The Mind of God

 Karl Rahner, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, once said, "The Christian of the future will either be a mystic, or he will be nothing at all."    Now, in the 21st century, I see Rahner's statement taking shape.  There is so much "nothing at all" in our culture that we now have a name, a label, for it -- nones, referring to those who have no religious affiliation. But even among those who call themselves Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc., there seems to be little mysticism among believers.  I think maybe it's our culture, which places little or no value on mystical experience -- indeed, in the age of science, mysticism is regarded with suspicion.

In the Garden of Paradise, man was given a choice -- to live by Wisdom / The Tree of Life, or to live by his knowledge of good and evil/ science.  In other words, we can enter into the mind of God, and live, or we can choose to live by what we can see, taste, hear, and see -- which leads to death.  In the desert, Jesus repeated the lesson Moses gave the Israelites:  Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3).

Mysticism is not magical; it is not "out there;" it is not reserved for a few.  Mysticism is simply entering into the mind and heart of God, learning what it is that "comes forth from the mouth of God," and leads to life.  In the 55th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet speaks for God:

"Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
 Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
 Give ear, and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.....
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. 

Mysticism is nothing more than "giving ear," listening to the Holy Spirit instead of to the voices all around us.  When we read Scripture, we read with an ear cocked to the Voice of the Spirit within, Who teaches us as we read.  When we pray, we pray not so much our of our own minds, but listening to what the Spirit prays in us.  If we have accepted the Gift of Tongues, we are able more easily to let go of the persistent thoughts of our own minds and enter into the mind of the Holy Spirit. The Gift of Tongues essentially shuts down, or at least occupies, the language center of the brain, and opens our minds to receive the thoughts of God.

In the Book of 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" ---but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.  It is not "far away," or "out there;" it is in our hearts and minds:  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

....that we may understand.....The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned....for who has known the mind of the Lord....But we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:6-16)

 It is more than clear that God wants to communicate His thoughts, His mind, His heart to us.  He sent Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, to reveal to us His own thoughts --- Have you been so long with me and you still do not know the Father? Jesus asked Philip.  If we are thirsty enough to read Scripture, to ask for the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to listen to Jesus, the spoken Word of God, we can know the mind and heart of God.  And that, that, is what makes us ordinary people "mystics."

Psalm 63

 When I sit down each morning to pray, the first thing I do is to recite Psalm 63:

O God, you are my God; at dawn I seek you;

For you my flesh is pining,

like a dry weary land without water.

 

Your faithful love is better than life;
my lips will speak your praise.
I will bless you all my life;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul shall be filled as with a banquet;
with joyful lips my mouth shall praise you.

 

When I remember you upon my bed,

I muse on you through the watches of the night.

For you have been my strength;

in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.

My soul clings fast to you;

Your right hand upholds me. 

This morning it dawned on me that Jesus had to have prayed this same psalm at some time or times in his life.  Yesterday I wrote about finding God, or belief in God, from the experiences of our life -- and I thought about Jesus praying this psalm remembering how the Father had delivered him from the clutches of Herod as an infant.  Surely Mary would have told him that story as he grew up.  

And then, when the crowd at Nazareth wanted to toss him from a cliff because of blasphemy, he passed through the crowd without harm.  Surely, while fasting in the desert, he may have prayed this psalm....my flesh pines for you like a dry weary land without water.... my soul clings fast to you; Your right hand upholds me!

We almost cannot pray this psalm ourselves without recalling the times when God upheld us, when God became our strength.  Certainly we cannot praise Him with thanksgiving without recalling those times.  So praying this psalm each day is almost like watching my life in review, recalling those times when I was saved from certain death or disaster -- the time I was almost kidnapped as a five-year-old, the time I was warned of impending danger as I sat in the park, the time I was diagnosed with lung cancer after five or six years of constant coughing.  I think of these times and "with joyful lips my mouth shall praise you!"

One psalm that expresses our experience is better than a thousand others that mean little to us!  Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he cautioned us against multiplying words without meaning.

Where Does Faith Come From?

 As a child, I learned that faith, hope, and charity were theological virtues -- that is, they came from God to draw us back to God.  They were gifts; we were not able, I learned, to give ourselves these gifts.

As an adult, I would often hear sermons about how important it is to have faith in God --- only no one ever said how we are supposed to "get" faith.  I guess maybe someone must have said to ask God for the gift of faith, but if you don't already have some degree of faith, it is hard to believe that God will give you what you are asking for.  

Reflecting on Father Ken's homily posted yesterday, I realized that he was saying, "If you want to "believe" in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, look to your experience rather than to your doctrine.  Not that doctrine is not important -- it certainly is, but our doctrine, or belief, begins in experience first, and only then moves to reflection on our experience, and finally to a statement of belief:  "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"

Karl Rahner, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, maintained that every person has experienced God.  When countered with someone's denial, he would say, "O yes.  You have experienced Him!"  And looking back at the Bible, our source of belief/ doctrine, I realize that in every case, faith emerged from experience.  From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; from the history of Israel, from the prophets, from those who encountered Jesus Christ, first there was an experience ---  and only afterwards, "faith."  

Anyone who reads the Bible through these lenses will see where faith comes from -- first, God takes the initiative in someone's life, and then.....we believe.  We believe because we have seen and heard for ourselves that God is present and active in our lives.  God is no respecter of persons.  If He acted in Abraham's life, in Peter's life, He must also act in our lives.

Ask anyone who believes, really believes in God, why he/she believes.  In many cases, someone has told of his/her own experience, and that story leads the person to turn to God, hesitantly at first and without faith -- but then, they come to believe because of their own encounter with the Living God.  But there is always the story, the experience, that leads to belief.

