The Eyes to See

Two men who wanted to see the sunrise would be very foolish to argue about the place where it will appear and their means of looking at it, then to let their argument degenerate into a quarrel, from that to come to blows and in the heat of the conflict to gouge out each other's eyes. There would no longer be any question then of contemplating the dawn…  

Let us who wish to contemplate God purify our hearts by faith and heal them by means of peace; for the effort we make to love one another is already a gift from him to whom we raise our eyes.

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Sermons 23,18

Our Spiritual Homeland

Purify yourself and you will see heaven in yourself. In yourself you will see angels and their brightness, and you will see their Master with them and in them… The spiritual homeland of the person whose soul has been purified is within. The sun that shines there is the light of the Trinity. The air breathed by the entering thoughts is the Holy Spirit the Comforter. 

ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 24

Homily — Second Sunday of Lent

And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.

Last week, as we began to undertake our Lenten discipline the Church presented us with the mystery of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Although, as God, he is without sin and unable to sin, he still humbled himself to undergo baptism, purification by fasting, and battled with the temptations of Satan in the desert. 

This Sunday, we have the mystery of the Transfiguration. On one level, the Church places the Gospel of the Transfiguration here in the opening weeks of Lent to give us encouragement and consolation. Our process of purification and participation in the Cross is to be seen in the light of the victory of Christ in the Resurrection. At a deeper level, because the Transfiguration belongs to the pedagogy of Christ himself, who uses the transfiguration to instruct his disciples about the nature of God and therefore their own and their discipleship.

In all three synoptic Gospels, the transfiguration is placed after Peter’s confession of faith, and Jesus’ first passion prediction.

Jesus is moving toward his Passion. He knows this but the disciples do not. He needs to bring them into a deeper understanding of himself and his mission if they are to follow him as he needs them to.

In his confession of faith, Peter has shown he is on the right path, he has opened himself enough to the light of Christ that he is able to witness before the Lord and the other disciples, with great confidence and conviction, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He has attained a certain level of faith.

But when Jesus follows Peter’s confession with his first passion prediction, Peter responds with a rebuke: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

Jesus makes it quite clear that Peter has badly misunderstood him and the nature of his mission. He responds to Peter with a rebuke of his own, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me you are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.

It is not enough for the disciples to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ they must also align themselves with his mission. The two must line up. There is no other way. Peter’s standpoint is an obstacle, a stumbling block, he is blocking Jesus view of his Father, whose will, desire and plan is always before the eyes of Jesus; guiding him in every step.

Thinking of Peter here, I was reminded of the third century bishop, Clement of Alexanderia’s distinction between the Pistic and the Gnostic Christian. The “pistic” is one who lives by “pistis”, which, in Greek, means ‘faith’. For Clement, the ‘pistic’ signifies the ordinary faithful believer, one who trusts in God, accepts the tenets of revelation and the apostolic teaching as given, and is obedient to Christ. This person practices virtue, worships regularly, and lives a moral life in a straightforward way. Clement does not intend this term to be pejorative. He insists that the way of the pistic is good, holy, and salvific, but it is not yet a mature faith. In Peter’s case, although his life has been turned upside down by his encounter with Christ, has left all things to follow him, and has come so far as to make this bold confession of faith, his understanding remains very limited. Jesus has more in mind for Peter. In comparison with where Jesus needs Peter to be if he is to fulfill his role as Jesus has laid it out for him, his faith remains immature. Jesus needs him to become what Clement calls the ‘true gnostic’ (from gnosis, meaning knowledge), as opposed to the heretical Gnostics he was battling against as bishop. 

Clement describes the true Gnostic as “a mature Christian whose faith has blossomed into deep, contemplative understanding. One who has undergone intellectual, moral, and spiritual purification. Someone who reads Scripture with spiritual insight, who is capable of discerning its symbolic and mystical depths. 

For Clement, The life of the true Gnostic is marked by perfect charity, (that is, love, for Clement, is the highest knowledge), and has achieved ‘apatheia’, that is freedom from disordered passions. Clement was perhaps the first to apply “apatheia” to the spiritual life.  The true gnostic, in other words, is the pistic whose faith has reached its full flowering. 

Jesus wants to see this kind of growth in Peter. 

Jesus follows his passion prediction with a teaching about the conditions for discipleship: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

On the mountain Jesus’ primary intention is to show the disciples the truth of who he is: in his radiant splendor with all the theophanic signs that accompany him in the vision: the mountain, the shining face and garments, the present of Moses and Elijah, and the voice from the cloud - all point to his equality with God and his role as the one who is to come. 

What’s more, the saying of the voice from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”, refers to the prophecy of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42:1, as does the almost exact saying of the voice that came from heaven at the Jesus’ baptism. In chapter 12, Matthew provides the whole quote: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight; I shall place my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not contend or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope” (Mt 12:18-21).

