The Great Adventure
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Give me a sign
By Renée M. LaReau| 0 Comments | Print this pagePrint | Email this pageShare
How do I know I'm doing God's will?
Two years into her work at a New York advertising research firm, Joan Conroy realized her workdays were making her miserable.
"A lot of it was just the way I was feeling when I would come home at the end of the day," says Conroy, 27. "I wasn't feeling like I had energy; I was burned out. I didn't want to come home every day feeling like this."
Conroy, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology, longingly thought of her past social services work with homeless people, which she had done for two years after college.
"I felt like I have these great skills for counseling people; I have a heart for working with the homeless and the poor," Conroy says. "I thought, ‘Why am I here with these top business executives?' Not that they don't need love, too, but when I have these great skills, what am I doing here?"
As unhappy as Conroy was, the thought of quitting her job without having another one lined up was daunting, especially while living in an expensive city. She decided to do some soul-searching.
"I talked to people a lot-my parents, my friends in the city," Conroy says. "And there was definitely some crying and some long walks." She prayed, wrote a list of pros and cons in her journal, and confided in a co-worker. Finally, when that co-worker said she thought Conroy would be more fulfilled if she left, Conroy decided to take it as a sign.
"It was a moment of clarity for me," Conroy says. "I decided to stop talking about it and make the jump."
Like Conroy, many people struggle to discern what they are "meant" to do, often described in religious terms as seeking "God's will." Whether it's a decision about career, family, relocation, or a medical issue, Catholics use a variety of spiritual discernment methods to determine their next step.
Does God have a plan for each person's life? Many Catholics acknowledge they'll never know for sure, but that hasn't stopped them from devoting lots of time to discerning God's will for their lives.
Since leaving her job, Conroy has enlisted the help of a trained spiritual director to help her figure out what to do next.
"It's a neat idea to have someone else help you look at your life and be able to pull things out for you, to help you see where God is moving in your life," Conroy says. "It's nice to have someone specific you can bounce things off of."
As she looks ahead, Conroy harbors some fear of the unknown, but she feels a sense of peace about her decision.
"I feel like God will use me wherever I choose to go," she says. "I don't think that there's one certain path and I have to take all these right steps."
Conroy believes taking time to thoughtfully discern God's will for her is just what God intends.
"I feel like I'm doing God's will when I'm continually seeking that, wherever I am in my life."
Make a new plan, Stan
Finding the will of God often is understood as trying to figure out what God wants for our lives in the way of a vocation, says Michael Downey, the cardinal's theologian for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and a professor of systematic theology at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, California.
"The question often is, ‘What does God want me to do with the one and only life I have to live?' " Downey says.
While people often wrestle with the question of whether God has a plan for them, Downey suggests that reframing that question can be helpful.
"Very often there is a sense that there is a kind of preordained plan that God has for each one of us, and we often get a little too absorbed in trying to figure out what that is," Downey says. "I think the question is along this line: If God is the giver of all gifts, what are the gifts I have received so that I might pass them on to others?"
Discerning the will of God, Downey said, is often a matter of cultivating a sense of awareness rather than just a matter of problem-solving.
"Finding God's will has less to do with trying to figure out God's mind and more to do with being alert to the events and the vital forces of life in the world," Downey says.
"I've never had much luck at reading God's mind, but I do believe there are traces of grace in our ordinary, humdrum lives, and if we are alert to them, these often slowly and gradually-rather than all at once-disclose God's intention for us."
For Brendan Wilson, an attorney in Washington, D.C., determining God's will is more about listening than it is about doing.
"When you talk about ‘doing' God's will it puts a lot of emphasis on the action of it," says Wilson, 29. "I think that doing God's will is a question of listening-trying to be quiet enough and thoughtful enough about your life and honest enough to admit to yourself that what you're doing is not always God's will."
This means not only admitting that we are sometimes shortsighted and selfish, Wilson says, but also learning to trust God.
"The most important thing in all this is humility," Wilson says. "If we're humble we can be open to correction."
Kate Kustermann, 39, a senior manager of strategy and innovation at a consulting firm in Chicago, says she thinks doing God's will is a matter of both listening and taking action.
