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An essential element of our
monastic conversatio is mindfulness of God. We are to be responsive to the
Holy Spirit and so cultivate continual mindfulness of God's presence. A good
part of this “mindfulness” often entails a great deal of “mindfulness of my
desperate need for God’s mercy.” And my heart is broken open with regret and
repentance as I recall, sometimes in vivid detail, the dumb, selfish things
that are a real and embarrassing part of my past. How could I have been such a
jerk? God is not surprised. Why should I be? So it is that I remember
blowing up at my Dad one day for some trifle that I deemed inappropriate. I was
not proud of myself. And a day or so later, I had the sense to apologize. His
response was simple, “Jimmy, you never have to apologize to me.” This touched
me deeply. His words were my forgiveness. He knew
me and understood me, he loved me. And I understood that the
love, the relationship we had, meant more and could tolerate the breach. In the
end, I think I really learned to forgive and what it feels like to be forgiven
by my father. He simply was not a grudge-holder. And when I was trying to
muster the courage to take steps toward entering this monastery, it was somehow
imagining his words as the Father’s words deep in my heart that gave me the
courage I needed, “Give it a try. What have you got to lose?” My father knew me well.
The idea of "knowing" in Ancient Hebrew thought implies
a highly personal and intimate relationality. (See Jeff Benner) It is the intimate knowledge of
lovers; in Genesis, we read that Adam "knew Eve his wife". And we pray
in the psalm, “O God, you search me, and you know me,” implying an intimate
loving awareness that is much, much more than God smugly spying on us.
Hopefully, most often, this knowledge spurs a response, and we say with Saint
Paul, “All I want is to know Christ.”
Both are converted, literally turned
around by mercy. Peter who three times denied his Friend in the light of a
charcoal fire is given the opportunity by Jesus three times to proclaim his
love early one morning by another charcoal fire. There on the beach, he gets to
say, “Lord, I do love you; you know well that I love you.” Jesus knew that all
along never doubted it.
So, we know how Peter and
Paul would respond to Jesus’ question, but what about when we hear the wounded
resurrected Christ Jesus ask us this same question, majestic in its quiet
insecurity Who? Who do you say I am/ How do you experience me? And Paul
temporarily blinded by the glaring light of Christ’s self-revelation- “I am
Jesus whom you are persecuting”- speaking from his deep-down experience will
tell us that, “Nothing whatever can separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus, our Lord.” Their encounters, and their evolving relationships with Jesus the
wounded Life-giver, empower them both to be themselves wounded
and forgiven life-givers. They have been empowered by mercy and compassion and
forgiveness. We celebrate two men desperately in need of transformation, a transformation
that happens in their encounters with their most merciful betrayed and
persecuted Lord.
Paul will say it best: “God
has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are
mighty.” Clearly, God’s preference for the weak is all about availability. Simply
put- it is that only what is fragile, weak (and) precarious according to the
order of this world that can allow itself to be “broken so as to be created
anew.” That which 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.
Perhaps this is our most
important work as monks- to allow things to fall apart and notice that, as
things fall apart, we are more available for mercy. Perhaps part of our work is
to normalize this fragmentation for one another- normalize the falling apart as
the means to a most glorious end, life in Christ Jesus. This is not a 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. And so, I like to imagine us
encouraging each other as once the about-to-be martyrs did, watching and
waiting their turn with the beasts there in the dreary dugouts of the Coliseum.
“Go forward; don’t be afraid. This falling, this dying will not be your
dissolution but your means, a royal, jubilant gateway to new and more abundant
life in Christ, into Christ. Go ahead, let yourself be eaten up! It’s worth it.
He’s worth it. Don’t be afraid.”
Jesus’ question to Peter,
to each of us in this morning’s Gospel, situates us with Peter poised to listen
to our Master as he whispers this hauntingly beautiful question to each of us
in the depths of our hearts, “Who do you say that I am? Who am I for you? What
is your experience of me in your life, in your history? How do you experience
me now?” What will you answer? Perhaps when we come to understand ourselves as
sinners desperately beloved by God in Christ, then with Peter we can say, “You
are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” and with Paul, “All I want is to
know (you) Christ Jesus and the power flowing from (your) resurrection. Now
nothing else matters.”
When we eat this Bread and
drink this cup, we proclaim with every fiber of our being that Mercy has found
us, that we too like our saints have been empowered by his forgiveness because
love is more powerful than death.
Reflection by one of the monks.
