexible in our efforts. Do we expand them, change them, eliminate them? What would serve, not us, not our committee, but the gospel best?  We must be willing to supply bandages and patches. But we must remember that not a few, but thousands around us are impoverished and broken, and that poverty of spirit vies with hunger and homelessness.

Lastly, we must be prepared to support, especially spiritually, those devoted few who are always at the forefront of all our labours. It is often easy for the most zealous and dedicated to suffer burn-out, or to develop a Mary vs. Martha state of mind. We need to keep in mind the biblical accounts of Israel and Judah and how often their downfall was their trust not in God but in their own abilities. Thomas Merton once mused that all the world might well be held in existence by the devoted prayers of a handful of souls. It is a hypothesis worthy of consideration.

 

 

 

 

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on Priesthood

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

There are some who seemingly believe that a priest is a “sacred person” rather than one to whom is given a sacred charge. If the priest is a sacred person, all the priest need to do is keep some sense of piety about himself or herself, and perform the prescribed rites. The sacred person does not need to actively lead, guide, direct, facilitate, nurture, foster, heal, or anything else. The sacred person, having been made the very vessel of God, brings God’s presence to others simply by being there. There are some who may well find this idea of priest comforting, for here, in a person, as for some in a book, is the “the answer”, here another’s being resolves the problem of having to do something.

I grant you the idea of priest does traditionally carry with it the idea of sacred person. In scripture the title of priest is applied only to Christ himself. Unlike the terms deacon, presbyter, elder, and bishop it is not a term used for an officer of the church in the Christian scriptures, and was accordingly dropped by most reformers precisely because of this and its overtones of exclusivity and ritual sacrifice. I grant you also, Christian theologians, usually being priests, have had a lot to say about priesthood’s special character, graces, and status, but what they have said is merely variation on what is properly said about the character, grace, and status of being a baptized person, of belonging to a priestly people, a people called to minister, to serve and enfold the world to God. I am not about to create a dissertation on the topic. Suffice it to say the notion of priest as a sacred person bifurcates the community of the baptized, exalting the cleric, discounting the laity. It obscures the church (wherein all, by baptism, are called to be the good news according to the gifts given) by creating professional Christians opposed to part-time, Sunday Christians. It prevents the manifestation of the church as a communion of saints by reducing it to a pious body politic. If anyone ought to be treated distinctly, it is not by virtue of the office given but because of the use made of such office. There are some who in the sweeping of floors have consecrated nations to God, while others wearing miters have profaned altars in the mere reading of prayers.

Look at the practical ramifications of considering a priest a sacred person. If a priest is sacred, what is accomplished here and now in the world or the church is, at best, of secondary importance. God’s presence is already provided. If some by the hardness of their hearts and the dimness of their minds cannot see it, the problem is theirs. If the priest is sacred, the church or any of its subset organizations can be left to dysfunction forever. Despite the pain, injustice, and spiritual peril inflicted on others, all that ill is only something accidental to the situation. The history of western civilization is filled with, littered with, examples of such “blessings” of hopelessness and oppression. The sacred person cannot error, cannot be held to be in error. The Roman claim of infallibility is merely a doctrinal manifestation of the attitude.

Today, when churches are in decline, the managers and executives of the churches are not held to blame as they would be with the failure of any other organization or operation. When people turn away from religion, the clergy ask not what they have failed to do, but a more amorphously phrased question: “what have we failed to do?” Only in failure and defeat does collegiality appear, as it must, for the sacred person is spared of error. It is an attitude more general than acknowledged, and attitudes, because they pass without examination, are dangerous. The rules of discernment have always held that anything that claims—as opposed to manifests—a link with the divine is suspect.