"I do think generally there is this grand plan, but at the same time, God gives us our own ability to think and make decisions," Kustermann says. "It's a complex idea, but the two things are somehow connected.
"If you really believe that you're a kind of puppet and God is pulling the strings, it could lead to a very passive life," she says.
Like Wilson, Kustermann says she thinks discerning God's will often is a matter of paying attention.
"It's being open to listening and following the signs you're being given; being open to possibility," Kustermann says. "It's not really like there's some clear map or direction. It's being open as life is unfolding in front of you."
I saw the sign
For Ken Heigel, 44, a civil engineer in Dublin, Ohio, receptiveness to such "signs" helped him make a decision during a very difficult time. Heigel's wife was dying of breast cancer, which meant he would be raising their three young children on his own. As she neared the last weeks of her life, she was moved to a hospice center, and Heigel couldn't decide whether she should die at home or in the care of hospice. He worried how her dying at home would affect their small children.
"There were some intense periods of prayer," Heigel says. "I said to God, ‘What do you want me to do? You've got to give me some strength.' "
One night, as he lay in bed, Heigel says he prayed: "I need to know where she should pass."
Then something profound happened.
"I felt God's presence that night," Heigel says. "I felt that strength of someone physically holding me."
The next day, Heigel visited his wife at hospice and saw that she was doing well that day. He decided to bring her home to die.
"I had to listen to God," Heigel says. "He gave me the sign I needed."
After his wife died, Heigel thought he'd never marry again. But a few years later, he met up with a college classmate, felt a strong connection with her, and they began dating. Heigel says he took that connection as a good sign and decided to introduce her to his children.
"The kids took to her instantly," Heigel says. "It was the final sign that we were meant to be." Heigel remarried four years ago.
God is my co-pilot
For some people struggling to make decisions, "signs" can take the form of inner longings and desires. Those who are trained as spiritual directors take it upon themselves to help people uncover those inner longings and desires.
"What we help people to do is to discern-to sort out or sift apart their outer and inner feelings, impulses, and promptings," says Sister Maureen Conroy, R.S.M. (no relation to Joan Conroy), director of the Upper Room Spiritual Center in Neptune, New Jersey.
"We look at the pros and cons-sorting them out with another person can be clarifying," Conroy says.
And at some deep, inner place, God's desire and a person's desire are one and the same.
"To do God's will is to follow God's desire for the person," says Conroy. "I prefer to use God's ‘desire' rather than God's ‘will' because ‘will' sounds like it is fixed and ‘desire' is more of an ongoing, unfolding process."
David Schimmel, the co-director of the Institute for Spiritual Leadership in Chicago, says that when he's doing spiritual direction, before anything else, he first tries to help people identify their deepest inner desires.
"The big question is, ‘What is my heart's desire? What at this moment is my passion? What do I really long for?' The first step is to answer those questions."
Schimmel says helping people identify their heart's desire can be difficult, but it's possible when given enough time to strip away distractions.
"Each of us as individuals has the wisdom we need to discern God's will, to become our most authentic self," Schimmel says. "But often that's pretty hard to access. There are layers of culture, family systems, the ‘shoulds' and ‘oughts'. We grow up with all this information from the outside telling us who we are, who we should be."
Paying attention to the longings of one's heart, not just one's head, is important in any kind of discernment, says Sister Maureen Conroy.
"Making a decision to follow God's will is not just a matter of thinking something through," she says. "It's not just a matter of the mind; it's a matter of the heart also."
The facts on the ground
According to Schimmel and Conroy, determining God's will always involves practical considerations. "Discernment always works in the context of our lives," Conroy says. "It's meant to enhance our life with others."
Schimmel says that bringing logic into the mix is an important second step after identifying one's desires.
"Spirituality is practical; it has some effect on the world," Schimmel says. "It's not only ‘What do I want to do?' but ‘What are the needs?' "
"You need to take into account your life situation," Conroy says. "If you're a husband or wife, you have to take into consideration your spouse."