Peter will become the true Gnostic when he is able to see the splendor of the transfigured Lord manifest in the servant of the Lord. He will be able to set up his tent and abide in the rapt ecstatic movement of being caught up in God that he knew on the mount when his heart abides in the Lord who has set up his tent among us, who has come among us in free self-emptying love, who has willingly taken upon himself all our sins, sorrows, trials and difficulties, in a simple, lowly, hidden life, and when he follows the Lord by conforming his own disposition and behavior to his. Passages in the Scriptures that had seemed obscure will light up and unveil their meaning for him. And although his journey will not be without its humiliations and failings, in the end he will follow his Lord to the Cross. 

Let us, too, put on the mind of Christ as we continue our Eucharistic celebration. 

The Abyss of Humility

We need to exercise our ourselves greatly, to lay upon ourselves many hidden labors after a life of negligence, in order that our spirit which resembles a greedy and irritable dog may obtain purity and vigilance through simplicity, gentleness and fervor. However, be of good heart. If the passions lord it over us and we are weak, let us with great confidence offer to Christ our spiritual weakness and our impotence; let us confess them before him. He will help us irrespective of what we deserve, on the sole condition that we descend continually to the bottom, into the abyss of humility.

JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 1st Step

Mistakes at Prayer

What a mistake it is to be tormented and sad because you have no light or consolation in prayer, to strain your head seeking after sensible devotion at Holy Communion, and to neglect little faults, small observances, and occasions for mortifying your own will and desires, for conquering your human respect and for procuring your own humiliation before others! If we were reasonable, we should think only of these last and not make the slightest effort to succeed according to our own ideas; because, as a matter of fact, we never succeed better than when we humbly endure dryness and the privation of this false fervor that nature so loves and that the real love of God despises and even rejects as far as it is able.

ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Letter 7

The Discipline of Contemplation

Contemplation should not be exaggerated, distorted, and made to seem great. It is essentially simple and humble. No one can enter into it except by the path of obscurity and self-forgetfulness. It implies also much discipline, but above all the normal discipline of everyday virtue. It implies justice to other people, truthfulness, hard work, unselfishness, devotion to the duties of one’s state in life, obedience, charity, self-sacrifice. No one should delude himself with contemplative aspirations if he is not willing to undertake, first of all, the ordinary labors and obligations of the moral life.

THOMAS MERTON The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

Homily — 1st Sunday of Lent, Year A

Drama in the Desert

From the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and all the way to Golgotha, we see plainly that Christ Jesus did not come into this world to tread the broad and easy way. As his disciples, we should keep that fact foremost in mind. On the contrary, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit he goes without detours to the place where divine battles are fought: that is, to the depths of the human heart, symbolized in Matthew, first, by the depths of Jordan’s waters, where demonic monsters were thought to lurk, and, today, by the desert, where only the saint or the demon can survive. If Satan is the hero of the world—the lord of the earthly-minded, plotting the disruption of the divine order of unity and love at every step—Christ is the divine Hero who comes to confront Satan’s logic with clear-headedness, dogged determination and humility. In this forbidding wilderness two diametrically opposed solutions to the human plight are at loggerheads: on the one hand, capitulation to the comforts of the satanic suggestions; on the other, surrender to the mercy of God’s Providence. Either option requires listening and yielding to a voice from beyond ourselves, though resonating in the depths of our being. Who can doubt that such a tug of war is at the center of the human drama? And to which voice will I pledge my allegiance and devotion? 

The desert is the place of utter poverty and, therefore, an invitation to heroic trust in God. When we experience our own barrenness, when we are most in need, then it is that we are the most vulnerable and that the decisive crises arise. Will I accept quick fixes and adore their Pusher, thus betraying my identity as a person begotten of God, my Creator? Or will I agree to wait in silence and privation, fasting from all the world has to offer, for the perfect length of God’s pleasure, represented by the forty days and nights that recapitulate Israel’s historical wandering in the desert? 

The story of humanity’s Fall through sin is explained today in the tale of our first parents’ seduction through the temptation to become like God. Genesis shows us that God did not create the Human in a condition of alienation from itself but rather in a relationship of graciously bestowed friendship with the Creator. Harmony and not disruption is our origin. Because God creates us in the divine image, God gives us the highest of gifts, freedom—a gift that puts us squarely before the challenge of accountability: this single truth is the source both of our greatest difficulties and of our highest dignity as spiritual beings. A creature cast in unvarying moral uprightness as in a block of concrete would not be free at all. Goodness, like love, can never be the product of an automatic-response mechanism, but only the fruit of a free and personal act.

Now, this is where the plot of salvation-history thickens. God knows “in advance” that humans, enjoying such freedom of choice, will yield to the temptation to want to become like God.  This foreknowledge on God’s part, far from inducing a divine mistake, is rather a measure of how highly God regards the freedom he conferred on us. Yes, God is willing to risk the defeat of his wondrous design of friendship with man. It seems that for God everything hinges on our possessing by nature the privilege of freedom of choice. The reason must be that, without such freedom, there can be no authentic, reciprocal love, which is ultimately what God is after. God does not only wish to “make us happy” in a generic and static manner; God wants for us to enjoy forever the blissful intimacy of his love, and for this a reciprocal relationship is necessary which can be entered into only through the portal of total freedom. God always bestows his love, but we must actively embrace it and live accordingly. 