The charge to do the work of God renders no one anything but charged to do a job. The doing of God’s work renders one, at best, worthy of recognition as a faithful servant. There is no mystery to it. A priest is merely a member of the community of the baptized who is called and ordered to attend to the spiritual welfare and well-being of others.  It is not in the person that any special dignity or honour resides; it is in the work that the sacred is to be glanced, and that work is to bring the people to the fullness of human potential, a potential that cannot easily be delineated into compartments of body, mind, spirit, soul. Only to the degree that a priest is free from self-delusions of sacredness and otherness is the priest free to be truly servant, friend, mentor, companion, free to be at once activist and contemplative, one whose soul is no stranger to resting in silence in God that in his or her labours justice, peace, and understanding might ever more dispel the reign of political posturing, compromise by force, and blind obedience.

Wheresoever and whensoever such faithfulness is found, there ought to be, indeed, reverence.

 

 

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on Throwing Stones, letters to an unworthy cleric and his publisher

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

I read your work twice because at first I thought I was misunderstanding some rhetorical trick. Most unhappily, I realized I was gazing upon an act of grossest ignorance.

I am certain that you had to spend several years in some sort of academic institution to qualify for ordination. Why have you chosen to renounce your education, your supposedly acquired skills in logic and research, and flare out with such rash judgments based on the remarks of a sportscaster  and a “groupie” interviewed on a television show? Why do you parade your ignorance of the nature of HIV and AIDS and the statistics regarding those infected when accurate data is available from any number of organizations?  Why do you dare to attempt to cloak your feelings, your anger, and your fears with pious references to the Holy Scriptures? Obviously, you do this because you choose to, and that choice is wasteful, sinful and sacrilegious. If you want to be afraid and angry and confused, at least, as a minister, you ought not stuff your mouth with God’s words and turn them into the bile of hell.

If you want to talk about choice, then review your school texts on cause and effect. If AIDS is a matter of choice, then so are all the cancers, tuberculoses, birth defects, insanities, etc., for we as nations and individuals choose, will, select, and support (too often by sins of omission) the life-styles that create the pollutants, the chemical toxicants, the holes in the ozone, the desires and allures that deteriorate and destroy life, global and individual. By your logic everything in life is a matter of direct human choice, including your own hideous lack of understanding.

If you feel AIDS is a punishment for sin, be prepared to acknowledge every illness, every accident, every natural disaster a punishment for sin. If you feel you are compelled to wrestle with such a question, I must ask whereto has all your theological training vanished. If humanity had any ability to effectively deal with its destructive sinfulness, it would have no need for so great a Saviour. It is not given us to debate our sinfulness, it is given us to be thankful for our forgiveness. If the deliberations of the judge belong to anyone, they belong to the Almighty, not the cleric, for the mission given the church is to gather the world to God, to proclaim the love of God, to apply the forgiveness, the healing, the peace of God to a fallen and broken humanity, to a disrupted and disoriented creation.

If you a serious in your questioning, go off and meditate on the story of Simon, the Pharisee, and the woman who came into his house to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears. Simon and company were compelled to think only of the woman’s sinful reputation. Jesus was free to embrace her humanity undissected.

If you are serious about ministry, go off and learn to discern between your own feelings and the demands of discipleship. If you are tired of the dying being treated like martyrs, go off and contemplate death, at least, go off and consider the trails of the dying. Put aside your feelings and discover that humanity is something more than you. I do not doubt your good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with such intentions.

To the cleric’s publisher:

I presume you have chosen to solve our garbage problems by taking up the publication of rubbish. Your mindlessness is a matter of public shame.

I realize the church is not an organization like any other in the world. But, how long is the church, both as an institution and as a body of recovering sinners, going to tolerate ignorance, professional incompetence, and the dire absence of pastoral concern from its clergy and other leaders? How long shall the people suffer leaders who will not minister the gospel? How long shall the people have to be pastors to whimpering and self-absorbed clerics? I am tired of seeing and hearing people being beaten to near death with pronouncements of sinfulness and immorality before they are coldly dismissed with “but God loves you”.

