GIVE GOD A CHANCE

By Robert Kelly SJ

FORWARD

When Father Robert Kelly SJ first wrote this book he wanted it to be published under the name of 'A Joy So Glorious', but the original publishers thought it should have a title which would not only appeal to the converted but which might also attract the seekers and the curious to pick up the book and open it. 

When I first read 'Give God a Chance' I found it impossible to put down.  I read it several times before I returned it to the friend who had lent it to me.  At the time Gina introduced the book to me she explained that her husband had found it 'very helpful' when his health began to fail, and as my husband was preparing for heart surgery, she thought I might like it.

After I returned it, Gina lent it to other people who were equally enthusiastic and while my husband was recovering he also read the book and reacted with the same passionate enthusiasm. 

By then I had started to buy copies as presents, but found them difficult to get hold of.  I wrote to Fr. Robert, wondering if he knew where I could get further copies, and he very kindly packed me up a parcel of three of each of his books, which sadly has been lost in transit between Zambia and the UK.  I began to use the internet to hunt, and bought books as far afield as California, Columbia (USA) London and Ireland.  Eventually though, supplies ran out, which is when I had the idea of using the internet itself to publish 'Give God a Chance'.

Veritas seemed more interested in newer books that re-publishing older ones.  Other publishers, now under much bigger umbrellas, had their own favourites and nobody was ready to publish 'Give God a Chance' again.

Father Robert works in Zambia, where he has spent almost all his priestly life.  He is now 77, and works as an assistant pastor in a parish in Lusaka.  He underwent heart surgery himself a couple of years ago but is now in much better health.  A great deal of his work has involved giving retreats and he is very much concerned with the AIDS epidemic rampaging its way through Africa.  He has written several books which include 'With God on Our Side', 'Be Still and Know' and 'In Love with God', and has become a real friend through his books - a second parcel did arrive! - and through our exchange of letters and the occasional phone call. 

People everywhere have been kind and encouraging in this venture, from Fr. Robert himself, to Father Peter Jenner of the Catholic Internet Trust, to members of my own Parish of St. Francis of Assisi, Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire, England and to my family.  I would especially like to thank the publishers in London and New York who hold the copyright for the Jerusalem Bible for allowing the quotations to be used without charge

Fr. Robert's book is a beautiful and simply written book which reminds us again of many things we have either forgotten or shows us ways we never thought - or even knew of - about how to get to know God through the loving kindness and understanding of His Son, Jesus.  It also teaches us about ourselves and shows us how we underrate ourselves compared to the way God sees us.  Jesus, after all, thought we were worth dying for.  The simplicity of the answer to the eternal questions starting  'Why....' is there in the pages for everyone who reads it. 

As the saying goes nowadays....Enjoy!  Even if you just start by dipping here and there into the book, persevere and may God bless you now and always.

Sarah Bell
April 2002

INTRODUCTION

Always have your answer ready for people who
ask you the reason for the hope that you have.

1 Peter 3:15

With these words St. Peter encourages his fellow Christians to be ready to explain to others why they follow the new Christian way of life, why they have accepted Jesus Christ and believe in him. His words apply to believers of all times, to you and me today. If our Christian faith has real meaning for us, we should be ready to explain to others who may ask us why we believe and live as we do.

As life goes on, the most important questioner to whom I must be ready to explain my religious hope is myself. The most important questions to be answered are the ones I ask myself when I am alone. What does Jesus Christ mean to me? Why do I believe in him and try to follow him? What difference does he make to my life? If I cannot answer these questions to my own self, I am unlikely to be able to explain my Christian hope to others.

Let us notice the kind of questions we are speaking about here. We are not concerned so much with intellectual questions and answers. We are not talking about scoring high marks in a Christian doctrine exam. Many of us would feel intimidated by such an exam. Recent years have seen rapid and startling changes in our world. It is very obvious in the area of technology, but it is happening with equal speed and force in the world of ideas, culture and religious beliefs. One of my favourite comic postcards shows a picture of a bewildered teddy bear poring over a large book with a caption that says, ‘There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about!’ We can be intimidated by the development of science, technology and new skills in our secular world. Now, our faith life, our religious beliefs and practices are subject to their own growth process and development. As a result many good Christians feel less confident about explaining or defending their Christian beliefs. Startled by new interpretations of traditional faith, they feel less secure.

Thus it may seem harder than ever in our time to respond to Peter’s urging that we should be ready to explain our Christian hope to those who ask. But the Christian message, the Good News, is more about salvation than about having correct answers to difficult doctrinal questions or providing neat solutions to the complex problems of life. The heart and centre of our faith is a person, Jesus Christ, and this person, Jesus, offers a salvation that may be deeply experienced, just at a time when correct doctrinal answers elude us.

If we were to ask Peter himself to explain the hope he had, I am sure he would start to speak of Jesus Christ, how he met him and how life was never the same again. And Peter understands that this Jesus is at the centre of the lives of the Christians he is writing to. To them he writes, ‘You did not see Jesus, yet you love him; and still without seeing him, you are filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe.’ This book offers some reflections which may help us to share the experience of those early Christians who, like us, did not see the Lord but loved him. That love was real for them. Indeed it was the greatest reality in their lives and filled them with a joy so glorious that it was difficult to describe.

1

ANNO DOMINI

In identifying dates in history, we use the letters BC to indicate the years before the birth of Christ. We identify all subsequent years by the letters AD, which stand for Anno Domini, the year of the Lord. Notice that we do not refer to those years as AC, after Christ. This is perhaps the most startling claim our faith makes. It is the basis of all our hope, namely that there is no such thing as time after Christ. Jesus Christ is alive today. We live in his time.

For a Christian believer there are only two periods of history, the time before Christ and the time of Christ. But often, by the way we speak and act, we Christians seem to suggest that there are three periods of history: the time before Christ, described in the Old Testament; the time of Christ, as described in the New Testament; and the time after Christ, which is the rest of history and, for us, today, is this modern age. This way of thinking leads to greatly reduced expectations of our faith. It encourages us to accept a very watered-down version of our Christian hope. It deprives us of power and spiritual nourishment. The Good News of our faith is that we live in the time of Jesus Christ. He is alive and among us. We can meet him and have his friendship. He is doing or wants to do among us what he did when he entered our world in the incarnation.

