"It’s startling, really. He goes away. Where does he go? It suggests that God absenting himself from the human soul is what sets the stage for the disobedience."This is always the question, isn't it, Lord? Where did you go? But as Fr J pointed out once, when John Paul II looks at the Genesis telling, he suggests that the first version of the creation story is given to us through an objective (dare I say omniscient?) point of view, whereas the second version, the re-telling, is presented through a subjective lens: the human perspective. So it seems, as well, with the telling of the fall. Where did you go? You dropped out of perspective. Humanity already had begun to absent itself from you, had already begun to look to itself--to other human beings--for company. You were there, all along, withdrawing into our desire for self-sufficiency and self-determination, and all along asking "where are you?" Where is your heart, humanity? Oh, we are busy, Lord, with each other, with the garden of things around us. With this serpent who is chatting me up. Please come back another time.
And out of respect for our boundaries, you withdraw and wait. As always.
The tree is only a concrete symbol of demarcation, a boundary that gives us some understanding of the difference between a loving act towards you and an act that steals from you what cannot be given to humanity without our falling into the (humanly) unlivable reality of God's life--which is a terrible annihilation. To take and consume for myself what belongs to God properly is to attempt to live what I cannot survive. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." The fruit of those trees--of knowledge, of life--is the boundary that marks where I end and you begin, myself/yourself. My will; your will. My want would consume everything in sight, including you, for my own possession. But I cannot survive the possession of your life, for then I would be you, and not myself, which is nothing more than my extinction. This you will not do: you will not allow me to cease from existence out of utter selfish possessiveness. I will die, yes, that is certain. But I will not cease to exist, for my existence is good, whatever choice I make. That seems equally plain.
So we begin with the invitation to love: do not eat from God's person what, as a human person, you are incapable of possessing and assuming, and you will discover through loving relationship what you are within me. When humanity prefers desire to love, self to relationship, and possession to freedom, we are lost to you and to ourselves, for then we want nothing more than to be our own gods--of love, relationship, and freedom--without you, who is the source of love, relationship, and freedom.
We end with the transformed invitation--even this you give us: you want to eat God? Very well, then, eat God. Possess him for yourself: "take this, all of you, and eat it. This is my body." But our portion cannot be consumed until it can be received within your total reciprocation: not until you deliver yourself to us as one of us, as a human meal prepared from God's human body, can humanity survive the taking.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To God who is, who was and who is to come, now and forever.
Amen.
...
"The vulnerability of Jesus' heart remains somewhat difficult to define because it is of a very interior domain; but we must affirm that this vulnerability is greater than all other vulnerability. It is preferable to use that term than to say that Jesus, in his glory, continues to suffer or to say that the Father suffers. We now hear this said often, but theologically it is not correct, it is purely metaphorical. It is better to use the term 'vulnerable' that directly qualifies love. Love is receiving and it is giving. It tears us away from ourselves (it is 'ex-static'), but it is also receptive of the other, of the loved one. And from the moment one is receptive, one is vulnerable: one is hurt by the person one welcomes, who might not be as considerate as he who welcomes him. Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa, 'You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride, says the Bridegromm of the Canticle. The vulnerability of Christ's heart remains for us an unfathomable mystery."...
--Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P., I Thirst: Conferences on the Wisdom of the Cross
1 comment:
Dear G –
I could not possibly match your eloquence here, particularly as I am rushing this during baby’s short nap (and the dog insists on barking at the gardener, damn him). Much of what I experience these days is through the lens of a parent to a newborn. Receptivity is definitely the indelible stamp on all my waking hours; terrible vulnerability, yes. And the hurts will come. I grieve every inch she grows, every ounce she puts on. I already have a sizable stack of tiny clothes she outgrew. I examined each of them with tenderness and heartbreak. Ah, she was too big for this one when she came from the hospital. And this one is the one in which she first crossed the threshold of our home. And that tiny little shirt with sleeves that fold over like mittens over the hands? The hospital gave her that one when she was just born. I won’t give that one away.
Does God hold on to our first shirts? If he does, he never lets us know. His respect for our boundaries is impeccable. But speaking for myself, I wish he was less discreet (or discrete). I really need his presence sometimes, and to hell with my ego, but I really need him so I don’t fall altogether apart. Like an infant.
A baby is born so naked and so bereft and so abandoned to the vicissitudes of existence – and the ineptitude and egocentricity of those who are to take care of her. I wish God would be more available – to the babies in huge big gobs, to the rest of us in discreet but unmistakable bursts. I don’t see his greater availability as any compromise on boundaries. It could help many to take in more reality. But he hides so damn well, it is almost as if he is playing hide-and-seek – with us and with himself. I used to have a problem with God’s wager with the devil over Job, but now I see the truth of it. I really experience that truth.
I am sad and feeling rebellious. There are some difficulties in my immediate family which I am grieving (not to do with baby). And of course I come back to God each night and ask him for an accounting of the mess he’s made. I know, I know, I’m sure it is a sin for me to say that. I am a little demoralized.
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