Just to be ALIVE! ALIVE to all of life! Being ALIVE means looking out a window to behold red-breasted robins on the lawn and yellow daffodils spearing up through cold-hardened ground. Or taking out the garbage, a fresh, stinging, snow-filled breeze buffeting your face and reminding you that you are ALIVE. Or cuddling a wiggly, complaining five year old who should be in school but isn't because her school is closed, and discovering you are ALIVE when you smell her neck's sweet skin. Being ALIVE means looking beyond this broken world and all its crosses, contradictions, cross-purposes, and conflicts that we see daily in our own lives and on national and international stages, and being able to rest, to abide, in the ongoing Life that pulses beneath it all. To be truly ALIVE to all of life is to abide in that supernatural Life Which is Hope.
HOPE is deeper than happiness, and comes from a different source. We are aroused to happiness by outer circumstances. For instance, we can easily become happy and optimistic when people say "It has to end sometime. There's a new day coming." But then we sink so easily into despair when that new day doesn't come as fast as we want it to, or, when it comes, it doesn't bring us what we so desperately want or think we need. We can live in this terrible uncertainty about whether a new day will ever come.
Happiness and optimism are dependent on certain things happening which will make us happy and relieve our inner tensions and sufferings. They are not the same thing as Hope, which operates independently from our "outer life." Happiness and optimism can make us feel alive for the moment, but they are not supernatural, mystical Hope. Happiness and optimism come and go, leaving us on a roller coaster of attitudes and feelings influenced by people and events. Hope is eternal, because its Source is eternal.
No, we cannot find and abide in Hope in our outer world of life. We can only find and abide in Hope in our inner, hidden world of life, our heart-and-soul-world, our life with God. In our inner life, we meet with and are met by God, our Hope and the Source of our Hope. In our inner life, we talk with, and are held by God, our Hope. To abide in Hope is to abide in God.
God! You say. Where is God, where is Hope? Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, says that often while we suffer we only see the backside of God. In other words, we have an IDEA that God is with us during our times of uncertainty and suffering, but we can't really see God or feel God's Presence. We cannot pray, or we can't "find" God when we do pray. All we seem to get, during our painful experiences, and our attempts at prayer then, is the sight or sense of God's "back." Then, when do we discover that God has been with us? Sometimes, it's only later, after the fact. He explains,
"I feel a deep solidarity with individuals throughout the world who are wrestling with health issues. In 2016, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a complete prostatectomy....Prayer was both constant and impossible for much of this period.
"About ten days after the surgery, during my attempt at some spiritual reading, I opened the Bible to an obscure passage in the Book of Exodus. Moses asks YHWH to “Show me your glory” (33:18), and YHWH shows it in a most unusual way: “I shall place you in the cleft of the rock and shield you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I shall take my hand away, and you will see my backside, but my face will not be seen” (33:22–23). In several sermons, I have used that verse to teach that our knowledge of God is indirect at best, and none of our knowledge is fully face-to-face. God is always and forever Mystery. All we see is the “backside” of God."
Rohr continues, "My best spiritual knowing almost always occurs after the fact, in the remembering—not seen 'until God has passed by.' I realized that in the moments of diagnosis, doctor’s warnings, waiting, delays, and the surgery itself, I was as fragile, scared, and insecure as anybody would be. If I could stay with the full narrative all the way into and through, only afterward could I invariably see, trust, and enjoy the wonderful works of God (mirabilia Dei).
"The foundation of faith is the ability to look at our entire salvation history (our own life story/salvation history, and the Biblical story of how God has always abided with God's people) and then trust that this pattern would never—could never—change! It is largely after the fact that faith is formed—and gloriously transmuted into hope for the future. Only after the fact can you see that you were being held and led during the fact. During the fact, you do not enjoy or trust your own strength at all, in fact, quite the opposite. You just cry out in various ways. Then God, for some wonderful reason, is able to fill the gap....