The Good News of our faith is eternally modern. It is a ‘today’ thing. It is always a ‘now’ event. It is happening. It is Good News. It is not a ‘history’ of good things that God did in former days. It is not a ‘prophecy’ of good things that God will do in future when we become more worthy of his love. No! It is what God is doing or wants to do for us right now. It is ‘news’. When we open the daily newspaper, we expect to read about what is happening right now in the world about us. We would not accept last week’s newspaper from our newsagent. The gospel message is not only news, it is good news telling us about God’s presence and activity here and now in our lives. This activity is re-creating, healing and liberating. The message of the good news is spoken afresh all the time and is addressed to me by name. I am not a spectator of revealed truth being handed to someone else and passed on to me. I am the addressee. The message is spoken to my heart and if I listen with faith, the words become reality in my life. After Jesus announced the good news in the synagogue of Nazareth, he looked at his audience and said ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’ (Luke 4:22)

The words that God speaks to us through Jesus are different from all other words. Scripture calls them ‘living words’. These living words, which are as fresh and alive as God himself in every age, reveal God’s very inner being which is love. The Bible is not a book of information about God aimed at my intellect. It is the self-revelation of God’s heart aimed at my heart. The word is ‘I love you’. Faith is not a matter of looking for correct intellectual answers to difficult questions about the existence and nature of God. Faith involves my answer to the one, all-important question which he puts to me: ‘ Do you love me?’ It was the question put to Peter at the lakeside of Tiberias after the resurrection. (John 21:15)

This very question put to us by God brings us into a world of wonder and mystery. It tells us we are ‘the sought-after’ (Isaiah 62:12) God seeks our love. We think of St. Augustine’s words: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ It has been so from the beginning. The first book of the Bible describes God walking in the garden with the first man and woman. He strolls with them in the evening, chatting as friend with friend. Then the dialogue is interrupted. Something goes wrong. Evil is present. Sin follows. The conversation breaks down. God’s friends experience shame, fear and guilt, and they hide. God, their friend, is not happy. He wants the friendship to continue and searches for his friends. ‘Adam, where are you?’ (Genesis 3:9) – and the answer comes, ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’

God did not give up on his friends. He continued to search for them, to search for us. He sent message after message through many prophets, through many years. Through these years the guilt increased. When misfortune came, people saw it as God’s revenge and anger and they cried out, ’Yahweh has abandoned me, the Lord has forgotten me’ (Isaiah 49:14). They are far away from knowing the mystery of God’s love. Yahweh answered their cry:

'Does a woman forget her baby at the breast
or fail to cherish the son of her womb?
Yet even if these forget,
I will never forget you.'
Isaiah 49:15

Despite this beautiful word, fear still held sway. Guilt erected great barriers, terrible walls. And the fear and guilt were reinforced by false teachers, self-righteous people who felt sure they knew what God was like. These teachers told people that they were outcasts and that their sickness and misfortune were punishments from an angry God. Such teaching was a great dark cloud obscuring the sunshine of God’s love.

What can God do? He seeks us and wants to convince our hearts of his love. He has spoken many words of love through the prophets. What more can he do? He will speak one more word, his greatest and clearest word. But now he will take no more chances. He will not rely on spoken words which can be misunderstood and misinterpreted. He will send his Son, he will send his word in the flesh. ‘The Word was made flesh, he lived among us’ (John 1:14). The bright warm sunshine of God’s love broke through that dark cloud of guilt, fear and false teaching and shone upon us. The love of God became visible in Jesus. God would once again walk on earth and talk with his friends, man and women, and he does not seem to mind that they are labelled ‘sinners’ by the self-righteous. He is happy to be called ‘friend of sinners’. We are still ‘the sought-after’, even in our sins.

‘At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son.’ (Hebrews 1:1-2). Notice ‘in our own time’, Jesus speaks now. It is Paul’s time, it is Peter’s time, it is our time, anno domini. He speaks to me, to us, today. We know from the gospel the extraordinary power of the words of Jesus. People hung on his words. They forgot about food as they followed him out into the desert to listen to him. They said ‘There has never been anybody who has spoken like him’ (John 7:46). These words have not lost their power as they are spoken afresh to us today. His teaching was different from that of the Scribes and Pharisees. ‘His teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.’ (Mark 1:22).

Jesus speaks with authority. Let us understand this well. There is deep meaning in this word ‘authority’ which we could miss, quite different from our ordinary understanding. The authority with which Jesus speaks is not something external to the word he speaks. Jesus is not saying ‘I am your new religious teacher and you must listen and believe because I say it.’ He is not even saying ‘I am the Son of God and so you must accept my word.’ Something more wonderful is happening. The authority is in the very word itself. He speaks the Truth. The Truth needs no authority outside of itself to command obedience. When people hear the word of Jesus, it touches the deepest part of themselves, the heart and centre of each person made in God’s image. His word reaches that deep centre and, wonderful to relate, an echo comes back from that deep place, an echo which agrees and says Amen.

Here lies the power of Truth, its nourishing and transforming power. We are made for Truth. The word of Jesus is the Truth. Jesus himself, the word made flesh, is the Truth. Our deepest good self, made in God’s image, hears, ‘knows’ and responds to this Truth which is Jesus. He himself said that his followers know his voice. ‘The sheep hear his voice, one by one he calls his own sheep. He goes ahead of them and the sheep follow because they know his voice’ (John 10:3-4). Jesus speaks our name in love and our deepest self recognises him and his word. Maybe we cannot describe this exactly to others, but we ‘know’ that something beautiful and mysterious is happening. St. Paul speaks of his. Writing to the Christians in Rome he reminds them that they have not received a spirit of fear but the spirit of children, ‘and it makes us cry out "Abba, Father!" The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God’ (Romans 8:14-l6). Notice what he says: ‘the Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness.’ That is, when God’s spirit tells us we are his children, our own spirit recognises the truth, there is an echo from our deepest self. This deep self accepts and is moved to ‘cry out, Abba, Father"’.

Something like this was happening when Jesus looked around at the crowd and told them God loved them as children. That’s why they forgot about food to listen to him. They were hungry for this truth. When he told them they were children of the Father, that they were more beautiful than the flowers; when he told them that their Father loved them even as he loved Jesus himself; when he told them their sins were forgiven and their sickness was not sent by God as punishment, they knew they were hearing the truth and they were transformed.

We live in his time. It is today. It is our time. We need not envy the first Christians. He is with us to the end of time as Friend and Saviour. He invited us to accept his friendship and salvation. He wants to speak his word to us today, the word of truth which can nourish and transform us. He would like us to talk to him, to share ourselves with him, to tell him the story of our life. And he would like us to listen to him and let him share himself with us and tell us his story, what it was like for him to live out a truly human life among us. As we listen he will share the secrets of his Father with us. He will lead us into the mystery and wonder of his Father’s being and into the mystery and wonder of our own being. He will lead us to the truth about God, about himself and about our own selves. This truth can touch the deepest part of us and release unexpected springs of life, growth and beauty. The wasteland within us can bloom again. Our dry hearts can become a beautiful garden for God where he will be pleased to walk, as he walked in the original garden of creation with the first man and woman.

2

FROM BELIEVING TO KNOWING

On one occasion towards the end of his life, St. Paul is in prison in Caesarea awaiting transfer to Rome for trial. The governor, Festus, is explaining to a visitor, King Agrippa, the curious charges being brought against Paul. ‘His accusers did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected; but they had some argument or other with him…about a dead man called Jesus whom Paul alleged to be alive’ (Acts 25:18-19) For Festus and Paul’s enemies, Jesus was a ‘dead man’, no more. But for Paul and the Christian believers, Jesus is alive and among them, their living Lord and Friend whom they can know and love and for whom they are joyfully prepared to die.

So for us Christians today, Jesus is alive and with us. We not only believe in him, we can know him, have personal friendship with him and experience this friendship as the source of our deepest joy and power. Peter’s words to the first believers should apply to us. ‘You did not see him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him, you are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe’ (1 Peter 1:8-9). Our faith must touch the whole person and not just the mind only. The risen present Lord offers his love to our hearts. After the crucifixion of Jesus, two of his disillusioned disciples are on the road to Emmaus, certain that their Jesus was a dead man. But then he joins them on the road and their eyes are opened. This is how they described their experience. ‘Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road?’ (Luke 24:32). Believing should lead to knowing and knowing must touch the heart.

