JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD RELAX . . .

Here, in the middle of summer, it would be nice to give our minds a break. But today's reading comes from Paul's letter to the congregation in Rome, whose intelligence and alertness he never underestimates. And accordingly, the awesome Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, Benedictine hermit in Provence, has provided a "meditation" to comment on it which equally refuses to underestimate us. How refreshing. I've chosen J.B. Phillips's New Testament translation to represent the current official French one, which mostly fits. Read with care, because this is not easy. But very, very rewarding.

“Moreover we know that to those who love God, who are called according to his plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good. God, in his foreknowledge, chose them to bear the family likeness of his Son, that he might be the eldest of a family of many brothers. He chose them long ago; when the time came he called them, he made them righteous in his sight, and then lifted them to the splendour of life as his own sons.”

(Romans 8:28-30; tr. J.B. Phillips)

GOD, GREATER THAN OUR HEART

Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, Benedictine hermit

In the space of three verses of extreme density, Paul sketches our ultimate destiny. Thus he opens up for us a horizon that goes far beyond what our spirit can conceive. Moreover, he deals cleverly with the experiences where we have trouble understanding that everything contributes to our good.

Preparation

Lord, “let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort” (Ps. 119:76)

Observation

Right from the start, Paul sets us on another plane than that of feelings, even religious ones. To speak of those who love God he chooses, from among the words available to him, the verb corresponding to “agapè”: the love that has its wellspring in God and has been “flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.” (Rom. 5:5) So it takes on a level of depth and stability that allows it to withstand storms. Then, Paul mentions those whom God “chose long ago”, thereby expressing his conviction that our being in the world did not happen by chance: we were thought and willed by God before our creation. Finally, there are those whom he “made righteous”: a specifically Pauline approach to salvation, seen as the opposite of condemnation, in other words as reconciliation with God (cf Rom. 5). Hence the restoration of the image and of the resemblance; hence our participation in the very glory of the God who calls for our response of faith.

Meditation

By means of these words we understand that our “good” is not only that which is “pleasant” to us, but also that which is “useful” and “salutary”, in a view that goes beyond the limits of our present horizon and of our singular person. It is not that Paul passes over the sufferings of our current state, but by the standard of this ultimate future he sees them as labour pains (cf Rom. 8).  This connotes a dynamic of life awaiting its fullness. This dynamic we can already experience in our existence when, like Job, we move from a hearsay knowledge to a personal knowledge of God as a result of a drama in our life. Or when, like Paul, we find that our murky ways can, by God’s grace, end up in the light: yes, “though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still.” (Rom. 5:20)

Prayer

“I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place. The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.” (Ps. 118:5,14).

OF POETRY AND ROCK-CLIMBING

“To reach the Creator, I must make myself a creator – at least in so far as my dispositions are concerned. I must break all the moulds in which I constantly fashion myself, for they are invariably restrictive; I must reject all securities, all familiar words, all riches, so as to offer myself utterly poor and virginal to the breath of the Spirit. In this way is the only creativity that counts made possible: the creativity that forms Christ in us, that gives birth to the Son, the creativity which forms ourselves, not just some object, into a poem of love to God, a poem that is completely unique.

Sometimes the Spirit gives me my being through solemn words of love, sometimes through words of joy. There are very mundane words, like bread, or water; there are words of humiliation, of suffering, even of sin. It is necessary to let ourselves be formed, through these various words, so that the glory of God may be sung. 

If I am the poet of the poem which is my life, I am also the priest. The word which is given to me – as a Christian*  and, in a particular way, as a priest – has the power to transform all things into the body of Christ. This is my body, this is my blood, given for you. Just as  God creates, by his Word, at every moment, so he recreates us, takes us up again in all our humanity, with the whole of creation, into the eternal offering of the love of Christ to the Father, into the heart of which we are immersed by the sacrifice of the Mass.” (The Wound of Love, 162-3)

*The priesthood of the faithful is a genuine participation in the priesthood of Christ, and gives us from the start the power of offering ourselves and all things in Christ, with the ordained priest. This dignity conferred in baptism is all too often forgotten.

This is from a chapter on Conversion, called “To Create is to Forget”. At first glance, it seems as remote from our lives as the life of the Carthusian monk who spoke it and those who heard it. This is hardly the Christianity wich we learnt (if we learnt any at all) in a local parish church, in the odd Christmas sermon, or the Christianity we read about and decided was only for those who had the magical gift of faith which we, like most people, just didn’t happen to get. 

When I first read this and other texts in the volume, my reaction was, “Why didn’t anyone ever talk to me about the Christian religion like this?” I felt like the weekend rock climber I once was, coming face to face with El Capitan and those who made its first ascent (3,000 feet of smooth vertical or overhanging granite).

Now, having read it a number of times and thought about it, I realise that while it is the word of a contemplative monk and a priest – and thus of someone who can and must devote all his time and energy to this alone – we others are not necssarily excluded from it. If we absorb this, say, in our morning prayer at the beginning of the day, and keep its essence (as St Francis de Sales said) as a “posy” or buttonhole bouquet to sniff at periodically in the intervals of work or play –- when we are driving, or bicycling, or walking; while we are doing the dishes or cooking –, then the breaking of moulds, the emptying out, the opening of inner doors and shutters, followed by the delicate reshaping of our inwardness to become a line, or a stanza, of that poem becomes not only possible but an entirely natural step to take. 

(The third paragraph, of course, goes quite far, and is a challenge. Even for the Carthusian priest, saying that all things can become the body of Christ might be questioned by his superiors as being dangerously Teilhardian; but his insistence on the priesthood of all believers, conferred by baptism, is currently very much echoed even by our local parish priest. More about that in a future post.)

El Capitan, Yosemite, California