So often, when we are in pain of any kind, we cry out to God "Why? Why is this happening?" It seems that we are only crying out to the "backside" of God, that God doesn't hear us, that God doesn't answer. Remembering our common/communal Biblical salvation history, we can remember Job, who lost so much, - his health, parts of his family, his belongings, his wealth - and who continually cried out to God in various ways. God heard him out and finally answered, "Be still and know that I am God." In other words, "Trust Me. I alone can be the Source of your inner peace, stability, and hope." Job realizes that his cries have actually been prayers, and that he has actually met God and been in a conversation with God, and that God has listened to him and replied. He hears God's reply and is satisfied.
Rohr comments,
"Sooner or later, the heart of everybody’s spiritual problem is 'What do we do with our pain? Why is there evil? Why is there suffering?' Job begs God for an answer to this mystery, and he can’t get one. He only begins to trust when he no longer feels ignored, when he knows that God is taking him seriously and that he is 'part of the conversation' (see Job 42). When Jesus later becomes the answer in his own passion, death, and resurrection, he discovers what Job finally experienced: in the midst of suffering, God can be trusted. The world is still safe, coherent, and even blessed.
"We are 'saved' by being addressed and included in a cosmic conversation. We do not really need answers; we need only to be taken seriously as part of the dialogue. But we usually only know this in hindsight after the suffering and the struggle. It cannot be known beforehand, not theoretically or theologically. Our knowledge of God is participatory. God refuses to be intellectually 'thought,' and is only known in the passion and pain of it all, when the issues become soul-sized and worthy of us."
In these past High and Holy Days, we have remembered the apex of our common/communal salvation history: the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, who becomes the answer to the Mystery of pain, suffering, and death. In the solid, physical reality of a bloody Jesus hanging on the rough wood of the cross, dying, and a resurrected Jesus allowing his frightened friend to touch his wounded hands and side, we find a God Who meets us, communicates with us, is audible, see-able, touchable.
First, the cross. We usually describe happy times as times when things are "looking up." The cross, an instrument of torture, seems to be a symbol of things "hitting the bottom." How can the cross be the source of our Hope? Paradoxically, during those times when our lives seem to have fallen down off a cliff and are falling apart, we can turn to what Jesus did for all of creation on the cross. Rohr tells us that reality has a "cruciform shape": reality is perpetually wounded and dying. Nothing is perfect in this world, nothing and no one lasts, everyone and every relationship is wounded by conflict, and misunderstanding, by sin. He describes how Jesus, God and man, holds our broken world in his outstretched arms, both cradling it and literally holding its broken pieces together in love, a love-to-the-death which forgives and heals:
"It seems there is a cruciform shape to reality with cross purposes, paradoxes, and conflicting intentions everywhere. Jesus hangs right there amid them, not even perfectly balancing them, but just holding them (see Ephesians 2:13–22). This deserves a major “Wow!” because mere philosophy or even proper theology would never have come to this conclusion."
Imagine! Jesus on the cross, hanging there, holding everything together, not even worrying about trying to bring things into perfect balance.
How well do I hold all the brokenness in my life in my arms, just HOLD it?!
We each have to respond to this personally, so I will go first. I think of my ongoing worries about my family and my Church family, especially during the global health crisis of this pandemic. When will scientists discover an antiviral that works? Develop a vaccine that works? Can parishes survive financially during this time when they are shuttered because of the pandemic? How can impoverished Third World countries even survive when this virus attacks them?
I think of "Church" concerns: will the Catholic Church ever get past its patriarchal bias and ordain women? Are there any pastoral answers for couples remarried without having gotten annulments, or gays and lesbians in faithful, committed relationships? Can we adequately heal all the victims of Church sexual abuse? Can we truly preach the Gospel and be heard by those who most need to hear the saving, forgiving, healing, challenging Word of God? Can we preach Christ with our frightened, weak, inadequate lives?
I think of political concerns: how can Catholic/Christians possibly choose between the Republican and Democratic candidates for election when neither party is truly committed to the sacredness of all life, including the life of the planet?