We live in anno domini. We believe that Jesus is risen, alive and with us as we journey on the road of life. Yet many do not seem to experience his presence warming their hearts. Hopefully, it is not that they think that Jesus is a dead man. But many would say that for them he is distant and not so ‘real’, not as real as family or friends, or as real as the daily cares and problems, or the joyful recreations that make life happier. Believing in Jesus does not bring the ‘glorious joy’ of which Peter speaks. The duties of Christian life often seem irksome. Prayer, charity, parish involvement and communal worship are mostly seen as ‘duties’, activities imposed by outside authorities rather than a real experience of something going on within the person, a friendship with the living Lord deep within, which should provide the inspiration, joy and power to enable us to follow him. Often, believing does not lead to this ‘knowing’ experience.

I wonder why this is so. Why do so many stop at believing, and have only a kind of intellectual relationship with Jesus? Why do so few progress to knowing the Lord personally and to enjoying a heart experience? I suggest it may be something to do with the way they are introduced to Jesus. Many Christians first meet Jesus in a catechism or creed rather than in the gospel story. They meet Jesus as true God in the Creed and have little experience of him as true man in the gospel. And most who meet Jesus in this way were introduced to him in a school setting, in a Christian doctrine class. This relatively dry and shallow encounter seldom progresses to a deeper, more personal relationship.

From classroom they progressed to Christian practice in a parish community where faith was meant to be nourished chiefly by attendance at Church devotions and services. This attendance was often motivated by a spirit of conformity rather than any deep personal conviction. This is an over-simplification, but many readers will agree that it reflects their general experience. This road of faith led many good, devout people to lives of great fidelity. But, for today, faith will have to be more personally experienced if it is to meet the challenges of our time. And Christ wishes us to have this experience. He came that we might have life and have it to the full. He wishes to reveal himself to us and lead us to joy in knowing him. How might this happen?

Let us look at those Christians Peter writes to in the letter we have quoted. Like us they did not see the Lord in the flesh. They met him in faith by believing. Peter observes that this faith knowledge led to love and this love filled them with a joy so glorious it was hard to describe. How were those believers introduced to Jesus? We might say they had an advantage over us since they were introduced to Jesus by the very first followers who had known him in the flesh. But we have to remember that even those first followers who had known Jesus in the flesh had to progress to a faith relationship with him. Not all who met Jesus in the flesh accepted him or believed in him. He had his enemies. Not all who were attracted to him followed him. We think of the rich young man. And some who started as disciples fell away when he proposed teachings they could not accept. When he said he would give himself as food and drink, we are told, ‘After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’ (John6:66)

I suggest it can help if we go back to those very first followers and recall their experience of meeting the Lord and how they handed on that experience to those Christians Peter is writing to. I think this will help us believers of today to achieve a closer affinity with our first brothers and sisters in the faith and to a more personal experience of Jesus in our own faith lives. The very first followers did not meet Jesus in a creed. They met a man of flesh and blood. John writes: ‘Something…that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eye; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word who is life – this is our subject’ (1 John 1:1) This Jesus they met was an unusual man who, by his words and lifestyle, provoked many questions. ‘Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him’ (Matthew 8:27) ‘What authority have you for acting like this?’ (Matthew 21:23) ‘Why does he eat with sinners?’ (Mark 2:16). ‘How did he learn to read? He has not been taught’ (John 7:15). ‘Who are you claiming to be?’ (John 8:54). Some who met this strange man and listened to him were deeply attracted. They became his disciples, ready to learn more and adopt his lifestyle. Of course they had lots of unanswered questions, plenty of wrong ideas and false hopes. But in time they would learn the deeper reality and meaning of this strange and fascinating man.

This deeper understanding came, paradoxically, through the totally unexpected trauma of Jesus’s suffering and death. This tragedy devastated his disciples. It appeared to be total catastrophe and it came very quickly, within a matter of a few years. Their master, their hero who had made claims which sounded as if he was invulnerable, suddenly broke down completely. One night he went to pieces before their very eyes. He was forcibly taken prisoner, was rejected by the people, apparently abandoned by God and handed over to a colonial government. He was tortured and crucified. All their hopes were dead, as dead as the corpse they laid in the tomb.

Then came something totally new, resurrection from the dead. These first followers meet Jesus again. They are slow at first to recognise and believe it is really he. Gradually the truth dawns on them. He is alive. He is risen from the dead. He is the same Jesus they had known and lived with. He is the same and yet in some way different. He is the same gentle, compassionate, loving person, but there is some strange new quality about him. And now a new relationship blossoms, a deeper awareness is reached about their master and friend, a deeper understanding of his relationship with God. He is the Messiah, but no mere prophet: he truly is the Beloved Son of God.

They have met and known the man, but have now come to know that he is the Son of God. And this Son of God, who called them friends, has brought their humanity into a new and glorified existence where they are to follow. Once they had accepted this great mystery, that the one they had known as a man was truly God, they became transformed people and began to see the true meaning of everything. Their own lives now took on an incredibly new and beautiful depth. Their humble lives are suffused with extraordinary meaning and beauty. These simple followers begin to enter into the mystery of love, to be open to the truth that love is possible in our world, that it conquers even death and is for ever. They begin joyfully, excitedly, to share this discovery with others.

These first witnesses are driven not by duty, but by love, the love of Jesus in their hearts and the new love they now feel for all others because of him. They are not looking for converts to a new religion. They are sharing incredibly good news. They are sharing a friend who, they believe, is the Son of God. All this they share with those around them who, in turn believe. These are the people Peter is writing to. They, in turn, share the news with their friends and acquaintances. So the Christian tradition of handing on began, and eventually reached us. Now, as the sharing of this good news spread, there arose opposing voices which rejected this or that part of the message. False teachings and heresies appeared and the early Christian community had to deal with them. Church councils were called to refute the heresies and protect the good news. Dogmas were worked out and creeds formulated to try to put the mystery of Jesus into words. New Christians were then introduced to Jesus through the creeds and teaching and faith life of a Christian community.

 It has to be this way, but we must always be aware of the inevitable danger inherent in this process, that a dogma or creed could take the place of the living person of the Lord. The Christian revelation in Jesus is more than a set of teachings or a creed. The Christian revelation is a person. The good news is Jesus who came not so much to start a new religion as to put us in touch with the living God, and, even more, to share the very life of this God with us. ‘I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full’ (John 10:10). This very Jesus is risen and among us now, drawing us into the fullness of God. Yes, we meet Jesus in the Creed and believe. But somehow we must meet him in person and know him. He became flesh for this. He was born among us to be close, to win our hearts. The word became flesh. The possible danger of creeds is that the flesh might become words and that a creed might replace the living risen Lord.

Also, when we meet Jesus in the Creed, there is a subtle tendency to stress his divinity. We meet Jesus as true God who is to be adored and obeyed. This can make him seem distant and less real. A further complication is added by our assumption that we know what it means to be divine. For us, divinity means to know all, be all-perfect, have all power, be immune from all suffering. We then impose all these qualities on Jesus and thus push him still further away and widen the gap between him and our ‘real’ world. Whatever our salvation means, we feel it was accomplished by Jesus exclusively as God. But our faith teaches that Jesus became man to save us. The story of that salvation is in the Gospel.