While Conroy says she often recommends books to people to whom she offers spiritual direction, Schimmel says he prefers not to.
"People then stay in their heads and look for answers in the book," Schimmel says. "I invite people to just trust the process, then themselves.' "
In any period of discernment, an important part of the process is simply gathering information. For Kate Kustermann, while deciding whether to marry the man she was dating long distance, this meant getting to know him as much as possible, while praying about the decision at the same time.
"Most of it was just spending more time with him so I was getting more data points," Kustermann says. "It was finding out who this person was and praying that God could help me. It was mostly just me observing and getting to know him."
Kustermann says she didn't solicit the advice of family and friends as she had with past relationships.
"I only talked a little to my friends," Kustermann says. "But when I did, it was more that I was introducing him, that here was this very special person."
Over time Kustermann says she was able to piece together certain signs that she and her significant other were meant to be together. When he indicated that he was willing to quit his job and move to the city where she lived, she took that as the final sign things were meant to be.
"It was such a huge vote of confidence, a huge emotional deposit," she says. "That was on top of a lot of signals that were happening-signals of commitment, signals of love."
I will follow him
Because of the unpredictable twists and turns life often takes, people sometimes think they have "missed" their vocation or "missed" their chance to do God's will. On this note, Michael Downey has some encouraging words.
"God can redeem even the bad choices we make," Downey says. "God's will is never discerned once and for all."
Discerning God's will, rather than being one big choice, is often closer to a series of smaller choices that gradually determine one's life course, Downey says.
"Sometimes we find God's will in bits and pieces, and over the course of many years we look back and say, ‘It's really all of a piece-like a quilt of patches that while it was being sewn looked uneven and scattered."
Brendan Wilson says his life thus far has unfolded in such a way. After practicing law in Washington, D.C. for two years, he decided to enter the seminary in another part of the country.
But soon after he arrived, he suddenly felt like he was in the wrong place.
"Everything about it felt wrong," Wilson says. "I was sick a lot; I started putting on weight. But I was with a community I loved, so intellectually it didn't make a lot of sense to me."
After a semester at the seminary, Wilson returned to Washington during a holiday break to confide in a priest friend and to make a weeklong retreat at the seminary next to his former parish. He spent the week talking with his friend, writing in his journal, and praying the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
"It was a really challenging time," Wilson says. "But there was a moment when I reached a conclusion in my mind about what I wanted to do."
Wilson eventually decided to leave the seminary. Though he had experienced much pain and angst leading up to his decision, he says he felt a sense of peace almost instantly once he had finally made his choice.
"I felt liberated," Wilson says. "I was able to pray again, and the joy I had had before I went came back. In the next two weeks, about 10 things happened that confirmed it."
In an interesting twist of events, Wilson later took a position with a Washington law firm that represented religious orders.
"It combined my previous life as a lawyer and my interest in religious life," Wilson says. "It has been remarkable to see how God brought all of that together but took me through this weird path."
Wilson says his experience at the seminary helped to make an important future decision easier. He says the decision to get engaged was one of the easiest he has ever made.
"It was obvious," he says. "If I hadn't gone to the seminary and wrestled with that question, I would not have been able to say yes to this."
Facing a major life decision often can feel draining and overwhelming. From time to time it can be helpful to take a step back from the discernment process and try to put things in perspective.
Sister Helen Cahill, O.P., a spiritual director at the Claret Center in Chicago, recalls one clarifying moment in her own life during an agonizing decision-making process that stretched over several months.
"One morning I woke up and had a sense of this inner voice that said, ‘Helen, I really don't care what you do,' " Cahill says. "It was a very freeing moment. Initially it was a shock because I had been in this mode of trying to figure out what God wanted me to do. At one level, God cared, but I had the freedom to choose what would make me happy, to make a loving choice."
Ultimately, Cahill says, the moment made her realize that in any kind of discernment, a sense of humor can be a big help.
"That inner voice was a playful voice," Cahill says. "There ought to be some lightness, some playfulness in our discernment process with God. God is with us in that way if we are open to it."
Renée M. LaReau is the author of Getting a Life: How to Find Your True Vocation (Orbis, 2003). She writes from Columbus, Ohio.
