Never forget, my friends, that God's original Church is in our souls. That our own souls are our original Houses of Prayer where we can meet God and God can meet us. And also, never forget that God has no problem entering either our houses or our souls through locked doors.
When Jesus' disciples were hiding in a locked room in Jerusalem, far away from their House of Prayer, the great Jerusalem Temple, they must have found it so hard to pray. They were terrified that they too would be arrested by the Roman soldiers who had arrested and murdered Jesus. They felt so guilty that so many of them had run from Jesus and left him to his fate. They were so grief-stricken that their teacher, their Rabbi, their best friend whom they thought was the Messiah, was dead.
Yet, suddenly, the risen Jesus, a glorified body and soul, appeared among them, miraculously traveling through that locked door as if it wasn't even there. Miraculously his beautiful face shone with the light of love and forgiveness, healing their grief-stricken, depressed, tormented souls as he breathed his Holy Spirit upon them and poured his peace over them. Seeing their great need he traveled to them, sought them out. Do we have any doubt that the Risen Christ will do the same for us? In over 2000 years, the Risen Christ has always known his people's needs and traveled to them, wherever they were, and however they were imprisoned.
We can be imprisoned in actual places or imprisoned in our minds/hearts/souls. The great Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross (1542 – 1591), friend of the great reformer St. Teresa of Avila, endured a terrible nine month physical imprisonment that included torture at the hands of his own Carmelite Order, during which he almost lost his faith. But the risen Christ still reached him, coming through the locked door of John's cell as easily as he reached the frightened disciples through their locked door. Biographer Mirabai Starr tells John's story:
"Juan de la Cruz was twenty-nine years old and madly in love with God. The great living saint Teresa of Ávila had recognized a rare sanctity and brilliance in this humble young friar and placed him in charge of her first reform convent [in 1572].
"Then late one night [when John was thirty-five], threatened by this movement to return the order to the contemplative path embodied by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the mainstream Carmelites whisked him away and imprisoned him in Toledo.
"His cell was a tiny closet that had formerly served as a latrine. There was not enough room to lie down, and the only window was far above his head. . . .
Twice a day the friars took him out and flogged him.
“'Denounce Teresa!' they demanded. 'Renounce the heresy of this so-called reform!'
"But he would not betray the dream. The dream of a life of voluntary simplicity, solitude, and silence. A contemplative life based on the Gospel teachings of poverty of spirit and charity of heart. A life of stripping away rather than accumulating. Of relinquishing power and seeking nothing. Of nothing but loving friendship with the divine and loving service to [God’s] creation. . . .
"As the months ground by, [John] began to fear that he had been abandoned by the Holy One. For the first time in his life, he questioned the existence of a God he could no longer feel or remember. And, as his soul dried up, he found he could no longer even conceive of this God to whom he had dedicated everything. When he tried to pray, all he encountered was a cavernous emptiness.
"He cried out, 'Where have you hidden, my Beloved?'
"Echoing from this cry came an outpouring of love poetry to God. He committed each poem to memory and recited them all again and again until they were etched on his heart. His poems became simultaneously a call to and a response from his Beloved. . . .
"At last [after nine long months], one dark night, a sympathetic guard turned the other way as the frail friar made his escape. Taking refuge among the sisters in a nearby convent, he fell into an ecstatic state [of love for God], from which he never recovered." (Adapted from Mirabai Starr, "St. John of the Cross: Devotions, Prayers and Living Wisdom", Sounds True: 2008)
Although the public could not guess it as they laughed at his brilliant caustic wit, the great Danish philosopher, theologian, and poet Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was caught in an inner prison. He was held captive by ongoing depression which he'd struggled with since childhood, and an ongoing interior struggle over what the purpose of life was, and, if he could believe in God, who God truly was. Sounds like the dilemma of many people today, doesn't it? One of his early poems states this dilemma:
Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.
Soren endured a life-long state of depression, undoubtedly caused in part by his early life. He grew up in an affluent family, but, over the years, five of his siblings died, leaving him with only one brother. His father made everyone's life miserable because he feared God, feared no one could ever really be forgiven by God, and preached that the family was cursed and that everyone would die tragically by age 33, the year of Jesus' death on the cross. He took his children on regular trips to the cemetery, where he exhorted them to meditate on the agonies of Christ and on their own terrible sins.
The older Soren, an oddball, loved roaming the crooked streets of Copenhagen, mentally fiercely rejecting a God Who was a punishing, wrathful avenger, but also a God who was distant and uninvolved with His creation. What - or Who?- was God? How could he find meaning and purpose in his life?
Soren grew ever more melancholy as philosophy failed to answer his questions about the meaning of life. He was drawn to Jesus, the Jesus that was alive and real behind and beyond the abstract religious dogmas he'd been taught, but he knew somehow that to embrace the person of Jesus would require a full spiritual commitment. Since his brilliant mind and deep emotions rebelled at the idea of conversion, his inner struggle - and imprisonment - continued as his soul cried out "Not yet!" But the Risen Christ is never held back by locked doors, whether they are the locked doors of our houses, or the locked doors of our souls.