The churches grow empty, and all the black-robed and weeping madonnas run in circles asking why. Do they ever see the cause to be their own bible-thumping, grand-inquisitor ravings? Yes, there are many people today who seek salvation from the burdens of life in sex and drugs, in over-achieving and over-acquiring and over-drinking, and why not? Where are they to go? Where shall they find a God? Where shall they see Jesus Christ?–certainly not in the distortions and self-righteous piety of unworthy clerics. How long will the people allow such incompetence and dysfunction? How long are schools of theology going to pass out degrees without need of either orthodoxy or discipleship? How long are examining chaplains going to recommend for ordination men and women not prepared to minister? And where is the bishop to demand obedience, to command responsibility for the mis-care of souls?

I can name at least two people who ought to be out looking for a new job and a grasp on reality. Enough is enough!

 

 

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on Human Sexuality

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Allow me to make a few notes regarding your paper.

In your opening argument I deeply felt the absence of a statement that the Scriptures present a culturally conditioned presentation of sexuality, one conditioned toward a patriarchal society wherein sexuality is equivalent to the sex act, and the sex act reserved to the extension of the species. I am aware you made those points in other places, but sometimes ideas need to stand melded together.

Contrary to your claim and contrary to the view expressed by the bishops of the English Church, heterosexual love is not the foundation! To go on to claim that the divine will for humanity is fulfilled by heterosexual procreative actions is utterly absurd. In chapter two of Genesis, before God reveals the woman in man, God brings all the animals to the man, for man, in the divine judgment, needs a companion, a helpmate. One might argue that woman is just one possible resolve to man’s aloneness, one humanly accepted divine experiment. One might question other strains in the creation story, such as why man was not content with God as a companion. And, of course, if one wants to be literal about such things, one might well ask what happened to the male and female created in chapter one. Let us not dwell in fragments; Scripture, like God, is un-dissectible. I am not about to write a dissertation on the tribal codes consecrated in the great Genesis myths, but the question remains: does sex exist for procreation, or does sex exist for the person. Human sexuality is about communication, communion, trust, giving, caring, loving, and out of that, and within that consecrated state of being, about the procreation and nurturing of children. Not every heterosexual couple is capable of producing children, not every heterosexual act is capable of producing children. Heterosexual acts are about the two people involved in a communion. Homosexual acts are likewise and equally about the two people involved in a communion. To say that homosexual acts are not as complete within the terms of the created order is to confuse gestation with creation, to elevate egg and sperm over personhood and humanity.

You speak of heterosexual relationships as the norm, and grant homosexuality status as an aspect of humanity’s broken nature. If you call the heterosexual the norm, do you not imply everything else the ab-normal? And how can you speak of homosexuality as a result of our broken nature without noting that everything we are, everything we know, including our concepts of God, our religions and churches, our beliefs, and our hopes, is the result of our nature. The argument from “humanity’s broken nature” is an empty argument; we know no other nature, we have no other nature. But, having made the argument, how can you go on to speak of research that gives evidence for the biological foundations for the distinctions in sexual preferences. I am afraid that words like BROKEN and NORM are value judgments in themselves, and all the qualifications you make after them are just excuses to which no one can in honesty subscribe.

You discuss marriage. You do not distinguish between the term marriage used to designate a legal contract and the term marriage used to designate the blessing of the estate created by the contract. The ministers of the church have in some places and at some times acted as officers of the state and officiated over the contract, but as many canon lawyers would gleefully argue, that does not create in the church or for the church any authority over or in the contract itself. The church is merely allowed to act as an agent of state. The church is free to bless whatsoever it will, be it a contract, a car, or a canary. It baffles many that the church is willing to say that God is not an ancient mariner floating in the sky above the ozone and its holes, seated on chubby cherubs and equipped with all the rules for all the world for all time, but that the church is not so willing to admit that God is incarnate in the world, unfolding and evolving toward a day of compassion and justice for all. But is that not what sex is all about? Is not sex about finding God incarnate, growing toward a consummation in compassion, evolving into one who understands the weight, the glory, of justice, of the righteous due of all, a due given by God, a due fore-given by  God in the eternal Christ, a due that is, by divine appointment, acceptance and love?