We have that gospel today. Jesus lives there and speaks his living words to us and reveals himself to us. There we can meet Jesus the man, whom we can come to know as our friend, as one of us, saving us through our humanity which he shares. Then, like our first brothers and sisters in the faith, we are led by Jesus the man to Jesus the Son of God. We do not talk of a ‘dead man called Jesus’. We speak of the Lord who is the first risen man, the first of our human kind to pass over into glory. This risen Jesus, still true man, is able to understand our human heart, our struggle, our temptations, our searching. He can listen to our story and speak to our deepest selves so that our hearts too can burn with us as we walk the road of life with him. And this Jesus is true God, not any idol or small god of our fashioning. He is true God, revealing himself as the mystery of love in Jesus, who invites not just the obedience of our intellect, but also the surrender of our heart. We believe in him, but, much more, we claim we can know him.

Is it not presumptuous for us to speak so confidently about knowing Jesus the Lord, about knowing him who Paul says is ‘beyond’ all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19)? It would be presumptuous if we were claiming we could know the Lord by our own unaided reasoning or desiring. But it is not so. We are given the Holy Spirit precisely to make this possible. We said that the first witnesses knew Jesus as God by faith and that the first generation Christians, who received the good news from those witnesses, also knew and loved Jesus by faith. This was possible only because they had received the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit is given to us today. Jesus tells us what the Spirit will do for us. ‘He will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’ (John 14.26). And again, ‘He will be my witness’ (John 15:26). The work of the Holy Spirit is not to take the place of an absent Jesus. It is something more wonderful. His work is to make Jesus present in his new and glorified state. The Holy Spirit comes, not to start a new cult of devotion to himself, but to lead us to Jesus. He witnesses to Jesus and makes Jesus ‘real’ for us. It is the Holy Spirit who enables you and me today to pass from believing to knowing. With the help of the Holy Spirit, then, let us seek to know and love Jesus, true man and true God.

3

TEMPTED LIKE US

The doctrine of the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, is the very foundation of our Christian faith. Throughout history there have been extremists who have accepted one part of this truth and denied the other. Some have asserted that Jesus is God, and only had the appearance of man. Others have said he was truly a man, the most perfect man, but nothing more. There have been heretics on both side.

Many Christians may not be as orthodox as they appear. They affirm the doctrine of the incarnation in the creed, but subconsciously stress one side of the truth at the expense of the other. I confess that for many years I was, in this matter, a kind of heretic. I believed firmly in the divinity of Christ, but gave only a notional assent to his humanity. I did not deny the humanity of Jesus, but the humanity I professed was such a watered-down version of human nature that it meant very little to me. It did not nourish my spiritual growth, it did not challenge my faith and did not make Jesus attractive to me as he must have been to his early followers.

I emphasised the biological aspect. Jesus was a man because he was conceived in the womb, grew up like us, ate and slept, was tired and hungry and experienced human emotions. All this is true and wonderful but there is something deeper and more wonderful in the incarnation which I was missing. Emptying himself of his divinity to become one of us was not only a biological experience but was also a truly spiritual adventure in which Jesus accepted the full consequences of being human. He laid himself open to fear, danger, darkness, loneliness and helplessness. He was vulnerable not only to the physical violence of his enemies but, worse, to the spiritual violence of temptation. He accepted the ultimate consequence of being human, that he would have to depend totally on another to save him. That other was his Father.

I missed this truth and, for many years, Jesus was for me more like a God dressed up as a man, like an actor on the stage wearing the costume of humanity, acting a part. We know how the great actors can ‘live’ their parts. They ‘become’ the character they are portraying for the duration of a play or film. Or, to use another image, Jesus was somewhat like a psychiatrist who, wanting to help his client, studies the complexities of the human psyche so he can enter the inner space of his client and feel with him or her. Von Balthasar gives another image of such impoverished notions of the incarnation, the image of a teacher: ‘Jesus came to show us how to live, like a teacher writing on the blackboard the solution of the problem which presents no difficulty to him, since he has no part in the laborious efforts of his pupils.’ All these false understandings of the incarnation have one thing in common – that Jesus did not endure the full consequences of being human, that it really did not cost him, that the divinity was always there to protect and save him. I do not know how I missed the clear message in Paul’s words: Jesus ‘did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross’ (Philippians 2: 6-8)

The Letter to the Hebrews says Jesus was able to feel our weaknesses with us because he ‘has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin’ (Hebrews 4:15). This inspired word, which stressed the genuine humanity of Jesus had a curious stumbling block in it for me. I had the strange idea that this sinlessness made Jesus less human, that he would be closer to me if he had experienced sin. Time was needed for me to realise that the more truly human a person is, the more he or she will live from love, the more sinless that person will be. The truly human person is the one who is moved to compassion, who goes out to others, who puts love and not self at the centre. Jesus was tempted to sin. He was pulled towards evil away from love, but he held on to love even to the point of death. So he can understand us when we are pulled by evil and even when we surrender to the evil. He can hold out a hand to pull us back. He can save.

This is what makes Jesus so attractive. I should have realised this when I read in the gospel that the sinners flocked to him (Luke 15:1). Sin turns one back to self, away from God and others. Sin separates. Sinlessness, which is unselfish love, draws Jesus closer to me. Sinners flocked to Jesus because he was a perfect man who had also experienced temptation but who overcame it with love and trust. It was because he was truly human, truly one of us, and despite suffering and temptation, could still believe in the Father’s love – it was because of all this that he could touch hidden springs in people’s hearts. There was no judgment in him. True love never makes the other feel small or mean or inferior. Jesus echoed the deepest good self in others.

The inspired word of scripture says Jesus was tempted like us. What can it mean to say Jesus was tempted? Very often, when Christians speak of sin, they think of sexual sins, and when they think of temptation they think of temptation to such sins. This very limited and childish understanding of sin obscures the terrible variety of evil which abounds in our world and buffets the heart, evil that surfaces within us or attacks from without. We must not trivialise the very painful reality of temptation by reducing it to sexual temptation. When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment, he said that it was love, and he summarised all law under the twofold command, to love God and our neighbour. The great temptation then is to act against love, to put self at the centre and act out of selfish motives, to pull away from other and refuse love. Jesus was one of us, a truly human person. He had an immense love and compassion for all people. This love for other, which was nourished by his love for God his Father, was the meaning of his life. But being truly like us this love did not come easily to him. It did not just happen. It involved heroic unselfishness and temptation which on one occasion produced a sweat of blood from his body (Luke 22:44).

The classic scripture passage about the temptation of Jesus is the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan. Remember that the short gospel account is a summary of days and weeks of struggle. It was not simply a matter of Jesus hearing a voice inviting him to work a miracle and then replying to it with a text of scripture and that was the end of it. No! It was real temptation, real interior struggle going on for days. The tempting voice did not come only from outside Jesus. It was echoing within him. Jesus was feeling this could be all right. I am hungry; I need food. Why not work a miracle? But his truer self resisted and saw that this would be going back on his agreement to be fully human, to being truly dependent on power outside himself, truly relying on his Father. He has emptied himself of divinity out of love for us. He will accept the full consequences of his choice. There is interior struggle and pain, but he wins through. He resists the temptation. He does not sin.