- See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/life/2008/07/give-me-a-sign#sthash.AB3xzKXu.dpuf
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Reparation
from Island of the World by Michael O Brien
"...for Josip and Josip alone, she exercises something akin to diabolic loathing. It is so astounding he takes it on as a challenge. He estimates it will take 3 - 4 years to tame her, but he is resolved that even if can not tame her, he is willing to spend a lifetime enduring her as reparation.
Reparations for what? I have not hurt the woman. We have never met before. My parents and ancestors surely did her no harm. General reparation then. He can accept the insult as a mild form of humiliation offered for her soul and offered as a payment for sins committed against her people by Croats. The disproportion in this seems incredibly unfair because most of the victims of Yugoslavia's confusion were not, are not and probably will not be Serbs. Even so she has an eternal soul and he feels pity for her. Whenever she throws a dart, he takes it in the chest and says a silent prayer for her."
"...for Josip and Josip alone, she exercises something akin to diabolic loathing. It is so astounding he takes it on as a challenge. He estimates it will take 3 - 4 years to tame her, but he is resolved that even if can not tame her, he is willing to spend a lifetime enduring her as reparation.
Reparations for what? I have not hurt the woman. We have never met before. My parents and ancestors surely did her no harm. General reparation then. He can accept the insult as a mild form of humiliation offered for her soul and offered as a payment for sins committed against her people by Croats. The disproportion in this seems incredibly unfair because most of the victims of Yugoslavia's confusion were not, are not and probably will not be Serbs. Even so she has an eternal soul and he feels pity for her. Whenever she throws a dart, he takes it in the chest and says a silent prayer for her."
Monday, July 4, 2011
from Island of the World
by Michael o Brien
"...a messenger is is in his words, if the messenger is truly himself. His life is his primary word, and his spoken word bears his life. He learns to be this when he has discovered that a man can give to others only what he truly is."
Seek nothing for yourself.
stand ready to serve
in quietness,
demanding nothing,
expecting nothing sacrificing and praying without anyone knowing
Silence
Silence
Silence
"...a messenger is is in his words, if the messenger is truly himself. His life is his primary word, and his spoken word bears his life. He learns to be this when he has discovered that a man can give to others only what he truly is."
Seek nothing for yourself.
stand ready to serve
in quietness,
demanding nothing,
expecting nothing sacrificing and praying without anyone knowing
Silence
Silence
Silence
Thursday, June 30, 2011
The Trinitarian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and theodicy by Friesenhahn, Jacob H., Ph.D
http://gradworks.umi.com/33/56/3356159.html
Balthasar's interpersonal model of the Trinity as a life of communal self-giving love and Balthasar's grounding of the economy of salvation in the immanent Trinity provide the proper framework for answering the problem of evil from a Christian theological perspective. I conclude that human suffering, united to the Cross of Christ, becomes a participation in the life of the Triune God in a way that renders such suffering of great salvific value to the one who suffers and that thus justifies God's permission of innocent suffering. Finally, as a connection between Balthasar's work and American popular culture, I observe the trinitarian features of the response to the problem of evil found in William P. Young's recent best-selling novel The Shack and discover claims concerning the Trinity and theodicy that resonate deeply with the theology of Balthasar.
Balthasar's interpersonal model of the Trinity as a life of communal self-giving love and Balthasar's grounding of the economy of salvation in the immanent Trinity provide the proper framework for answering the problem of evil from a Christian theological perspective. I conclude that human suffering, united to the Cross of Christ, becomes a participation in the life of the Triune God in a way that renders such suffering of great salvific value to the one who suffers and that thus justifies God's permission of innocent suffering. Finally, as a connection between Balthasar's work and American popular culture, I observe the trinitarian features of the response to the problem of evil found in William P. Young's recent best-selling novel The Shack and discover claims concerning the Trinity and theodicy that resonate deeply with the theology of Balthasar.
