A Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 17:5-8 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20 Luke 6:17, 20-26
Religion has a way of undoing God. This is not a criticism so much as an acknowledgement of the inevitable. Whatever God is, as St. Thomas Aquinas once put it, God is “not us.” So, when we encounter that which is “not us,” we cannot be blamed for responding as ourselves, for creating something that corresponds to our understanding. In short, we encounter God, and we produce religion.
All of that is inevitable, but it becomes dangerous when we mistake religion for God or reduce God to the parameters of religion. If God is “not us” then God begins where we end. At its best, religion takes us to the borders of human life—there to await God.
But religion has a way of undoing God when it domesticates the mystery of human life, our open-ended desire for what lies beyond it. Take, for example, our two readings, each about being blessed. True or not, Jeremiah’s words at least make sense:
Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose hope is the Lord (17:7).
Choose the good, do the good and you will be blessed. Jeremiah’s words are challenging but comprehensible. Those of Jesus are not, because he outrageously says that we should consider ourselves blessed when bad things happen to us.
Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied (Mt 6:20-21).
Treacly piety has a way of goo-ing over common sense. The bad is not a blessing. Either Jesus is wrong, or we must struggle mightily to understand how he can be right.
If that does not happen, religion is undoing God. God is not breaking through the membrane of religion, which tends to regularize the irregular. So, at the risk of blasphemy, allow one more Beatitude: “Blessed are you if you find the Beatitudes non-sensical, because you take their point.” You are supposed to return home disturbed by them, not comforted. Or rather, real comfort is supposed to follow, be a fruit of, your initial disquietude.
If you have been graced enough to be discomforted, I will leave you to wrestle with it, like Jacob with his angel. But I will share two of my experiences with contemplative prayer. Perhaps they are an experiential confirmation of the notional confusion Christ creates.
First, what is contemplative prayer? It is not about words or images. In contemplative prayer we are not petitioning God, nor are we meditating upon what God has already revealed. We are simply trying to be aware of God’s presence.
Second, a personal confession. I avoid contemplative prayer, or rather, I go at it with the reluctance of someone taking a cold shower. Why? Because when I stop speaking to God, when I stop reflecting upon God’s revelation, when I simply try to become aware of God, I become terrified that there is no God, that I am thoroughly alone in this world. There is only me and the silence from which I have emerged and to which I will return. Consequently, though I attempt it each time that I pray, I can only briefly contemplate God’s presence before I retreat in terror.
But lately—and perhaps this is the result of old age—I have found a new entry into contemplative prayer. An odd little trick that throws me into the frigid waters. I remind myself that I am going to die, that my breathing and the thoughts that depend upon it will cease. There is nothing that I can do to avoid this fate. I can only ignore it, run from it, but not when I pray. Then I embrace it. I am going to die. Whatever the project I call myself has been, it will come to nothing.
It takes some effort to believe the obvious: I am going to die. Denial of death is written into our DNA. How does pondering my death aid my contemplative prayer?
Essentially, I confront the fear which contemplative prayer prompts by closing off my avenue of escape with an opposing terror. I have nothing. Am nothing. Either God exists or I do not exist, at least, not much longer. Here in the scary silence, I must await a beatitude beyond my ken, a fullness of life coming from another.
God then appears, as the security beyond my insecurity, as the silence into which I must go down. Perhaps one could say that God does not appear. Unless God’s appearance simply is the silencing of wind, illusory wind.
I wish that I could assure you that I now spend long stretches of time in contemplative prayer, but I do not think that is the point of such prayer. Indeed, comfortable contemplative prayer might suggest a retreat to the domestication that is religion.
No. I am still terrified. I simply allow one terror to confront another: fear of the silence with the certainty of death. It is a paradox that juxtaposing two terrors brings peace.
This strange peace is the deepest level of belief, an encounter that lies beyond or beneath avowal. Faith is experience before it is assertion. I do not assert that I know anything about the silence. I have no notions to postulate. Following the example of Jesus, I simply entrust myself to the silence.
If you need some notional support, here it is. You and I are not alone in the scary silence. St. Paul knew the same when he wrote:
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor 15:19-20).