"One Sunday, Soren read the Gospel story of the disciples who, frightened at their teacher's crucifixion, took refuge in an upper room. Soren felt much like them, conflicted and scared, at once relentlessly seeking the divine, studying theology and even reading Scripture and yet hiding out from the living God. The disciples were taken completely by surprise when Jesus showed up saying 'Peace be with you.' If Jesus was going to get to him, too, Soren realized, it would only be through firmly locked doors. And yet, unexpectedly, that is just what the risen Jesus did. On May, 19, 1838, Soren had a decisive spiritual experience, a feeling of 'indescribable joy' that was inexplicable to his rational mind. In that mysterious moment, the young man arrived at his life's central truth at last - the realization that, at his core, he was a person found by God."
( from Karen Wright Marsh's book "Vintage Sinners and Saints: 25 Christians Who transformed My Faith.")
The Risen Christ knew all of the needs of St. John and Soren, traveling to the cell where John was imprisoned, and the mind/heart/soul where Soren was held captive. For both men, what began as a catastrophe became instead a time of illumination and great change. Their imprisonments were defining times in their lives. In the midst of a dark spiritual captivity, each met the Living God and was set on fire by a new, passionate intimacy with the Divine Lover.
St. John, met by the risen Christ in the cell he could not even lie down in, composed and memorized the first thirty-one stanzas of what would become a spiritual classic, "The Spiritual Canticle." In the Spiritual Canticle St. John beautifully tries to explain the mystical process/journey of the soul until it reaches its union with God, the Divine Lover. St. John explains by using an allegory: the search for the husband (Christ) by the wife (the human soul). The wife feels wounded by love, and this causes the search for the Beloved (el Amado); the soul asks everywhere for the Beloved (Christ) in despair until they finally meet and unite in the garden (Paradise)
After his spiritual experience of liberation by the risen Christ, Soren taught that faith is an either - or: either God, whom we reach through constant prayer, or an unfulfilled life. "Don't just be a Christian...as if 'Christian' is some assigned label that you are simply stuck with forever, an identity that means nothing to you. No, take all of your life to become a Christian: Choose again and again with each new day, to be a real self, an authentic person in relation to God. Abandon your calculated safety for a reckless, whole-hearted life of faith in Christ. Continue to become. Grow. Risk. Take that radical leap of faith right now.... Soul brother Soren, so traumatized by his father's fearful, fundamentalist religion, was once found by a great divine love. Now he urges us to take the risk and go deeper, to fling ourselves into God's Presence - and know the one, good, unshakeable thing in life." (from "Vintage Saints and Sinners.")
My friends, in this new imprisonment in our homes, in this unwanted loneliness, boredom, and fear, we have a defining moment in our lives. Some day this will end, our homes' locked doors will open, and we will be thrown back into that busyness that in the past has shielded us from our spiritual need to unlock our inner door for the risen Christ to enter. Not that Christ needs for us to open our locked doors! If we have the least interest in Him, He will come! But, oh, it is so much better for us to unlock our inner door first so that we can welcome Him with open arms, ready for a new risk, a new leap, into becoming a more authentic Christian, into discovering a deeper intimacy with our soul's Beloved. Christ does not need us kneeling in Church to find us; He wants to drift past the locked doors of our own humble homes and the stately Churches of our own souls.
If we open our inner locked door to Christ right now, He is ready to liberate us by entering into our lives. Ready to help us grow, risk, take that radical leap of faith right now. The radical leap of faith we take now will change our lives irreversibly in our future. The radical leap of faith into believing that our Father, our brother Jesus, and the Holy Spirit love us with a love that is unimaginable, and that Christ can and will show our Father and Himself to us. Our God will intimately touch our souls, and then enter into our lives to make them new.
The risen Christ is ready to enter all our relationships in our homes, to deepen them. Away from work and school, parents and children can navigate their family life into new ports of understanding and acceptance and forgiveness.
Christ is ready to deepen all the relationships we now have on the phone, on Facebook, on Zoom, in email, in texting, as we laugh and cry together, share news, and say "I love you" more often and with greater commitment.
Christ is ready to deepen our understanding that as this is a global crisis, the whole world are our brothers and sisters, needy for our prayers and financial assistance. Christ is ready to deepen our understanding that now is the time of Crucifixion and Resurrection for us, the time to reach out to our crucified families, friends, neighbors, city, state, and world to help them find the resurrection of new life in ways we could never have imagined at Christmas.
Choose each day to pray with Soren Kierkegaard:
"Father in Heaven, help us never forget that You are love. This conviction will triumph in our hearts, even if the coming day brings inquietude, anxiety, fright, or distress."
Or choose each day to pray with St. John of the Cross:
"O Blessed Jesus,
give me stillness of soul in You.
Let Your mighty calmness reign in me.
Rule me, O King of Gentleness,
King of Peace."