When, where, how were you first touched by the Holy Spirit?  When did you experience the Fatherhood of God, the compassion of the Christ, the love of the Holy Spirit?  When did you first "see" the hand of God in your own life?  Why do YOU believe?

I used to tell my Confirmation students, 11th graders who were trying to decide on a college or a career after high school, to consult not only college brochures, but their own interior experience of the college as they visited the campus.  In other words, to trust their experience as the leading of God in their lives. We have to learn what peace of mind, body, and soul feels like, and to trust our own experience of that peace as God's action in our lives.  As we trust, and then walk, in that experience, we begin to discover God's leading.  And we begin to believe that He will lead us to the next step.

Even as a young child, I used to experience a kind of peace whenever I went into an empty church during recess or after school.  I experienced a kind of Presence there that I came to trust.  The first time I visited the site of the high school I eventually attended, I felt that Peace and that Presence, and I knew that I belonged on that campus.

If we look at our lives for the times we experienced peace, true comfort, Presence, truth (in the case of St. Augustine, for example), we will find God -- and we will begin to believe!

Holy Trinity Sunday

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity.  Our guest celebrant today was Father Ken Hedrick, a retired priest now living in Mississippi.  His homily touched me, and I asked permission to post it on this blog.  Enjoy!

.......

 No one thus far has really understood the concept of the Holy Trinity and we won’t either, no matter what theological constructs we employ in our prayers.  That’s why we call the Trinity one of the mysteries of our faith.  But the truth of the matter is that God never chose to reveal the reality of the Trinity as a doctrine.  The word “trinity” never even appears in Scripture.  Jesus did not ever invite his apostles to accompany him to a quiet place so that he would teach them a short course on the Trinity.  Instead, God, in the Scriptures and in Christ, chose to reveal the Trinity not as a doctrine but as an experience.

God the Father.  God as Father not only creates our lives, God cradles us with a parent’s protection and care, with a Father’s discipline, with a parent’s guidance.  As you recall times when you have felt cared for and watched over, when you felt a protection not of your own or this earth’s doing, when you felt supported in difficult times, guided from the waywardness you were tempted to pursue and onto the way of righteousness, when – through the love expressed in the sacrament of marriage – you have helped create new life on this earth, then you have experienced the revelation of God the Father. 

God the Son.  God as the divine Son and Savior is with us as brother and companion.  When you recall times you felt the burden of guilt lifted and new possibilities open before you in the second chance that was offered, when you found peace even in moments of challenge and tragedy, when you found the courage to sacrifice for what was right, when you took the hand of another in spite of your own weakness, when you shed a tear at another’s misfortune or hurt and you offered support, then you experience the revelation of God the Son.

 God is present to us now as the Spirit of life.  When you recall times when you did not give in to doubt, frustration or despair but knew you could journey on, when you heard a word of guidance that redirected and re-energized your heart, when you stood up for right with courage, when the voice of your conscience pricked you and changed your behavior or your attitude, when you felt solace in your time of grief, when you were moved to pray in your time of need, then you experienced God the Holy Spirit.

 The Holy Trinity: not a theological mystery to be figured out, but a revelation of a relationship to be experienced, the relationship of a community of love.  May we open ourselves to all that this experience has to offer us as we seek wholeness and holiness of life.  May we also renew our baptismal pledge to help others experience, in every aspect of this parish’s life and ministry, the community of love that the Trinity reveals and into which God, Father, Son and Spirit, invites us and all to enter, no matter what the next translation of the Roman Missal might have us saying.

I Will Bless You....

 I will bless you, ....and you will be a blessing (Genesis 12).  

All people on earth will be blessed through you (Genesis 12).

"Holiness" is nothing less than participation in the life of the Trinity, in the Divine Exchange of Love and Blessing.  We know that whoever comes to God is blessed; His first act following the creation of Adam and Eve was to bless them.  We know that whoever came to Jesus, saint or sinner, during His sojourn on earth was blessed and welcomed into His own relationship with the Father through the giving of the Holy Spirit.  And after Jesus' Ascension, the Holy Spirit was sent as a blessing on "people from every nation who fear God and do what is right" (Peter, in Acts 10).

I will bless you and you will be a blessing.....  This morning, I suddenly realized something very simple -- those who have entered into relationship with God have become a blessing to others.  It is not necessary that we identify those who belong to our church, our doctrine, etc.  Entering into a relationship with God comes in many forms.  In Acts 10, Cornelius, a centurion in the Italian Regiment, was described as "devout and God-fearing, giving generously to those in need, and praying to God regularly."  Obviously, though not a Jew, and not observing the law, Cornelius had some sort of relationship with God -- and God poured out on him and his entire household the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Cornelius was already a blessing to those around him; the gift of the Spirit enabled him to enter even more deeply into God's divine life and thus to become an even greater blessing on earth.

When we look around us, we can find many like Cornelius whose lives are a blessing to those around them. Some time ago, I was disturbed by the statement of one of my friends that an acquaintance was "going to hell" because she is a Buddhist and has not accepted Jesus Christ.  But I happen to know that this woman is a blessing in all she does to those around her.  If the story of Cornelius tells us anything, it is that God blesses those who "obey him and do what is right."  And those who are so blessed become in turn a blessing to the earth.

If God pours out His Spirit on those who are in some relationship with Him --- and He does, in one way or another --- then the Spirit of God will inevitably lead us into the Truth.  In the meantime, we can recognize God-at-work in other people by their lives.  If their lives are a blessing to others, we can know for sure that somehow God is moving in them, and that the Gift of His Spirit is not far behind!

Seek the Mark of the Spirit - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

Such a great reflection on "3" and our mission in the world!