Posts Tagged ‘kenosis’

The Body of Christ

· Sunday, 2 Sep 2007, 2 pm

The term Body of Christ means three things: 1) the actual physical body of Jesus; 2) the Church (with a capital “C”) because we as individual persons are church, parts of the Body, branches on the Vine; and 3) the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament. (Note: Some believers have issues with the third one. There is a plausible explanation below.)

God seeks us. He wants to have an I-You relationship (or I-Thou if you wish to be more formal). That means person-to-person, subject-to-subject, not subject-to-object. Objects are used and manipulated. Persons are in relation with each other, to communicate, to commune, to love, to be together. God will not—cannot—ever be an object. Unfortunately we often treat Him as an object for our own benefit and desires. We try to cajole and manipulate God into doing things for us like we cajole and manipulate other people. We do not seek relationship, union, community. We use. We manipulate. We are selfish. If we do not even treat other people as persons most of the time, how can we treat God as a person?

Some have described the humiliation that God must have endured to lower Himself to become a mere creature—to be born, to live, and to die as a human. Ah! The mystery of the Incarnation. But there is even more humility hidden within this one act. God not only risked becoming human, He also risked becoming an object. In becoming human, He not only bridged the gap between humanity and God to bring home His lost children, but He also showed us how to be fully human. Also in becoming human, God risked the objectification of His person, of becoming an object that could be manipulated and used, idolized or discarded. By risking to become an object to us, God is another bridge for us to rise above the slavery of subject-object, the I-It way of seeing life, to the freedom of the subject-subject relationship, the I-You of union and community.

There is no love or mutual respect in I-It. This is control, judgment, labeling, which leads to pride. (The Biblical term is slavery.) Only in I-You is there love and mutual respect, and the paradox of union and liberation.

So, in the term Body of Christ, I can recognize the person of Jesus in His actual body. I can recognize the person in other people (when I open my heart). Can I recognize the person in the Eucharist? Do I see the Eucharist as an object, some “thing” to be used for consumption? How do I see this little thin waffer of bread as the Bread of Life, as the person of Jesus, as God? How can I rise above the I-It-ness of this object and recognize the I-You-ness of Jesus?

No wonder so many of Jesus’ followers left Him as described near the end of John 6. No wonder some believers still have issues with the Eucharist today. It is hard enough to believe God came in the Incarnation as a mere creature, but it is even harder to believe God is in what appears to be an object. And neither, man or object, can be made an idol.

When I attempt to contemplate the I-You-ness of the Eucharist, I enter into silence. I am speechless, thoughtless. My thoughts and words fade as the objects they are, gently blown away in the sweet breathe of the Holy Spirit. Part of my mind wants to hold onto those thoughts, but mind only deals in objects. You are above that. And I am in silence.

As the sounds and thoughts return, I see kenosis connecting all three connotations of the Body of Christ. You gave Your life for me. I am called to give my life to others. I see the pattern of the Trinity in this. And in the Eucharist, You once again give yourself to me. You are the gift given to me so that I may give to others. You are the energy for me in this giving like the Holy Spirit is often described as the personification of the love between the Father and the Son. I am to risk being object too for others to manipulate and use, to idolize or discard, in the hopes of raising them above the I-It-ness of this world to the I-You-ness of your Reality.

My Lord and my God, Jesus Christ, purify my heart so that I may see You, so that I may see You in others, and that others may see You in me. Help me to see You in the Body of Christ, within your Church, within your Eucharist. Lead me into proper relationship with all people and all things.

