The God of My Tomorrow

First, some housekeeping:  at my last post, I quoted Lewis from memory, suspecting the passage was from Mere Christianity, but too lazy to look for it.  My sister, more diligent than I, found it easily.  Here is the full quote in context:

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?”

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If we learn anything from salvation history, it's that God is not in a hurry.  It took Him around 2000 years to prepare the Jewish nation for the coming of its Messiah.  Beginning with Abraham, Yahweh slowly formed first a man who could trust him, then a family -- and that was anything but easy --- and even tougher, finally a nation.  And always, at every stage, the people looked back on its history in order to move forward:  "I am the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ..... I brought your forefathers out of Egypt, that land of slavery......As I was with Moses, so I will be with you."

Because of its experience with the God of the fathers, Israel was able to walk into the future.  In fact, as they entered the Promised Land and discovered that Yahweh was still acting on their behalf, they constructed stone monuments in various areas as reminders to future generations.  They called these structures "Ebenezer," meaning, "Thus far has God helped us/ been with us."  Visible reminders, along with the stories that accompanied them, gave the Israelites courage and faith that God was guiding their history.

In a similar way, reflecting on where God has been for us in the past, thinking about how He has guided our decisions and paths, can be a strong impetus to our own faith and courage to open our lives to Him today.  In 1976, at a sort of crisis in my own life, someone asked me, "Who is God to you?"  I had the evening to think about my answer, one that surprised me.  No one had ever asked me that question before, so I was sort of coasting on a vague and general understanding of who God was to me.

The next morning ( I was at a retreat center, talking to a counselor), I replied, "God is the God of my past, occasionally of my present, but He is not the God of my future.  I worry about what may happen tomorrow and the next day, and I think maybe I don't really trust God."  

What I explained was that I could almost always look back and see where God had been in my life, where I had taken this turn instead of that one --- and occasionally I could experience God in the present moment, perhaps in prayer, but for the most part, I figured I was in charge of the next step and feared that I was not prepared to handle it.  The question I was asked was a powerful one, for looking back, I think that may have been the moment when I wanted to know and trust the God of My Tomorrow.

When David faced Goliath as a young man, his courage came from reflecting on Who God had been for him in the past: 

Saul replied: You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth."

But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.  When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; ....The Lord who delivered me from the pa of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine" (I Samuel 17).

In biblical terms, this "speech," if you will, is called "Theology of Recital."  That is, like the Israelites who built monuments across the land and told stories about how God had helped them in that spot, David recited stories of where God had been in his past.  

Our past is a signpost to our future if indeed we can identify the landmarks:  "Here I was helped," and "There I was directed."  Contrary to popular belief, faith is not a "leap in the dark," but rather a sound reflection on where and Who God has been for us in the past.  There is a popular song called "Will you love me tomorrow?"  I love the melody, and finally, I love changing the words to "You are the God of my tomorrow!"  I could not be more thankful!

Eternal Life

If we want eternal life, we must get very close to, or even into, the thing that has it. 

(C.S.Lewis)

I hope I have not misquoted Lewis above; I am "quoting" from memory here, and his writings are so vast that I have no idea where I might find this particular item.  If I happen to stumble across the source anytime soon, I will reference it and correct any mistake I have made.  

In the Gospel of John, there are numerous references to "eternal life," and these references, in contrast to those in Lewis's writings, are easy to look up.  In the 6th chapter, for example, Jesus asks the apostles if they, too, want to leave Him after "many of His disciples" are "grumbling" about His teaching on eating His flesh and drinking His blood.  Peter's answer was, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life!"

In our western mentality and understanding, "eternal life" translates to "everlasting life," or living forever, a state many people cannot begin to imagine or even care about.  Because our thinking is so bound to time and space, it is much easier to accept the idea that once we die, life is over -- and that's okay for many people.  Since they cannot imagine what an afterlife might consist in, they have not much interest in floating around in a disembodied state, maybe singing hymns and seeing other disembodied souls.  