Notice how the temptation is introduced., ‘If you are the Son’ (Matthew 4:3). Here is an attack on his identity, an attack on his trust in the Father. The essential temptation is always the same, to sow distrust in God’s word, in God’s love. So it was in the beginning in the garden. The serpent tried to sow doubt. ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ (Genesis 3:1). The first man and woman listened and were deceived. Now there is a similar scenario in the desert. The temptation is subtle. ‘If you are the Son. Perhaps you are not the son! If God were truly your father, how could he allow you to be hungry? After all, what father would give his son a stone when he needs bread?’ The devil tries to sow doubt in this man. But this is a new Adam, a new man and he will not listen to the tempter’s word, but only to his Father’s word. That will be his food, his nourishment for life’s struggle. He will show all of us that all who trust like that will not be ashamed.

The devil takes Jesus to the temple top and invites him to cast himself down. Again it is temptation; test your so-called Father. Scripture says he will not let you suffer. Cast yourself down, work a great miracle, people will be in awe and will worship. It will be a quick, easy, painless way of winning people to your side. What a plausible temptation, one which finds an echo in our hearts. But to agree would be to deny the incarnation, it would be clinging to divinity and evading the full consequences of being human. It would be failure to trust his Father and would avoid identifying with suffering people. There is another way, the way of being fully human, whatever it may bring, the way his Father wants and which he has accepted. Jesus did not argue this out calmly and easily. He was tired, weary, hungry. He battled with the tension within him; the pull of his human nature towards and easy and glorious way and the deeper wisdom of the Father which would lead eventually to Calvary.

The battle is not over when Jesus emerges from the desert. At a later time he will suffer the full consequences of this choice to be human, to be like us in all things. The temptation will recur and he will be reduced to a sweat of blood. St. Luke finishes the account of the desert temptation with ominous words: ‘The devil left him, to return at the appointed time’ (Luke 4:13). Gethsemane is the appointed place and Holy Thursday the time. Jesus again faces his tempter who will make a last desperate play to turn this man away from the path of love. ‘This is your hour; this is the reign of darkness’ (Luke 22:53). In the garden he feels the full weight of his very real humanity. ‘And a sudden fear came over him, and great distress. And he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful to the point of death"’ (Mark 14:33-34) He is so lonely and afraid. The forces of organised religion, of self-righteous, holy people, of ambitious politicians, are all combined against him and he is brought so low he wants to call it all off. ‘Father! Everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me’ (Mark 14:36)

But once again, as in the desert, he holds on and trusts his Father. ‘But let it be as you, not I, would have it’ (Mark 14:36). He is not abandoned. He receives just enough power to cope, to hang on, to remain faithful to love, to the Father, to you and me. For let us take note that all this is for us. Through it all he is saying, ‘It is possible to hold on, to trust, to love.’ This is what the incarnation means. This is how he is saving us. We look at this man, our brother, and ask the help of the Holy Spirit that we may understand what we see. Then, when we try to be like him, to love and trust like him, we are starting to experience the salvation he brought.

4

FAMILIAR WITH SUFFERING

We are exploring some of the deeper implications of the incarnation in the hope that this will lead us to a new appreciation of the wonder of Jesus’s love for us. Surely we must be drawn in a new way to our Saviour when we realise how he accepted our human nature in all its frailty and limitations, how he was truly tempted to give in to fear and selfishness, how he emptied himself of divinity to walk the lonely road of a limited human person and how he did all this for us. Will our hearts not be moved when we realise how like us he was and yet how he kept on reaching out to people despite disappointment, failure, misunderstanding, even rejection? Will we not want, as fellow human beings, to congratulate our Lord, to admire and thank him and believe more sincerely what he is telling us, that love is possible in our world? He invites us to follow him in this way, with total trust in our heavenly Father, and to be truly human in the best sense, thus bringing more light and beauty into our world.

We considered briefly two high points of temptation in the life of Jesus, the desert and the garden. We can be sure that the deeper currents of our frail human nature, which surfaced on those occasions, were flowing all the time and that Jesus, like all of us, had his dark and low moments when he wanted to give it all up, to run away from it all and question why he should be his brother’s keeper. There must have times when he was tempted to anger with his enemies. Did he not feel a struggle within when James and John wanted to call down fire on those towns which rejected him? These are the thoughts of men, and Jesus is a man. When Peter protested at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus would not have to endure suffering, the desert temptation must have flared up again. His sharp rebuke to Peter reveals deep inner emotion, upset and struggle. Peter is speaking the thoughts not of God but of humankind. ‘The way you think is not God’s way but man’s ‘ (Mark 8:33). Jesus will think only the thoughts of God, but as a man he feels the pull of our thoughts. We have an expression of great, frustrated disappointment with his dull and uncomprehending disciples when he says to them, ‘Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear?’ (Mark 8:17-18). And what a great weariness must have swept over him to move him to tears over Jerusalem.

The greatest temptation and the greatest victory and the supreme revelation of God’s love was, of course, Calvary. Here is the final emptying, not only of his divinity but of his very humanity. Here again the desert temptation is echoed. The crowd is shouting, ‘If you are God’s Son, come down from the cross!’ (Matthew 27:40). In the desert the tempter had said, ‘If you are the son of God, throw yourself down’ (Matthew 4:6), in that way you will win the admiration and support of the crowd. Here now it is the very crowd itself calling on him to work the miracle and come down from the cross. In the desert the tempter assured him that he would not suffer: ‘Angels will support you on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone’ (Matthew 4:6). Notice that in Satan’s picture of God there is no place for suffering. But this is not God’s wisdom. For God the only absolute is love, and to be true to love will involve suffering.

Jesus is the love of God made visible. What keeps him on the cross is not nails or ropes but love. He cannot come down. He would contradict himself if he did. If he came down he would not be God for God is love. But let us try to be sensitive to the struggle going on in his humanity as he hangs there. We are so familiar with the Calvary scene. We can be tempted to glamorise it and inoculate ourselves against the dark mystery of this young man hanging there, sacrificing himself in total unselfish love for so many who do not care and entering into that deepest, darkest place for him – the sense of being abandoned by his beloved Abba as he cries out, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’ (Mark 15:34). Yes, he is grievously tempted but will hold on blindly to his trust in this Father.

As we stand and watch Jesus, let us believe that the Father stands beside us. This is not mere fantasy. We are witnessing the mystery hidden from all time, the mystery of the ultimate expression of the love of the Most Blessed Trinity for you and me. We are loved and saved by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Paul says ‘Love endures everything’. Jesus now endures all, only because of this total trust in the Father’s love for himself and for us, a love which is poured out on him and us by the Holy Spirit. All this is for us as we stand and contemplate. We stand beside the Father. We look at the Son, our brother. And the Spirit is upon us to understand what we contemplate.

One of our temptations as we stand there could be to experience fear or guilt. But neither of these is a Spirit response. The Spirit, which is given us as the fruit of what we contemplate, casts out fear, heals guilt and pours out love. We are involved in the greatest act of love. We are not witnessing an act of punishment. But maybe we should qualify that statement. Is Jesus being punished on Calvary? Yes, he is being punished, but certainly not by his beloved Father. He is being punished by people for being different, for answering evil with love, for challenging self-righteousness and pride, for identifying with the poor and sinners, for challenging power structures which would debase and destroy the image of God in people.