I am sorely tired of sex being relegated to organs and orifices, of morality being chained to rules and regulations; when will we stop confusing the alphabet for literature, the road signs for the road? When will we stop adorning our genitals with doctrines and devotions and begin to adore one another? When will the church lead the way rather than be dragged along screaming? When will the church discover the Jesus who came to liberate us from legalism and literalism? When will the church find a new Pentecost and (as in Acts) go about seemingly drunk at nine a.m.? When will the church allow itself to stop worrying about what people will say, what people will do, and allow itself to manifest that intoxicating, that self-liberating spirit of compassion and joy? Our eschatology is our mask, our shield, our lie; the Day of the Lord is now. Our petty fears, our fragile egos, our Nicodemus-style discipleship keeps it veiled, keeps it from transforming ourselves and the cosmos. When will we realize the law is dead, that it lost its identity in Mary’s womb when the Holy One overshadowed it, that it radically mutated in order that the living word, the enduring presence, the unfolding revelation of God might dwell among us? In this season of the Coming, is that not a proper reading of the mythos of the virgin, a proper vision of the mysteries of incarnation?

I think the universe is infinitely more simple than we imagine; I think our fears are infinitely more complex than we are willing to admit.

 

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on Sexuality

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Some argue we must be faithful to tradition. Are we, however, being faithful to the Spirit? God does not go about creating the past, but the future. God is always making something “new”. We can follow God into that “new”, or we can cling to the dust of his passing us by. We need not argue the how and why these questions of human sexuality have been placed before us. They have. Sometimes the Spirit allows things to break apart so we are forced to examine them and re-fit them together into something new

The question of homosexuality cannot be dealt with except in the wider context of human sexuality, and human sexuality cannot be adequately considered outside the context of humanity, humanity called to community and commitment, reason and respect, thankfulness and caring. These questions I place here reflect those being asked by the church. The teachers of the church must give answer and direction.

Are human sex acts to be judged on the basis of genitals, on the basis of eros, on the basis of person, on the basis of person as dialogical? Are sexuality and sexual orientation to be understood as expressions of human dialogic? Are human sex acts primarily procreative of offspring? Are human sex acts essentially procreative of offspring? Are human sex acts essentially procreative of persons, offspring sometimes being the physical issue of the act?Within the confines of a heterosexual relationship characterized by love, sealed in commitment and established in accord with civil and ecclesiastical law, is it licit to engage in the sexual act of intercourse to the frustration of the possibility of conception by either interruption of the act or by some physical or chemical inhibitor? Within the confines of the relationship given in the last question, is it licit to engage in a sexual act of stimulation to orgasm and/or ejaculation without recourse to sexual intercourse? In what way might extreme age, sickness, impotence or infertility bear upon the situation given above? In what way would such acts as considered in the above questions performed by the heterosexual couple relate to such acts performed by a homosexual couple?

 This is not an exhaustive retelling of the questions I have received, but they represent the scope of inquiry stirring within the church, the scope of teaching that needs be given. We cannot hide behind endless commissions and committees, political antics and pious posturings. It is given teachers to teach.

We can answer all such questions and catalogue them, and as they have been asked, we must do so. We may also, I most ardently propose,  simply, honestly, and maturely aver that human sexuality finds its truth in the fulfillment of human potential created through the caring, compassionate and loving union of two persons freely, mutually, and consensually exploring the boundaries of body and soul toward the continual establishment of a communion (a marriage) acting in itself as the ground fostering a community (a family), the details of which properly belonging to the imaginations and abilities of the connubial coadunators.

The good life need not be—indeed, it is not—a complication, a compilation of rules and regulations. It is the continual and simple act of reverence and respect—virtues that can be fostered and educated, but never, by definition, legislated and enforced.