I have a friend whose joy is that, in the words of Carl Sagan, we are created out of stardust.  For her, death simply means that our energy returns to the earth to feed its overall health.  And for her, that is all she asks.  It is not that she is rejecting God; it is just that, like many people, she has never gotten around to entering into great intimacy with Him.  Our lives are busy, and the world is full of beauty -- enough to satisfy us for a time.  When our time is up, we are finished with the world and all it offers us, and that is okay.

What our Western understanding of eternal life fails to reveal to us is what the Greek language, the language of the Bible, reveals so clearly:  the words "eternal life" refer to a quality of life, not the duration of life.  In the Greek, "bio" and "psuche" are the terms for the physicality and duration, or length, of life.  For example,in Matthew 2:20, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, he says, "Get up, take the child and his mother and to to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."   Again, in Matthew 6:25, Jesus says, "... do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear..."  In these two places, the Greek word used is psuche, or "breath," the animal sentient principle only, as distinguished from the rational and immortal soul (pneuma) and from zoe, which means "vitality," "energy."

In Matthew 14, Jesus says "Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."  Here, although He does not use the term "eternal life," in the Greek, the term used is zoe, referring to energy, vitality, living, or in common use, the "beautiful life."

When we get to the Gospel of John, every reference to what we translate "life" is zoe in the Greek:  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men....God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that men might not perish but have everlasting life....I will give you a spring of water welling up to eternal life....  The first time in the Gospel that "psuche" (breath) is used is when Jesus says the Good Shepherd will lay down His life/psuche/breath for His sheep (John 10).

The woman at the well had "psuche," breath; what she lacked was "zoe," vitality/ energy/ the beautiful life.  What she craved was "eternal" life; she already had the other kind and she was miserable and lonely.  When she returns to her village, shouting to the others to come, "see a man who told me everything I ever did," we can sense in her manner an energy, a love, and a life that she had never before possessed -- eternal life!  She is joyful, full, overflowing, unable to contain this new energy.  She is no longer fearful of the opinions of others, or "careful for her own 'psuche/breath/life;'" she has been born again to eternal life, life that no one can take from her.  

THIS is the life we all seek even before we die -- this energy, vitality, love, beauty -- the life of children who do not worry, but who enter into each day with joy and excitement.  If we want this this life, we must get close to, or even into, the thing that has it, in the words of C.S. Lewis!

Behold! I Make All Things New!

Some time ago, I wrote about my dad substituting a new clothespin for the broken one I handed him.  "See," I told my neighbor, "I told you my daddy could fix anything." 

A child's faith in God our Father is required from all of us.  Like my dad, He knows that it is no good pouring new wine into old wineskins, for the old cannot contain the energy of the new.  He has no intentions today of patching up a fallen world, holding us together with baling wire and duct tape, and hoping for the best. Rather, whatever of our old nature is surrendered to Him is tossed into the pit, and in its place, He gives us a new nature, born not of Adam but of His own dear son, Jesus Christ.

"My Daddy CAN fix anything," but first we must hand it over to Him with full faith in His ability and in His love for us.  Jesus surrendered Himself body and soul to the will of God, into the hands of His Father Who loves Him.  Still, He went to a painful death and even to the feeling of being abandoned by God.  All that is in our old (Adam) nature must die, so that what is born again is born of the Spirit and of Truth.

Jesus accomplished our transformation once and for all with His death and resurrection, but His power and His energy must still work in us daily to transform our old natures into His.  In the Book of Genesis, God told Abram, "Walk in My Presence and be perfect!"  (Genesis 17:1).  Our transformation comes the same way -- as with the disciples on the road to Emmaeus, we too must "walk with Him" -- the Resurrected Jesus -- every day in order to allow Him to teach, to heal, to change our natures.  In His Sacrament, He daily feeds this new nature with His very own Energy, which we call the Holy Spirit.

On the road, He unfolded the Scriptures to them, making them see what before had been hidden.  He broke the bread with them, which now was their food -- His very own Body, Mind, Soul, and Divinity.  That food would change them forever, from Sons of Adam to Sons of God.  In our Mass, we have the same process -- feeding our minds and hearts with the Divine Word, breaking it open with reflection on its meaning, followed by the breaking of the Bread to feed our bodies and souls with the very Nature of Jesus Himself.