But God’s factual foreknowledge of humankind’s Fall is accompanied by an even deeper redemptive foreknowledge: namely, by the Father’s intention to send his Son into the world as the One who would face the very same temptation as Adam and Eve, but this time overcoming it. Today’s desert scene is, in fact, Paradise revisited: this is the scene of the unimaginable opportunity whereby the Lord Jesus undoes by his fidelity and obedience the evil that had been perpetrated there, and so re-establishes the innocence of our first condition. This is a victory that only a simultaneously divine and human Savior could accomplish for us. The decisive significance of today’s drama in the desert is that Christ does not triumph over temptation only for himself but for all humankind and each of us, for all who form his Body, so that every one of us can participate in his victory over proud rebellion and puffed-up self-aggrandizement and delusional phantasms of power and glory. Let’s be honest: We do not have to be princes, politicians or mega-CEO’s to be eminent practitioners of the dark arts of selfishness!

The Gospel today portrays Jesus’ victory as occurring after a 40-day fast, that is, at a moment when humanly speaking he is at his weakest and most vulnerable. Make no mistake about it: the temptations he undergoes are genuine temptations. They are not a show of pious make-believe enacted merely to teach us a moral lesson. Jesus may not have experienced the seduction of evil superficially, that is, as an enticement to crude sensual gratification. But surely for him it’s all the worse, because he is tested at a much deeper level of his being.  He suffers temptation in its pure state as a colossal gravitational pull to disobedience against his Father’s mission. What is here dramatized is nothing less than Satan instigating Jesus by every means available to his demonic know-how to abandon his divine Filiation and instead worship the Father of lies. In his well-aimed replies to each of Satan’s enticements, Jesus uses solely the words of Scripture. In this way he shows us that only total obedience to God, total interior identification with God’s Word, can transform mere freedom of choice into perfect freedom of heart and soul.  Indeed, we are most fully and gloriously ourselves only when God’s Word pervades and animates our whole being as the motivating source of all our thoughts, decisions and actions.  

In today’s encounter between God’s Incarnate Wisdom and the arch-Tempter we see that Satan, for all his angelic intelligence, did not understand the divine logic of salvation: namely, that obedient weakness is transmuted into spiritual power by the alchemy of the Father’s delight in the Son’s fidelity. Only faith can understand this, because only faith can understand the paradoxes of divine love. Satan juggles rationality and irony masterfully, but he is woefully ignorant of love’s readiness to embrace weakness for the sake of the beloved. When Satan gets his sharp teeth into Jesus’ flesh, his fangs crumble like sandstone grinding against steel. Sly, relentless, elemental Temptation then becomes elemental Overthrow of the Tempter. Satan thought he was testing the weakness of a generic holy man, yet all the while the Wisdom of God was, in fact, exposing, for all to see, the ultimate impotence of the Deceiver in the face of obedient fidelity and love. Satan is wholly ignorant of the power of fidelity out of love, and this is his Achilles’ heel. Loving fidelity to our Creator and Savior is thus our own strongest weapon in any temptation.

And behold angels approached and served him: I suggest that in these last seven words of today’s gospel text we have nothing less than the surprising fulfillment, by Jesus’ heavenly Father, of precisely the three offers Satan has just made to Jesus. As temptation leaves our Lord, fulfillment approaches. Instead of his (1) eating the bread Satan tempted him to create out of stones, angels now wait on him as at the heavenly banquet, where the sole nourishment is the Word of the Father. Instead of (2) casting himself down from the temple parapet, thus coercing the Father to send protecting angels to prove his love for him, now the Father, unbidden, sends a host of angels to take up, on earth, their jubilant task of waiting upon the eternal King of heaven. And, because the Incarnate Word plainly (3) refuses obeisance to anyone but the Father, Jesus himself receives the adoring service that Satan had tried to wrest for himself from him, the humble Son. 

Do we not ourselves experience—very palpably at times—God’s marvelous generosity with us when, after we have struggled to serve only him, God then overwhelms us with the very things we thought we had renounced forever, only now raised to an infinitely higher potency of truth, durability, and delight?

In conclusion then, brothers and sisters, let us embrace the freedom given us today by the power of the words of this Gospel and by the grace of this Holy Eucharist we are celebrating, and choose with a joyful heart to follow Christ more intimately step by step wherever he may lead us during this particular Lententide. And let us likewise allow Christ the freedom to fulfill our needs, desires and expectations beyond our most extravagant imaginings, for he can surely do it. Christ, I would say, is constitutionally incapable of leading us anywhere but to Paradise!