Here I am, sleepless at 2am, restlessly thumbing through emails to reply, busy all morning since leaving the house at 7.30am. Thinking about the Spanish review materials I procured this evening, about the first day of classes, about really asking the questions with Jesus that will unite the two parts of being He has given me into one cohesive existence to proclaim Him. As I have been profusely confessing over the past few days, I find myself a dichotomy, and reading over Michael Novak’s “Women, Ordination, and Angels” (readable online at: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5114) brought more to light than I think I still perceive. It is a curious thing, this reaching out to get to God, to understand worship through vocation, to find self in the midst of community… to learn about Jesus by finding the hands of another within the substance of this matter-ous form and spiritual being, united by a similar hypostatic tie, I can only think, like Jesus’.
Continuing the dialog with Jesus on the nature He has imparted to me through courses today, I stumbled across thoughts about Pauline discussion of flesh and spirit in Christianity Antiquities course… and wondered what it would entail to trace the evolution of a predominant theology that deems the body to be flesh, that it is sinful in essence and such, and where Christians integrated the Greek philosophy of the forms and matter’s absence of absolution and truth into our theology. I see some duality of belief in that thought of the flesh being bad, but of faith being about relationship. I think I was brought up and brought myself up in the belief that I needed to be an angel, loving to all, but truly in love with Jesus in the flesh of my brothers and sisters in Him? I ponder a passage of scripture…
“But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far off have been brought close, by the blood of Christ. For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one entity and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, by destroying in his own person the hostility, that is, the Law of commandments with its decrees. His purpose in this was, by restoring peace, to create a single New Man out of the two of them, and through the cross, to reconcile them both to God in one Body; in his own person he killed the hostility. He came to bring the good news of peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. Through him, then, we both in the one Spirit have free access to the Father. So you are no longer aliens or foreign visitors; you are fellow-citizens with the holy people of God and part of God’s household. You are built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone. Every structure knit together in him grows into a holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built up into a dwelling-place of God in the Spirit. (Eph 2.13-22)”
So we are knit together, composing as a unit the essence that makes up the needed Jesus here until He is fully present. Yet, if I am to be awaiting well my Jesus, and awaiting Him faithfully, I need to be engaging relationally more than I do. I thought of an awful description of myself based off the language used around me lately (and a horrible description of my inability to converse in a group context): I am a faithful, devoted lover for the 15-75+ minute conversations in which I engage; a very fleeting, but desperately passionate lover who impregnates quickly with the substance of friendship, yet who just as quickly breaks water in a premature baptism and departs, leaving the lover with an abandoned child and piece of my heart, breaking the lover’s heart as well. Yet I have been so promiscuous with this sort of exclusive attention that I don’t even notice the vanishing of my own strength of heart, till one day I wake up, and it is no more. The heart drains out like and hour glass… one grain of sand at a time, until one morning my heart awakes and finds the lover I tried to bear friendship with, but it has aborted itself from exhausted concentrated power of will. These lovers have been many, compartmentalized like a good polygamist so none knows of each other.
Do I desire that friendship and deep knowing? So hard to say sometimes, I feel once and a while, my one feeling reverberating an echo like a hollow instrument in which nothing but air is light enough to last and not sink through. Without life, how do I know my God; without people and thus without Jesus? Sleep is coming on slowly..
Nightly penance done, to bed!
“When you awake in the night, transport yourself quickly in spirit before the Tabernacle, saying: ‘Behold, my God, I come to adore You, to praise, thank, and love you, and to keep you company with all the Angels,’ “
~ St. Jean Vianney
“All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic
creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas
come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the
Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life —I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.”
~ Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
“The Lord Jesus himself proclaims, ‘This is My Body.’ Before the blessing of the heavenly words something of another character is spoken of; [bread]. After consecration it is designated ‘body’. He himself speaks of his blood. Before the consecration it is spoken of as something else; [wine]. After the consecration it is spoken of as ‘blood’. And you say, ‘Amen’ ~ that is, ‘It is true.’ What the mouth speaks, let the mind within confess; what the tongue utters, let the heart feel.”
~ St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan 339-39