But certainly he is not being punished by his heavenly Father who stands beside us. Jesus is the Beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. Think of that gentle Father whom Jesus described in the story of the Prodigal Son. That’s how Jesus understood his father and he claimed that no one understood the Father except the Son (Matthew 11:27). In that story Jesus told us how the father of the prodigal missed his boy and watched every day for his return, how he saw the boy when he was far off and was moved to pity, how he ran down the road to meet him and welcome him. We stand by the Father now and look at this other Son on the cross. He too left his Father’s house for a distant place. He too took with him his Father’s riches to scatter them in a prodigal way among us, his sinner friends. But now he is tired and weary and broken and would like to arise and go back to his dear Father. Do you not think that this Father saw his boy Jesus when he was far off on the hill of Calvary, that he was moved to a great pity and that he has run here to embrace him?

The father of the prodigal embraced his son in all his rags, covered with the dirt of the journey. This Son on the cross is badly disfigured from his journey amongst us. The prophet says:

‘Without beauty, without majesty,
no looks to attract our eyes;
a thing despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering,
a man to make people screen their faces.
Isaiah 53:2-3

I don’t think the Father on Calvary screened his face because he does not judge by appearances. It is only we who do that. ‘God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but Yahweh looks at the heart’ (1 Samuel 16:7). The father of the prodigal saw the repentant heart of his boy under the rags of his sins and he embraced the boy on the road. On Calvary, the Father sees the great loving heart of his Son under all the disfigurement of his passion and lovingly takes the boy into his embrace when he says ‘Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.’ This embrace is the resurrection. We can imagine this Father joyfully announcing to us all, ‘We are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this Son of mine was dead and has come back to life’ (Luke 15:24).

What will we say to this Father? How can we thank him? We can borrow God’s very own words to praise him, the words Yahweh spoke to Abraham when that father was prepared to sacrifice his only son Isaac out of loving trust to Yahweh. These words can now be our prayer. God said to Abraham, ‘Because you have not refused me your son, your only son, I will shower blessings on you’ (Genesis 22:17). God has not refused us his Son, his only Son. Will we not forever, in the power of the Spirit, shower blessings and praise on God our Father and Jesus his Son, our brother?

Satan had it so wrong in the desert. The crowd had it so wrong on Calvary. You and I have it so wrong today. Our wisdom is so puny and shortsighted. ‘Avoid pain at all cost, even at the cost of betraying love’ In the desert Satan invited Jesus to cast himself down from the temple top, assuring him that angels would lift him up lest he hurt his foot. But God had another way. Not angels but people would lift up his Son and lift him up in pain. But by this very lifting up on the cross, he will draw all people to himself. The seed will die on Calvary and produce an everlasting harvest.

5

LET GO THE BRANCH

When St. Paul invites us to become other Christs, when he says to us, ‘In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 2:5), it seems as if he is proposing an impossible ideal. The gap between the sinless Christ and myself seems unbridgeable. But when we take the incarnation more seriously, when we look upon Christ in his humanity and in his full acceptance of all the limitations that implied, we can begin to have a better idea of what Paul is proposing. Jesus emptied himself and lived a life of total trust in his Father’s loving providence. He worked no miracles for himself but depended completely on his Father. Jesus lived this life of trust out to the very end when his Father seemed far away, as on Calvary. Shortly after crying out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he can serenely let go his life and fall back into his Father’s arms. It is here in this life of total trust in the Father that you and I can be like our Saviour.

Consider this modern humorous parable. An atheist who is a keen mountain climber is climbing a high and difficult peak. He is all alone, way up on the mountain height. He is crawling along a narrow ridge. He moves with great care as there is an immense drop over the side. Then, despite all his experience, his foot slips and he tumbles over the edge. A small tree is growing out of the wall of the cliff and as he falls he grabs a branch of the tree. Hanging there and peering down into the depths below, he has second thoughts about religion and cries out to God for help. The only answer to his cry is the echo of his own voice. He tries again, ‘Oh, God, help me and I will believe if you!’ Again the only answer is an echo. He cries out again, ‘Please, God, help me. If you help me I will do anything you ask.’ This time the silence is broken by a mighty voice booming out over the valley. The voice says, ‘That’s what they all say when they’re in trouble.’ The excited converted atheist shouts back, ‘No, God, I am different from the others. I really will do anything you ask.’ ‘All right then,’ answers the voice, ‘Let go the branch!’

This little parable describes the bottom line of faith. ‘Let go the branch.’ I have a poster which shows a kitten hanging from a height and looking down in terror. The caption read, ‘Faith is not faith, till it’s all you have to hang on to.’

 ‘Let go the branch.’ To me this is what Jesus had to do on Calvary. He hung from the tree of the cross very much alone. Friends had deserted him. The leaders had rejected him and even God seemed far away. His act of death was a letting-go of the branch of the tree of the cross. It was his own deliberate act of trust. ‘No one takes my life from; I lay it down of my own free will’ (John 10:18). He let go and fell back into his Father’s arms. He is safely caught and lifted back to life. It is because of this immense trust that we, his followers, can serenely let go in death and know that we do not plunge into any abyss but fall gently into the Father’s arms.

In a beautiful scripture image God said that he carried his chosen people to safety ‘on eagle’s wings’ (Exodus 19:4). I never realised the beauty and power of this image until a scripture scholar explained it to me. The mighty eagle lives way up in the high mountain peaks. It nests on a narrow ledge overlooking the deep valley. There the eagle hatches her young. When it is time to train the young birds to fly, the mother takes a young bird and places it on her back and then flies out over the valley. At a great height the mother bird turns over and drops the bird into space. The little bird tumbles helplessly down through the air. As it falls, it furiously flaps its stunted wings. As yet they are not sufficiently developed to enable the young bird to fly successfully. All the while, the mother eagle is circling round the little bird as it plummets down. After some minutes, the mother bird sweeps under the fledgling, catches it on her broad wing and gently flies back up to the ledge and safety.

In his teaching, Jesus invited us to look at the birds of the air and learn from them about our heavenly Father and his concern for us. If a mother eagle can so care for her young and not allow it to fall to destruction, what about our heavenly Father? Will he allow his beloved Son Jesus to fall to destruction and final death? Jesus banked his life on the certainty that his Father would catch him. His trust was vindicated. Our faith says he did all this for us. He lived for us, he died for us and he rose for us. What are we learning as we contemplate his death and resurrection? Are we discovering the hidden meaning and being nourished?

The seed dies on Calvary, only to bear much fruit in us. Having died it will not remain alone (John 12:24). We today can experience the power of this great trust and love. We can experience it not only in the great final act of death, but in many other death-like situations which recur in life when all seems dark and hopeless and God seems far away. To put all our trust in God then will seem like letting go the branch. We may have to make a decision or choose a course of action which seems to promise something like death. We may have to give up a relationship without which we feel we could not live. We may have to kick a habit without which life would not seem worth living. Jesus assures us that it is possible to let go and that his Father who is our Father will be faithful. We will not plunge into the abyss we dread. It is not all dark below. There may be some cloud obscuring the view, but the ultimate sustaining reality is love.

