Which of us is worthy - of love, of real
relationship; which of us is worthy of Holy Communion each morning? Only the
love of the other, earthly or divine; only that gaze of love can draw me into
the reality of my belovedness. Small wonder that the intuition of the Church
has placed this prayer just before Communion, “O Lord, I am not worthy.” We are
not worthy. But Love has made us worthy. Indeed, in his desire for me, for you,
in his dying and rising for us, Jesus loved us into worthiness. He refuses
to not love us.
Still, we know the closer we get to him, the
more clearly, we see who we are. Always, with the realization of God’s
nearness, there is not boasting or complacency but reverence and contrition.
“Who am I?” The response of a grateful, awe-filled heart is always
appropriately- "I am not worthy." Noticing the blessing, the undeserved
abundance, we see clearly who the recipient is. It is I, it is you, not because
of what we have accomplished but because of who God is- all Love. It’s never
been about worth, but always about love, and the sweet condescension of his
mercy, the tenderness you never really deserve.
Our work is to be seized by awe-filled
gratitude at Christ’s deeds on our behalf over and over again, to see clearly
what God is doing in my life, in our lives together. It demands our attention
and openness to the epiphanies - to believe beyond all doubt that God is
choosing me, choosing us, favoring us, and blessing us beyond our imagining in
ways far beyond our often-narrow comprehension, ways that are his ways, not our
ways of doing things.
We may sometimes want to say with Saint
Peter, “Depart from me, Lord, I am sinful.” Well, the hardest part is that
he won’t go away. Even with my hardheartedness and stupidity, Jesus is not
going anywhere. He just continues to love and mercy us. His love is
ultimately unmanageable. He is aching for us. He can’t help himself. He is
longing to take us into his wounded side as refuge.
Only what is fragile and broken can be
created anew; what is vulnerable is transformable; what is sinful can
be mercied. But what is stiff, stubborn, and intractable is stagnant and
stuck. Allowing myself to be forgiven changes everything. God doesn’t want my
virtue, he wants my weakness.
We must normalize fragmentation for one another - normalize the falling apart as the means to life in Christ Jesus. This is not careless, presumptive laziness, (“I’m broken, you’re broken; Christ will rescue us. No problem!”) Neither is it the blind leading the blind into a catastrophic fall. It is rather the weak leading the weak into a willing acknowledgment and celebration of the inevitability of our fragmentation and weakness as good news that will lead to our transformation in Christ. We need to be prepared for a “collision of desires”- our desperate need for forgiveness bound to collide with Jesus’ desperate desire to forgive and console us.
Photograph of Brothers Guerric and Mikah by Brother Brian. Meditation by one of our monks.