I think of Justice concerns: when will white Christians/ Catholics truly realize and acknowledge that people of color in this country deal with so much racism and economic inequality, which is a good deal of the reason why so many are dying during this pandemic? Why can't so many committed Christians understand and acknowledge that climate change is real? That "in 2018, climate scientists reached a consensus that, based on current global emissions, we have roughly twelve years to dramatically reverse course before we cause irreparable harm to our planet and our way of life....Through floods such as Katrina and Harvey, we hear the planet gasping 'I can't breathe.' Amid out f control wildfires in California and Australia, our planet is hollering, 'I can't breathe.' The tragedy is that the church is too often unresponsive to the earth's desperate cry." (Adam Russell Taylor, "A Planet Gasping for Breath," Sojourners Magazine, May 2020.) I think of so many discriminated people struggling just to live, mired in hopelessness, and I cry out "Why?' and embrace Bryan Stevenson, Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative's cry, "I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice."
I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I keep crying out to God Why? Or How? Or When? as if my cries will make any difference. But the cross tells me that God hears me. I know God hears me because God, in Jesus, held all the brokenness of this world between his outstretched arms, held everything, cradled everything, first accepting this broken world as it is and yet forgiving it (us!) and healing all through the sacrifice of his blood.
The bloody, crucified Jesus looks at me and says, " Your cries, your questions are important, and I hear them. The answers will come in their own time, way, and place, and you don't need them all now. You may not even live long enough in this world to receive your answers! Just hold those questions, those people, those concerns, close to you with love, with patience, with committed involvement. Accept the brokenness of this world as I accept your brokenness. If you first accept, you will not grow bitter. Bitter people cannot do the works of Justice. Just trust me, the Source of your Hope, that Healing and Reconciliation will come. Rest in Me, abide in Me, in Hope."
The frightened, inadequate apostles and disciples certainly saw only the backside of God. Did they pray, were they even able to pray, during the trauma of Jesus' arrest, torture, crucifixion, and death? Could they even find God present with and to them, or did they only feel and see fleeting glimpses of God? They must have cried out in various ways to God: Why? Why now? Why He who was our Hope?! Could they even believe that during this time of terrible suffering and guilt that God could be trusted? Aren't they Everyman? Aren't they us?
Imagine their pounding hearts, their radiant - though for the most part guilty - faces, when Jesus appeared to them, - still wounded?! Aren't they Everyman, aren't they us? Suddenly God in Jesus is fully visible, fully present to them, but only after the fact, after the suffering and pain have passed. Now Jesus the Christ converses with them, saying Peace, Peace is my Gift to you. His wounded hands reveal that there is a deeper Mystery and Meaning to suffering than we can understand in this world, that we will only understand how our suffering has molded us and made us wiser after the fact, when we are alive with God in Paradise. Because, if the Christ still has his wounds, then suffering does have meaning and importance, beyond anything we can grasp this side of the grave. Knowing this, that suffering IS important, DOES have meaning, is what gives us Peace and allows us to be held by Christ and to abide in Hope.
Can we allow all that we are to wait quietly before God, abiding in Hope? Only being held by God the Source of our Hope can give us true Joy in being ALIVE. We are ALIVE with wonder at a robin and a daffodil and a brisk, snow-filled wind, because we know that in the resurrected and cosmic Christ, all creation will endure and one day be made new. We can be ALIVE holding a wiggling child because we know that even as inevitable change and death come her way, one day she will be re-born in Heaven. We can be truly ALIVE facing the contradictions, wounds, and challenges in our lives and as we work for Justice because we know that God our Hope and our Justice will one day (not in our lifetimes) bring God's Heavenly City to radiant and eternal Life, and that we are indispensable stones in that City's defending Wall.
Peace is Christ's eternal Gift to us, Peace wrapped in the Gift of Hope: for God in Jesus forever holds us, sustains us, forgives us, heals us, reconciles us all in the Mystery of His Cross. God in the resurrected Jesus holds out His radiant wounds for us to touch, teaching us that nothing that we suffer here is unimportant, or without meaning. One day, when we see Him Face to Face, these magnificent Mysteries in our lives will be revealed by God as the Ways in which our wounds have made us whole in Him.