FRIENDS

Just a quick thought. A comment in Prions en église pointed out, à propos of a passage in the Gospel of St John, that we keep thinking that we have chosen to be Christians, Episcopalians or Anglicans who actually believe, Methodists, Baptists, etcetera.  That it reflects a mature choice in our adult life, that we have considered the temptations (manifold) to be something else, or, temptingly, nothing at all so we can live with no constraints whatever, and that we have come to the conclusion that, as Winston Churchill said about democracy, the Christian faith is the worst of all faiths except for all the other ones.

Wrong. Wrong, said Fr van den Driessche. We may believe that it happened like this, but we are fooling ourselves. It is He who has done the choosing. Wake up and smell the coffee. You didn’t choose squat. You were chosen. How very unnerving. You were chosen: he chose you because he loved, and loves, you. How embarrassing. How spectacularly wonderful. How humbling. 

What do we do about this? No, no, no: we do not charge off to Do Good. At least not right away. How would it be if we stopped for a while and pondered, and let that love reach to our inmost noogies, and basked in it? We keep being told not to do things like that, and to get of our ass and Do Good. Uh, huh. Unless and until we can feel that love warming the cockles of our heart (what are cockles, anyway?), we cannot pass it on. We aren’t equipped. We’re hindered by all those thornbushes and all those serpents. Only if we can stop – stop – and let that love (not just for everyone, for humanity, for men of good will: for you, for me, oh shit) percolate to every nook and cranny of our inmost being, and enjoy it, and bask in it, and revel in it ------- only if we can do that can we go on to communicate it, in whichever way we have received the gift of doing so, to all those people we love and who could be receiving it too if only we could explain it to them . . . . . . .

“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” (John 15:16)

"Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." (John 15:15)

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Image: detail from Paolo Veronese, The Feast in the House of Levi (1573)