All the sufferings in our past are a gift
from Island of the World by Michael Obrien - page 587-588
"would I like the gift rescinded? of course! Yet in the strangest level of myself I know that it is a gift none the less. how else do we know God's rescue unless we have been drowning. Can healing be demonstrated without injury or love proven without trail? Still there is an ache within me that cries out: what of those who are not protected, who are left unhealed, who do not know love? the reply is articulated by - and can only be articulated by - God dying with us on our cross."
"would I like the gift rescinded? of course! Yet in the strangest level of myself I know that it is a gift none the less. how else do we know God's rescue unless we have been drowning. Can healing be demonstrated without injury or love proven without trail? Still there is an ache within me that cries out: what of those who are not protected, who are left unhealed, who do not know love? the reply is articulated by - and can only be articulated by - God dying with us on our cross."
Monday, June 27, 2011
THE SCAPEGOAT AND THE TRINITY
By Hans Urs Von Balthasar
When what is required of us seems too burdensome, when the pains become unbearable and the fate we are asked to accept seems simply meaningless—then we have come very close to the man nailed on the Cross at the Place of the Skull, for he has already undergone this on our behalf and, moreover, in unimaginable intensity.
Nearly two thousand years ago a trial took place that resulted in the death of the condemned man. Why is it that, even today, it will not allow mankind to forget about it? Have there not been countless other show trials down the years, particularly in our own time, and should the crying injustice of these trials not stir us up and preoccupy us just as much as that ancient trial at the Passover in Jerusalem? To judge by the constant and even increasing flood of books and discussions about Jesus, however, all the horrors of the extermination camps and the Gulag Archipelago matter less to mankind than the sentencing of this one innocent man whom, according to the Bible, God himself championed and vindicated—as is evident from his Resurrection from the dead.
The question is: Was he the one, great and final scapegoat for mankind? Did mankind load him with all its guilt, and did he, the Lamb of God, carry this guilt away? This is the thesis of a modern ethnologist, René Girard, whose books have attracted much attention in America, France and recently in Germany. According to this view, all human civilization, right from the outset, is constructed on the principle of the scapegoat. That is, men have cunningly invented a way of overcoming their reciprocal aggression and arriving at an at least temporary peace: thus they concentrate this aggression on an almost randomly chosen scapegoat and appoint this scapegoat as the sacrificial victim, in order to pacify an allegedly angry god. According to Girard, however, this divine anger is nothing other than men's reciprocal rage. This mechanism always needs to be set in motion again after a period of relative peace if world history is to proceed in any half-tolerable way; in this context it reached its absolute peak in the general rejection of Jesus by the gentiles, the Jews and the Christians too: Jesus really did take over and carry away the sins of all that were loaded onto him, in such a way that anyone who believes this can live in peace with his brother from now on.
Girard's ideas are interesting; they bring the trial of Jesus to life in a new way. But we can still ask why this particular murder, after so many others, should be the conclusive event of world history, the advent of the end time? Men have cast their guilt onto many innocent scapegoats; why did this particular bearer of sins bring about a change in the world as a whole?
For the believer the answer is easy: the crucial thing is not that this is an instance of our wanting to rid ourselves of guilt. Naturally, no one wants to admit guilt. Pilate washes his hands and declares himself guiltless; the Jews hide behind their law, which requires them to condemn a blasphemer; they act in a pious and God-fearing way. Judas himself has remorse for his deed; he brings the blood money back and, when no one will take it from him, throws it at the high priests. No one is prepared to accept responsibility. But precisely by attempting to extricate themselves, they are convinced by God that they are guilty of the death of this innocent man. Ultimately it is not what men do that is the determining factor.
The crucial thing is that there is Someone who is both ready and able to take their guilt upon himself. None of the other scapegoats was able to do this. According to the New Testament understanding, the Son of God became man in order to take this guilt upon himself. He lived with a view to the "hour" that awaited him at the end of his earthly existence, with a view to the terrible baptism with which he would have to be baptized, as he says. This "hour" would see him chained and brought to trial not merely outwardly; it would not only tear his body to pieces with scourges and nail it to the wood but also penetrate into his very soul, his spirit, his most intimate relationship with God, his Father. It would fill everything with desolation and the mortal fear of having been forsaken—as it were, with a totally alien, hostile and deadly poisonous substance that would block his every access to the source from which he lived.