Calvary is a drama. Good drama reflects and interprets life. In this drama of Calvary we are not mere spectators. We are involved. The young man hanging on the cross is one of the family and he is doing this for us. He is showing us that it is possible to endure the worst that can happen and eventually to let go in total trust. The drama of Calvary, like any good play, surrenders its meaning only slowly. No great drama or play will be fully appreciated on a first reading or performance. Deeper meaning is revealed as years pass by and I come to the play with more personal experience of life’s joys and sorrows. Surely I will see and grasp more of life in Hamlet now that when I first met it in my schooldays. So, over the years, the drama of Calvary invites me into a deeper appreciation of the mystery of God’s love for me.

In a sense, the very fact that in our faith we wish to come to Calvary in prayer and stand before a cross speaks of mystery. Let us not glamorise the cross. Remember it was an instrument of degrading torture. It was a shameful punishment and death reserved for slave and criminal. Scripture says, ‘Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree’ (Galatians 3:13). After the death of Jesus we could have expected that his first followers would want to forget about this part of the story, to rewrite this chapter of his history, to hide all references to the cross. But the opposite happens. The crucified Saviour is at the heart of their preaching. The crucified Lord who rose is the Good News. And the cross on which he hung is celebrated in creed, liturgy, song, art and literature. They are raised high on buildings, they adorn altars and graves. They are carried in pockets, worn about the neck. Why? Because the human heart reads the Calvary scene correctly and understands that the theme of this drama is love and we are the object of that love, and so Paul understands the cross as ‘God’s power to save’ (1 Corinthians 1:18).

In April 1986, in the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl, there was an explosion in a nuclear plant. The explosion threw up an invisible radioactive dust which contaminated and poisoned the surrounding district. Over 130,000 people were evacuated from their homes. A wasteland was left behind. The poisonous dust spewed out by the explosion was carried to lands far beyond the border. Its destructive effects were felt thousands of miles away from Chernobyl and for years after the explosion. We have been reflecting on Calvary. Can we not say that two thousand years ago on the hill of Calvary there was an explosion of love which sent great waves of power out over the whole world? This power does not maim or destroy or poison, it heals and restores and beautifies all it touches. It falls on the wasteland of human hearts and under its gentle touch that wasteland rejoices and blossoms into new and beautiful life. This power we speak of which now heals and re-creates is the power which originally created all being. It is the power of love and it has no borders of place or time. And all this is so because of Calvary, because there was a man, one of ourselves, who had enough trust to let go the branch. 

6

THE HIDDEN THINGS OF GOD

We have been contemplating Jesus, a man like us in all things. He is not a God dressed up and playing a part. He is truly one of us from the womb to the tomb. He accepts the full consequences of being human, even, as Paul says, to the point of death. He walks through our world as the embodiment of love. He is the man who lives for others. He reaches out in love and compassion to all people. This, he tells us, is what it means to be truly human. He is able to live like this because he is certain that the ultimate reality is love. He is the man of supreme trust. His name for God is Abba, a loving, caring Father. He can walk in love because he walks in trust. The source of his love for people is this God, who, he believes, is love itself. The source of his power to heal people, both their bodies and spirits, is the Father’s love. He walks in unwavering trust in that reality of God’s love even into the valley of death and beyond.

Let us enter more deeply into the Mystery of Jesus. This same Jesus who is perfect man is also revealing the inner being of God. He can say ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Matthew 11:27). One day, Philip, one of the Twelve, asked Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus answered, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’ (John 14:9). If we want to know what God is like, we must look at Jesus. We said earlier in this book that many Christians first meet Jesus in the Creed as true God to be adored. And we noted an inherent difficulty there, namely that we assume that we know what divinity means and we impose these assumptions on Jesus. But Jesus says that no one knows God except his Son. Should we not let Jesus teach us what it means to be divine? Fr. Nolan OP puts it well when he writes ‘Divinity has nothing to teach us about Jesus, but Jesus has much to teach us about divinity.’

The first followers met Jesus, the man, who led them on to discover God. In the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is described thus: ‘He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature’ (Hebrews 1:3). St Paul says, ‘He is the image of the unseen God’ (Colossians 1:15). Today we would say that Jesus is the image of his Father. Parents are pleased and complimented when friends notice and point out resemblances between child and parents. They are happy when someone says about the new baby, ‘She has her mother’s eyes’ or later ‘She has her father’s smile’. They are more pleased if, later on, deeper resemblances are noted; when someone says, ‘He has his father’s love for the truth’ or ‘He has his mother’s compassion for the sick’. Jesus is the perfect image of his heavenly Father. He reflects the Father to us and thus teaches us what divinity means.

When we say Jesus teaches us about divinity, we are not saying that it is an easy lesson to learn. The first followers were very slow learners, just as we are today. We say Jesus the man led them to know God, but, as we have noted, the road to that discovery led past a hill called Calvary. That’s where the difficulty lay for them, as for us and all believers. God’s revelation of himself in Jesus does not fit our preconceived ideas of God. St. Paul describes the qualities we all expect to find in God. ‘The Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom’ (1 Corinthians 1:22). In popular thinking God is power and miracle. This is the language of philosophy. Paul says the God revealed by Jesus cannot be preached in this language. Paul speaks of the ‘foolishness’ and the ‘weakness’ of God and asks, ‘Where are the philosophers now?’ (1 Corinthians 1:20). Surely these words from Paul must be inspired. Otherwise he would have to be accused of blasphemy. No Jew could have dared to apply such words as ‘foolish’ or ‘weak’ to Yahweh.

We say the road up to the discovery of God in Jesus lay past the hill of Calvary. Up to that point his followers had very unclear ideas about their master. But one thing would have been certain in their thinking, that suffering should not be part of the story. However, this is the lonely and unpopular road Jesus takes and it was only after the trauma of crucifixion, followed by resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that his followers enter into God’s wisdom and confess that Jesus was truly God’s Son, the perfect image of his Father.

If we today are slow to recognise God behind the mask of suffering, we can take heart when we remember how slow St. Peter was and how patient Jesus was with him. One day, when Jesus foretold his suffering and death, Peter protested strongly. ‘Taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. "Heaven preserve you Lord, this must not happen to you"’ (Matthew 16:23). Peter speaks for all of us here. It is good that Jesus should be the Messiah, but unacceptable that the Messiah should suffer. We all want a Messiah, a God of glory, success, miracles. We do not want a Messiah who suffers. Notice the strong word Jesus uses when he corrects Peter; ‘Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s’ (Matthew 16:23). Jesus calls Peter Satan because he echoes the desert temptation when Satan tried to persuade Jesus to take an easy road to glory and avoid all suffering.