 

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on Repentance and Advent

Posted on January 21, 2012 by admin

I am aware that the penitential nature of Advent is under question, if not attack. More and more the churches are listening to the world and pushing back the celebration of Christmas into this season.

In the 4th century the western church adopted the eastern practice of baptizing on Epiphany (where the feast commemorated the baptism of Jesus, not the visit of Magi). There came with this practice some impetus to create for it a period of intense preparatory reflection, a type of mini-lent. The Sunday liturgies of Advent in the Book of Common Prayer reflect this. They were designed to open to prayer the ways the Holy seeks us out—in the triumph of its being there, in its sudden and definitive interjection, in the questionings of the heart, in the wonders of care. But from every one of these portals, the cry is to repent.

I realize repentance is, regrettably, not a topic in vogue, a situation undoubtedly due to some very negative imaging. Our relationship with God has too often been set in terms of a judicial system. God sets down laws, we fail to keep the laws, we are arrested by conscience, set upon to feel the weight of our outrage, our offence against God, and to face the demands of the residue of restitutional justice left us after Christ’s merciful substitution for us in his suffering and death. If this image of being hauled into court is the image we are given to live with day in and day out, it certainly makes for a woeful existence. No one wants to live in court or in prison. No one wants to expend their life beating their chest and crying “woe is me”. Thankfully, despite the chain rattling of a brace of theologians, neither God nor Jesus Christ wants that either

Do not misread me. There is certainly room in every life to look upon what has been done or not done, to feel the weight of sorrow, even revulsion. My inquiry, however, rests upon the nature of our relationship with God in Christ. Our relationship with God in Christ is personal not judicial. The early disciples understood God in Christ in terms of their temple cult of substitutionary sacrifice. Sin deserves death, God spares us death by allowing us to substitute something, and the ultimate something is someone, God’s Christ. But, at the same time there was another approach to sin, a personal approach. The Hebrew prophets had begun speaking not of Judge, but Wounded Lover, not of offering up broken cattle, but a broken heart. We are no longer in a court of law, we are in a relationship, a personal relationship complete with all the frailties and foibles that tend to undermine and threaten unless kept in check through loving reflection and open dialogue, or as traditional theology would say, through examination of conscience and repentance. Lest those nasty terms be the last word, allow me to repeat. Personal relationships, and our relationship with God in Christ is personal, require loving reflection and open dialogue to keep them alive and healthy.

We all know sorrow and shame for something. We know we have in some times, in some places, in some ways, failed others and ourselves, failed to be there, failed to listen, to care, to do. We can ignore such things only at the peril of becoming relation-less or un-relatable. We can fixate on such things and become celebrations of our own morosity. We can reflect upon such things, accept them in sorrow and resolve to learn from that and move forward.

In this process of reflecting, owning, and moving forward, the identity of the offended party is an essential element. The more intimate the relationship, the more valued the relationship, the more deeply I will feel the pain I have inflicted,  the more deeply I will feel the lack of worth I bring to the relationship, and the  more deeply will I realize the value, the trust, the love within the relationship that causes my offence to not only pain me, but to call me out of that pain to renewal, to moving on, to restoration wherein I am more attuned to what I do, more at-one (atoned) with the one I have offended. I have been discussing failure in terms of personal relationship because we can only fail a person, be that person oneself, another, a society of others.

Repentance is rightly presented in religion as a daily exercise. We need regularly pause to reflect, to assay the landscape of life and adjust direction (in body, mind and soul) according to the ultimate goal. It cannot be denied that any exercise worthy the name will involve some sacrifice of time, energy, effort, discipline, and pain. But, without that sacrifice we will tend, at best, to subsist rather than exist. I think most of us allow a moment for the morning physical ritual of stretching, looking in the mirror, espying the scale, assessing the situation, and making the resolutions required. I think many of us have lost the practice of doing the same regarding the soul. As physical exercise strengthens and attunes to body, spiritual exercise hones the soul. The more practiced the spirit, the more comprehensive the vision will be, the more capable of objective critique the mind and heart. That in itself makes not, however, for malaise or morosity. There is groundwork here for objectivity, and objectivity makes for sound judgment, healthful living, enlivened relationships.