It is in the horror of this darkness, of this emptiness and alienation from God, that the words on the Mount of Olives are spoken: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. " The cup of which he here speaks is well known in the Old Testament: it is the cup full of God's anger and wrath, which sinners must drink to the dregs; often it is threatened or forced upon unfaithful Jerusalem or enemy peoples like Babylon. The cry from the Cross is uttered out of the same horror of spiritual blackness, the cry asking why God has forsaken this tortured man. The man who cries out knows only that he is forsaken; in this darkness he no longer knows why. He is not permitted to know why, for the idea that the darkness he is undergoing might be on behalf of others would constitute a certain comfort; it would give him a ray of light. No such comfort can be granted him now, for the issue, in absolute seriousness, is that of purifying the relationship between God and the guilty world.
The man who endures this night is the Innocent One. No one else could effectively undergo it on behalf of others. What ordinary or extraordinary man would even have enough room in himself to accommodate the world's guilt? Only someone who is a partner of the eternal Father, distinct from him and yet divine, that is, the Son who, man that he is, is also God, can have such capacity within him.
Here we are faced with a bottomless mystery, for in fact there is an immense difference between the generating womb in God the Father and the generated fruit, the Son, although both are one God in the Holy Spirit. Nowadays many theologians say, quite rightly, that it is precisely at the Cross that this difference becomes clearly manifest: at this precise point the mystery of the divine Trinity is fully proclaimed. The distance is so great—for in God everything is infinite—that there is room in it for all the alienation and sin of the world; the Son can draw all this into his relationship with the Father without any danger of it harming or altering the mutual eternal love between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. Sin is burnt up, as it were, in the fire of this love, for God, as Scripture says, is a consuming fire that will not tolerate anything impure but must burn it away.
Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for him, the less he has merited it. As we have already said, there is nothing familiar about it to him: it is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, he suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of him, to have lost him (to all appearances) forever. It is meaningless to call this suffering "hell", for there is no hatred of God in Jesus, only a pain that is deeper and more timeless than the ordinary man could endure either in his lifetime or after his death.
Nor can we say that God the Father "punishes" his suffering Son in our place. It is not a question of punishment, for the work accomplished here between Father and Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit is utter love, the purest love possible; so, too, it is a work of the purest spontaneity, from the Son's side as from the side of Father and Spirit. God's love is so rich that it can also assume this form of darkness, out of love for our dark world.
What, then, can we do? "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." It was as if the cosmos sensed that something decisive was going on here, as if it were participating in the darkness invading the soul of Christ. For our part, we do not need to experience this darkening, for we are already estranged and dark enough. It would suffice if we held onto our faith in a world that has become dark all around us; it would be enough for us to be convinced that all inner light, all inner joy and security, all trust in life owes its existence to the darkness of Golgotha and never to forget to give God thanks for it.
At the very periphery of this thanksgiving to God, it is legitimate to ask that, if God permits it, we may help the Lord to bear a tiny particle of the suffering of the Cross, of his inner anxiety and darkness, if it will contribute to reconciling the world with God. Jesus himself says that it is possible to help him bear it when he challenges us to take up our cross daily. Paul says the same in affirming that he suffers that portion of the Cross that Christ has reserved for him and for other Christians. When life is hard and apparently hopeless, we can be confident that this darkness of ours can be taken up into the great darkness of redemption through which the light of Easter dawns. And when what is required of us seems too burdensome, when the pains become unbearable and the fate we are asked to accept seems simply meaningless—then we have come very close to the man nailed on the Cross at the Place of the Skull, for he has already undergone this on our behalf and, moreover, in unimaginable intensity. When surrounded by apparent meaninglessness, therefore, we cannot ask to be given a calming sense of meaning; all we can do is wait and endure, quite still, like the Crucified, not seeing anything, facing the dark abyss of death. Beyond this abyss there waits for us something that, at present, we cannot see (nor can we even manage to regard it as true), namely, a further abyss of light in which all the world's pain is treasured and cherished in the ever-open heart of God. Then we shall be allowed, like the Apostle Thomas, to put our hand into this gaping wound; feeling it, we shall realize in a very bodily way that God's love transcends all human senses, and with the disciple we shall pray: "My Lord and my God."