According to the Jewish commentators, the expression "Walk in My Presence" means to trust with complete faith that the Light of the Infinite envelops and surrounds us on all sides, as the Scripture says, Whoever trusts in the Eternal is surrounded by lovingkindness (Ps. 32:10).

In our day of corona virus and the destruction of the world as we know it, it is helpful for us to hand over our lives into the hands of a loving Father with complete confidence, knowing that He makes all things new again.  If He is destroying life as we know it, surely it is only because He will hand us a life we cannot now imagine.  If we walk in the newness of faith, as the Scripture tells us, we know that we are surrounded by  His lovingkindness, and that He continues to make all things broken new again!

Good Friday

I moved to Long Beach in 2007 and began teaching Confirmation Classes either that year or the next, continuing until 2018.  Those 10/11 years brought me the greatest joy; some students were initially resistant to anything "churchy," but eventually came around to being not-too-unwilling participants.  A few seemed to enjoy the classes, and some never gave up their resistance but were confirmed nevertheless with the others.

One of the girls I had taught about 5 or 6 years ago called me out of the blue from Florida a few months ago.  She had been driving in her car when suddenly the car seemed to fill up with the Presence of God, and she encountered Jesus Christ.  Not knowing who to talk to after her experience, she called me.  What a gift that was, to know that a seed had been planted years ago, and was now coming to fruition!

As I entered into prayer time this morning, for some reason, all those students became intensely present to me in a spiritual way -- and I experienced a great love for all of them, the willing and the unwilling.  I could "see" individual faces, and I began to pray for all of them, wherever they were. I felt a strong spiritual connection with all of them, and then I realized that today is Good Friday.

Suddenly, for the first time, I realized that the experience I was having with my students was Christ's experience with us as He hung on the cross.  He could see each of us even then, and His love for each of us, the willing and the unwilling, was beyond words.  He prayed for each of us who would come to Him even then, and He was willing to die a painful death in order that we would not have to go through the death we deserved.

The death of the Passover Lamb, the shedding of its blood to cover and protect those in covenant with God from the plagues of Egypt, and the giving of its flesh as food for the journey out of Egypt, were all pre-figures of Christ's death on the cross, that we might experience the life of the Trinity.  As I could "see" and experience all my students from ten years of connection with them, I somehow was experiencing a small part of Christ's divine life and His connection with all of us.  He sees us; He prays for us; He has never given up hope that the seeds He has planted will eventually bear fruit.

Because we have died to the power of sin and death, we are now free to enter into the life that God lives.  We are free to love as He loves, to see what He sees, to overcome what He has overcome for us.  Indeed, today IS truly "Good" Friday.  We adore Him and thank and praise Him for what He has done for us!

HE'S ALIVE!

Nothing is more important than knowing that Jesus Christ LIVES! That He's ALIVE!

It is one thing to hear about, to read about, Jesus Christ -- His life, death, and resurrection.  It is something else entirely to know that He lives today.  Not only that He lives in heaven, but that He lives on earth today, and that we can experience Him today. 

The disciples on the road to Emmaeus were downcast and discouraged.  They had hoped that He was the One promised for ages, the Messiah.  They had followed Him, had seen His works, had heard His teaching.  But now, He had been put to death by the Romans.  He was dead, and His work, His teaching would pass out of memory.  But then.....they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread and in His teaching once again.  HE'S ALIVE!  They rushed back to Jerusalem with the news.  They had seen Him!