I know some who all but fall over when they hear the line from the morning and evening confession “there is no health in us”. Yet for me it is a paean, an anthem. I know how piteously little “me” is. I know how greatly that “me” is transformed and transfigured by the love and care of others, how much it owes to the nurturing and sacrifices of others. I know that celebrating with gratitude that lopsided dialogue wherein I am always receiving more ever than I feel I have to give is a grace in itself—and that opens the heart of repentance. Love is humbling. Repentance knows what humble means.

I have considered repentance in an open forum as an aspect of relational correction. But what does it mean to experience this relational correction before God? Where do I, we, humanity have to stand confronted with the Holy One, the one we are called to imitate?  We are told not only where to stand but how to stand. “Take off your shoes, the ground on which you stand is holy.” Take off your shoes: nothing is to come between us and the ground whereon we stand–our present, our past. We must touch it without filter. This is mine. Yet this “mine” is now confronted with the Holy, and that Holy is not only forcing my radical possession of my ground, the Holy is transforming this ground under my feet, making it holy. This is the ground for fear and trembling, for who am I before “I am”. This is the ground for joy and gratitude, for that which is under my feet is under them, and the path ahead is open, and by the creative Word, free of the burden of having to drag all things past with me. By standing before the Holy and possessing the past, it is transformed from stone in my shoe to the rock from which I venture forth to grow, to continue to grow, in sure trust, in living hope, in humble and joyful love. 

 

 

 

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on the Church Calendar and Prayer

Posted on January 21, 2012 by admin

The church year is a type of spiritual journey. It begins in the repentance of Advent and is consoled in the gift of Emmanuel, God with us. But to be with God is not the end but a new beginning. Emmanuel is the gift of light that illumines the darkness and deceit cowering in every soul, it flaunts the wonder of God and the emptiness of self, it burns the heart with longing for purity and love, it opens the path to the desert of Lent, a desert that scorches and evaporates every sinew of flesh until the Anointed One is seen, risen and glorified in the Pasch. The inheritance, the gift of the Passover, is no longer Emmanuel but the universe hidden in the power of God, no longer God with us but all in God. The church in this movement of seasons reminds us that our journey is one of continuous conversions, one of always moving deeper and closer into the greater light, the greater pain of our sinfulness, the greater mercy of God, the greater darkness, the greater selflessness, the greater depth which is the boundlessness of the Holy.

The church year is about the public worship of God, but the church, the bride of the Risen One, knows in her depths that there is no public prayer that does not flow from the prayer of the individual heart, no public prayer that does not seek to turn the individual heart deeper into the mystery of the Holy One. Prayer here is not to be understood as the busy prayer of telling and asking. There is indeed room in prayer for caring, and sharing, for being thankful, and for blessing both God and the world, but at the heart of prayer is listening, listening in the deep silence, listening to God, and waiting on God, basking in God, loving God, yearning for God. Prayer is about opening oneself up to eternal rest, to peace, and to joy, even if these appear to exist only beyond the fires of hell. Prayer is about taking off the masks that we wear in the world, about removing the costumes of ego and personality through which we interact and behind which we more often hide (even from ourselves) until we become like Eve and Adam, naked, divested of self-consciousness, self-pride, self-worth, and can walk with God in the cool of the day in a world where the opposition of opposites ceases to have either value or force. Such is the freedom of the Kingdom. Such is the fabric of the seasons of prayer.

There can be no ministry to the world that does not flow from God through the unencumbered emptiness of self, and so, there is no greater task for any who would minister than to pray.

 

 

 

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