When what is required of us seems too burdensome, when the pains become unbearable and the fate we are asked to accept seems simply meaningless—then we have come very close to the man nailed on the Cross at the Place of the Skull, for he has already undergone this on our behalf and, moreover, in unimaginable intensity.
Nearly two thousand years ago a trial took place that resulted in the death of the condemned man. Why is it that, even today, it will not allow mankind to forget about it? Have there not been countless other show trials down the years, particularly in our own time, and should the crying injustice of these trials not stir us up and preoccupy us just as much as that ancient trial at the Passover in Jerusalem? To judge by the constant and even increasing flood of books and discussions about Jesus, however, all the horrors of the extermination camps and the Gulag Archipelago matter less to mankind than the sentencing of this one innocent man whom, according to the Bible, God himself championed and vindicated—as is evident from his Resurrection from the dead.
The question is: Was he the one, great and final scapegoat for mankind? Did mankind load him with all its guilt, and did he, the Lamb of God, carry this guilt away? This is the thesis of a modern ethnologist, René Girard, whose books have attracted much attention in America, France and recently in Germany. According to this view, all human civilization, right from the outset, is constructed on the principle of the scapegoat. That is, men have cunningly invented a way of overcoming their reciprocal aggression and arriving at an at least temporary peace: thus they concentrate this aggression on an almost randomly chosen scapegoat and appoint this scapegoat as the sacrificial victim, in order to pacify an allegedly angry god. According to Girard, however, this divine anger is nothing other than men's reciprocal rage. This mechanism always needs to be set in motion again after a period of relative peace if world history is to proceed in any half-tolerable way; in this context it reached its absolute peak in the general rejection of Jesus by the gentiles, the Jews and the Christians too: Jesus really did take over and carry away the sins of all that were loaded onto him, in such a way that anyone who believes this can live in peace with his brother from now on.
Girard's ideas are interesting; they bring the trial of Jesus to life in a new way. But we can still ask why this particular murder, after so many others, should be the conclusive event of world history, the advent of the end time? Men have cast their guilt onto many innocent scapegoats; why did this particular bearer of sins bring about a change in the world as a whole?
For the believer the answer is easy: the crucial thing is not that this is an instance of our wanting to rid ourselves of guilt. Naturally, no one wants to admit guilt. Pilate washes his hands and declares himself guiltless; the Jews hide behind their law, which requires them to condemn a blasphemer; they act in a pious and God-fearing way. Judas himself has remorse for his deed; he brings the blood money back and, when no one will take it from him, throws it at the high priests. No one is prepared to accept responsibility. But precisely by attempting to extricate themselves, they are convinced by God that they are guilty of the death of this innocent man. Ultimately it is not what men do that is the determining factor.
The crucial thing is that there is Someone who is both ready and able to take their guilt upon himself. None of the other scapegoats was able to do this. According to the New Testament understanding, the Son of God became man in order to take this guilt upon himself. He lived with a view to the "hour" that awaited him at the end of his earthly existence, with a view to the terrible baptism with which he would have to be baptized, as he says. This "hour" would see him chained and brought to trial not merely outwardly; it would not only tear his body to pieces with scourges and nail it to the wood but also penetrate into his very soul, his spirit, his most intimate relationship with God, his Father. It would fill everything with desolation and the mortal fear of having been forsaken—as it were, with a totally alien, hostile and deadly poisonous substance that would block his every access to the source from which he lived.
It is in the horror of this darkness, of this emptiness and alienation from God, that the words on the Mount of Olives are spoken: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. " The cup of which he here speaks is well known in the Old Testament: it is the cup full of God's anger and wrath, which sinners must drink to the dregs; often it is threatened or forced upon unfaithful Jerusalem or enemy peoples like Babylon. The cry from the Cross is uttered out of the same horror of spiritual blackness, the cry asking why God has forsaken this tortured man. The man who cries out knows only that he is forsaken; in this darkness he no longer knows why. He is not permitted to know why, for the idea that the darkness he is undergoing might be on behalf of others would constitute a certain comfort; it would give him a ray of light. No such comfort can be granted him now, for the issue, in absolute seriousness, is that of purifying the relationship between God and the guilty world.