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Seeking Intimacy

· Sunday, 25 Mar 2007, 4 pm

We all are virgins of the heart. We seek, often desperately, intimacy with another person. But even in the midst of close intimacy, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual, it is not perfect. Something is always missing. It remains unsatisfactory on some deep level, whether we are immediately aware of it or not. It is incomplete. The other is somehow still distant. And so we still feel incomplete, and the drive for intimacy continues to haunt us.
We long for perfect intimacy, but are denied. It is a good thing that perfect intimacy is impossible on this side of heaven. If two human hearts met in perfect intimacy, one of two things would happen. In one situation, one heart, because of our fallen nature, would try to control and use the other heart. In the other situation, one heart would be so overwhelmed by the infinity of the other heart, so frighten at the ultimate responsibility of perfect intimacy, that it would run away.
Only in the Trinity of God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit does perfect intimacy exist, a total and complete giving and receiving—kenosis. Only can God not be tempted to control and use another’s heart. Only can God not run away from the ultimate responsibility of perfect intimacy. Only through God, with God, in God, will we finally be in perfect intimacy our hearts desire, at the great wedding banquet in heaven between the Groom and His Bride.
But this should not stop us from from reaching out to others here and now on earth. We still must open our hearts to others, for only heaven is closed to a closed heart. We attempt to prostitute our hearts only if we seek intimacy for selfish means, to control another, or to use another to alleviate the ache of our loneliness. To seek honestly and responsibly the many levels of intimacy in terms of friendship, compassion, hospitality, mercy, marriage, even prayer, is to seek out connections with others out of love.
The drive for physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual intimacy is a powerful energy whose source is the Body of Christ. And when we give this gift to others properly, it strengthens and reinforces the connectedness of the Body of Christ.
On one level, we all sleep alone. But not really. The one who loves is never alone.

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Friendship with Christ

· Monday, 5 Mar 2007, 7 am

Christ on the cross bows his head,
Waiting for you,
That he may kiss you,
His arms are outstretched,
That he may embrace you,
His hands are open,
That he may enrich you,
His body spread out,
That he may give himself totally,
His feet are nailed,
That he may stay there,
His side is open for you,
That he may let you enter there.

— Saint Bonaventure, Soliloquy

What a powerful image of friendship, of relationship with Jesus! How could some Christians ever take the corpus off the Cross? Kenosis, a total giving over, that is what the three Persons of the Trinity do/are, that is what Jesus is offering us, that is what He is calling us to, to total and complete relationship. We cannot give ourselves over completely yet, but He will help us, perfect us. Thank you.

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Nothingness

· Tuesday, 16 Jan 2007, 9 am

Is the nothingness I yearn for
a return to the comfortable nothingness of the womb,
or a step forward into the unknown
of total giving, of emptying myself to You?

Is this want from my egoic,
fear and attachment-driven empirical false self,
or from my shy true self that knows itself
to be in, of, and with You?

The one is caused by fatigue,
total tiredness of struggling in the world,
frought with frustions of a feeble will.
The other is from desire to be,
to be with You, to let You fill me.

One is retreat, resignation, giving up.
The other is giving over.

One is about self.
One is about other.

One leads to apathy and hell.
One leads to love and heaven.

Lead me to You.

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Why Worship

· Thursday, 23 Nov 2006, 5 pm

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote a wonderful little book called You, which is really about us and our relationship with God. Although the cultural references are a little dated, here is a cursory explanation, sprinkled with golden nuggets of insight, of why we worship God.

If you are a father, do you not like to receive a tiny little gift, such as a penny chocolate cigar, from your son? Why do you value it more than a box [of cigars] from your insurance agent? If you are a mother, does not your heart find greater joy in a handful of yellow dandelions from your little daughter, than a bouquet of roses from a dinner guest? Do these little trivialities make you richer? Would you be imperfect without them? They are absolutely of no utility to you! And yet you love them. And why? Because by these gifts your children are “worshipping” you; they acknowledge your love, your goodness, and by doing so they are perfecting themselves; that is, they are developing along the lines of love rather hate, thankfulness rather than ingratitude, and therefore they are becoming more perfect children and happier children as well.

As you do not need dandelions and chocolate cigars, neither does God need your worship. But if their giving is a sign of your worth in your children’s eyes, then is not prayer, adoration, and worship a sign of God’s worth in our eyes? And if you do not need your children’s worship, why do you think God needs yours? But if the worship of your children is for perfection, not yours, then may not your worship of God be not for His perfection, but yours? Worship is your opportunity to express devotion, dependence, and love, and in doing that you make yourself happy.

…God would still be perfectly happy if you never existed. God has no need of your love, for there is nothing in you, of and by yourself, which makes you lovable to God. Most of us are fortunate to have even a spark of affection from our fellow creatures. God does not love us for the same reason that we love others. We love others because of need and incompleteness. But God does not love us because He needs us. He loves us because He put some of His love in us. God does not love us because we are valuable; we are valuable because He loves us.

…Without Him, you are imperfect; but without you, He is still Perfect. It is the echo that needs the Voice, and not the Voice that needs the echo. …God thirsts for your love, not because you are His waters of everlasting life, but because you thirst, He is the waters. He needs you only because you need Him.

It is always about the other. By giving yourself to others in some form or another, you receive and are transformed. The cycle of love continues to flow. All is gift…receive, share, and give thanks.

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