For us today, faith is that essential contact with the Living Jesus of the Gospels.  We have read, we have heard, we have been at the Mass and received Him in the Eucharist.  But do we know He lives today?  Have we had contact with the Risen Lord of the Gospels?  In his book, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, Abbot Anscar Vonier writes:

It is a favorite idea with Saint Thomas (Aquinas), that faith is truly a contact with Christ, 

a real, psychological contact with Christ, which, if once established, may lead man

into the inner glories of Christ's life.  Without this contact of faith we are dead to Christ,

the stream of His life passing us by without entering into us, as a rock in the midst of a river remains unaffected by the turbulent rush of waters.  This contact of faith makes man susceptible to the influences of Christ....Till faith be established the great redemption has not become our redemption; the riches of Christ are not ours in any true sense; we are members of the human race, but we are not members of Christ.

For the Protestant believer, this initial contact with Christ is what is referred to by being "born again."  Most of them will recall a moment when they gave their lives to Christ, or surrendered everything to Him and were born again. For Catholics, typically, there is a slow simmer towards faith rather than a defining moment that they can recall. But they know Jesus is alive and active in their lives, and they live for Him. 

St. Paul said, "If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain and we are the most pitiable of men."  Most of us can accept the historical fact of the Resurrection without problem, but to many, Jesus is still dead in terms of a living relationship with Him.  He does not affect their lives in any way; He is simply someone they have heard about.  

So how do we come into a living relationship with this historical Person?  For many, many People, He comes to us gratis, as a Gift, as He did with the disciples on the road to Emmaeus.  For those who have heard but have not yet experienced the Gift of God, is is imperative that we ask for the Gift, as Jesus told us in Matthew 7 and Luke 11:

Ask and it will be given to you;

Seek and you will find;

Knock and the door will be opened;

For everyone who asks, receives;

He who seeks, finds;

and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

...For if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, 

how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son....

and if He gave His Son, would not He want us to know Him, to believe in Him, to love Him? Would He not want us to have contact with Him through a living faith?  How much more simple could it be?  If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and He would give you living water, welling up to eternal life!

Do This in Memory of Me

At sundown next Wednesday, April 8, Passover begins.  Our God has always been a sacramental God.  That is, He inscribes His Word not only on our hearts and in our minds, but also in our flesh -- in the things we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel.

Passover is the prime and defining moment of God's action in history -- to take for Himself a people no longer enslaved by the things of this world, but free to worship and enter into communion with Him.  At the moment of release from slavery and subjection, He instituted a "memorial" ritual -- the Passover Meal, to be kept not only that night, but in memoriam, in perpetual memory and celebration.  During the Passover Meal that fateful night, the Jews had to do three things, and they had to do them standing up, feet shod, and ready to leave Egypt forever.  They had to feast on an unblemished lamb; they had to eat unleavened bread; and they had to taste bitter herbs.  This 'eating and tasting' would be repeated every year as long as Israel continued in existence.  In later years, this meal would be much more than a "memorial;" in fact, it would re-create the experience of the Jewish ancestors who left Egypt.  The eating and tasting would make present to modern-day Jews the bitter experience endured by their fathers and mothers, and the saving action of God on their behalf.

Even more than a memorial, this ritual meal would make present today the saving action of God to those who participated in it. "Everyone who sins," Jesus said in John 8, "is a slave to sin.  But if the Son of Man sets you free, you are free indeed."

To "remember" in the Biblical sense brings the past event into the present -- the past, present, and future are all united in the biblical notion of zikaron, remembrance.  For Catholics today, to receive the Eucharist is to participate in the saving action of Christ's death on the cross and His Resurrection from the dead.  We are not "remembering" His action; we are living it.  We are in communion with Jesus Christ as He hangs on the cross, praying for us to His eternal Father.  We are one with Him as He rises from the dead, never to die again.  His divine energy flows through us as He remains at the Father's right hand, receiving all that the Father wants to give us.

At the Last Supper, the institution of our Passover, Jesus told the disciples, "I want you to be with Me where I AM."  Where HE IS.....God.  And we indeed ARE with Him in the Presence of the Father, no longer in slavery to sin and the values of this world.  We are free to worship God, just as the Jews were free to worship Him at Mt. Sinai.

God 'remembers' His people --- us!  That means He is acting on our behalf.  As we receive communion with His only Son, we receive the Divine action in ourselves.  So much more than a "memorial;" rather, a reality that words cannot express.