The man who endures this night is the Innocent One. No one else could effectively undergo it on behalf of others. What ordinary or extraordinary man would even have enough room in himself to accommodate the world's guilt? Only someone who is a partner of the eternal Father, distinct from him and yet divine, that is, the Son who, man that he is, is also God, can have such capacity within him.
Here we are faced with a bottomless mystery, for in fact there is an immense difference between the generating womb in God the Father and the generated fruit, the Son, although both are one God in the Holy Spirit. Nowadays many theologians say, quite rightly, that it is precisely at the Cross that this difference becomes clearly manifest: at this precise point the mystery of the divine Trinity is fully proclaimed. The distance is so great—for in God everything is infinite—that there is room in it for all the alienation and sin of the world; the Son can draw all this into his relationship with the Father without any danger of it harming or altering the mutual eternal love between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. Sin is burnt up, as it were, in the fire of this love, for God, as Scripture says, is a consuming fire that will not tolerate anything impure but must burn it away.
Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for him, the less he has merited it. As we have already said, there is nothing familiar about it to him: it is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, he suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of him, to have lost him (to all appearances) forever. It is meaningless to call this suffering "hell", for there is no hatred of God in Jesus, only a pain that is deeper and more timeless than the ordinary man could endure either in his lifetime or after his death.
Nor can we say that God the Father "punishes" his suffering Son in our place. It is not a question of punishment, for the work accomplished here between Father and Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit is utter love, the purest love possible; so, too, it is a work of the purest spontaneity, from the Son's side as from the side of Father and Spirit. God's love is so rich that it can also assume this form of darkness, out of love for our dark world.
What, then, can we do? "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." It was as if the cosmos sensed that something decisive was going on here, as if it were participating in the darkness invading the soul of Christ. For our part, we do not need to experience this darkening, for we are already estranged and dark enough. It would suffice if we held onto our faith in a world that has become dark all around us; it would be enough for us to be convinced that all inner light, all inner joy and security, all trust in life owes its existence to the darkness of Golgotha and never to forget to give God thanks for it.
At the very periphery of this thanksgiving to God, it is legitimate to ask that, if God permits it, we may help the Lord to bear a tiny particle of the suffering of the Cross, of his inner anxiety and darkness, if it will contribute to reconciling the world with God. Jesus himself says that it is possible to help him bear it when he challenges us to take up our cross daily. Paul says the same in affirming that he suffers that portion of the Cross that Christ has reserved for him and for other Christians. When life is hard and apparently hopeless, we can be confident that this darkness of ours can be taken up into the great darkness of redemption through which the light of Easter dawns. And when what is required of us seems too burdensome, when the pains become unbearable and the fate we are asked to accept seems simply meaningless—then we have come very close to the man nailed on the Cross at the Place of the Skull, for he has already undergone this on our behalf and, moreover, in unimaginable intensity. When surrounded by apparent meaninglessness, therefore, we cannot ask to be given a calming sense of meaning; all we can do is wait and endure, quite still, like the Crucified, not seeing anything, facing the dark abyss of death. Beyond this abyss there waits for us something that, at present, we cannot see (nor can we even manage to regard it as true), namely, a further abyss of light in which all the world's pain is treasured and cherished in the ever-open heart of God. Then we shall be allowed, like the Apostle Thomas, to put our hand into this gaping wound; feeling it, we shall realize in a very bodily way that God's love transcends all human senses, and with the disciple we shall pray: "My Lord and my God."
Cancer's Unexpected Blessings by Tony Snow
When you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change
posted 7/20/2007 02:30PM
Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'
Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."
There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.
Learning How to Live
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.
It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.
posted 7/20/2007 02:30PM
Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'
Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."
There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.
Learning How to Live
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.
It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.
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