Satan’s idea of God is our idea. God can only mean glory, power, success, miracles. Satan, Peter and all of us have to learn that God means love. Peter echoes Satan’s idea and our hearts. Jesus says to us all, ‘The way you think is not God’s way but man’s’.’ Jesus has come to show us God’s way, as far above our way as the heavens are above the earth. God’s wisdom appears like foolishness to us. But it is God’s wisdom and it is love. In some way Satan must have sensed this. Notice what Satan fears in Jesus. He does not fear power or strength or miracles. Indeed he encourages all this. But he deeply fears the weakness of Jesus shown in his suffering, for in there is hiding the only kind of power Satan fears, the power of love. Jesus is revealing God’s wisdom and power. This is what it means to be God, to go the whole way in love, to empty oneself in love. This is not only perfect humanity, but is also what it means to be divine. And we are created in the image and likeness of this God. We are invited to be like our God, to love as Jesus loved, to empty ourselves for each other, even to lose our lives for each other. Something deep inside us tells us this is not impossible. When we try to love, the divine spark within us is kindled. To be his disciples in this way, to learn this lesson, involves long, slow hard study in the school of life. Much of the homework involves suffering! This suffering can be a stumbling-block, but it can also be a doorway into that mysterious place where we touch divinity in Jesus and in our own selves.

In the desert Satan said that God would not let his Son suffer and he further suggested that if suffering did come, then he was not the beloved son. Those who mocked Christ on Calvary used the same kind of reasoning. ‘He put his trust in God; now let God rescue him if he wants him. For he did say "I am the Son of God."’ (Matthew 27:44). It is the same suggestion. ‘If he is God’s Son as he claims, then this should not be happening to him.’ The conclusion of the crowd in Calvary, whose thoughts were human thoughts, was, ‘God is not his Father.’ The true conclusion should have been, ‘We do not understand God and his mysterious ways.’

In the Book of Wisdom we have another example of human thinking, failing completely to comprehend the wisdom of God. There we read how wicked men plot against God’s holy prophet. They plan to condemn the prophet to a shameful death. They say to each other, ‘Let us see if what he says is true’ (Wisdom 2:17). What had the prophet said? ‘He calls himself a Son of the Lord, and boasts of having God for his father’ (Wisdom 2:13,16). We see their argument: God could not let his beloved messenger suffer. So, if he does suffer, then it means God is not really his father. Here is the same human wisdom which cannot fathom the depths of God’s ways. These men think like Satan, like Peter, like the crowd on Calvary, like me and you. The Book of Wisdom comments thus:

'This is the way they reason, but they are misled, 
their malice makes them blind.
They do not know the hidden things of God.'
Wisdom 2: 21-22

Let us ask Jesus to touch our eyes, to remove our blindness and to teach us the hidden things of God. Let us ask him to help us to know our heavenly Father so that we can better understand and follow his word to us: ‘You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48)

7

‘PRESENTE’

In the early hours of 16^th November 1989, armed men entered the residence of the Jesuit-run Central American University of San Salvador and murdered six Jesuit priests and two women domestics, a mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter. At a Requiem Mass for these martyrs held in Lusaka in Zambia, a Jesuit priest preached the homily. He spoke with great feeling because he had lived in El Salvador and knew personally those who had been murdered. In the homily, he reminded us that members of the basic Christian communities in Central and South America are no strangers to torture and death. He told us that when these communities meet for the Eucharist, they pray for those members of the community who have been slain. They have a roll-call for their members. The name of the murdered person is still called out and the congregation answers ‘Presente’. This beautiful response of faith asserts that death is not final, that loved ones still live, that our union with them is not destroyed by death. In some real mysterious way in spirit and in truth they are ‘presente’.

This kind of faith is possible because Jesus had enough trust to let go of his young life and let himself fall back into his Father’s arms. ‘Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit’ (Luke 23:46). If these South American Christians can call out ‘Presente’ for their martyred dead, it is only because we, with equal faith, hope and love, can shout out ‘Presente’ for our crucified saviour, Jesus Christ. And this is what we do at every Eucharist at the proclamation of faith when we all say ‘Christ is risen, Christ will come again.’ In another form of the proclamation we say ‘Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory.’

The mystery of God’s love affair with us is not exhausted by his death for us on the cross. St. Paul says, ‘He not only died for us – he rose from the dead and there at God’s right hand he stands and pleads for us.’ (Romans 8:34) Jesus rose from the dead for us. We might be inclined to think he died for us but that he rose for himself! The mystery is deeper. He rose to tell us that those who put their trust in God will not be abandoned. His rising tells us that love can overcome hate, that love is possible and is the ultimate reality. He rose to tell us that we will rise. He rose to take our humanity into glory. He did not discard his humanity after Calvary as a worker might hang up her overalls after completing a job. And he rose to be with us all the days of our pilgrimage through life. We can at any moment say his name and hear him whisper to our hearts, ‘Presente’, I am with you.

At the Easter vigil liturgy all over the world, groups of people, large and small, gather under the night sky around the Pascal fire. It is a very symbolic act, a community gathered round a fire at night. The fire, especially when out in the open night air, offers light, warmth, protection. The fire attracts and gathers a community round itself. And what do people do when gathered round a fire? Often they tell stories. They tell stories of the family, or the nation. A story may be told about some member of the family who was wise in leadership; one who did great things and brought pride and glory to the family.

At Easter the Christian family gathers round the Paschal fire and tells again the story of the great deed done by the eldest Son, the first-born of the family, Jesus Christ. It is the story of how he challenged the evil powers of darkness, even death itself, on behalf of the whole family and won a great victory. It was a terrible battle and it cost him his young life, but it was done out of love and, in dying for love, he proved what our hearts always secretly believed, that love is for ever. We can never tire of this story, and each year, as children do, we turn to our Mother, the Church and say, ‘Tell it again.’

This elder brother, our dear Lord and Saviour, is risen and present among us, offering a share in the victory he has won over evil, fear, sin and selfishness.

'Yahweh your God is in your midst,
a victorious warrior.
He will exult with joy over you,
he will renew you by his love.'
Zephaniah 3:17

The victory was for us. We are chosen in him from the beginning by the Father ‘Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to live through love in his presence’ (Ephesians 1:4). Without him we can do nothing. But we are not without him. He is with us in intimate union. ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’ (John 15:5). It is interesting to notice that in the Old Testament the image of the vine was used, but in that instance we were the vine, Yahweh plants a choice vine hoping for good grapes, but his people fail to produce good fruit. ‘He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave’ (Isaiah 5:2). But now, in our day, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. We can be fruitful because we draw life from him who is risen and with us.

Let us go deeper. The resurrection of Jesus our brother is part of the mystery of God’s plan for us, hidden from all eternity but now revealed in our time in Jesus. The resurrection is not a matter of turning the tables on Satan or evil. It is not merely the reversing of a bad situation. We are witnessing planned fulfilment. It is not a question of Jesus being brought back to this life and taking up where he had left off, thus frustrating all his enemies. We are witnessing the flowering of the seed that died in trust. Jesus does not come back to our limited form of life. He moves forward into the new life of glory. It is a Passover. And where he has gone, each of us can follow. This is our destiny. Death is not something that falls upon us or something which catches us out or cuts short a life. It is our Passover into glory.

And more still. The fruit of the resurrection of our Saviour is for us now. It is not only a consolation that awaits us after death. It is new life offered us right now, today. Our Passover can begin now. We can rise today out of the many death experiences that rob us of light, warms, joy and peace. Such experiences are fear, loneliness, guilt, anger, addiction and doubt. We are invited by him who is the victorious warrior, who is risen and present, to experience even today a Passover from such enemies. So it was for his first followers. The death of their friend Jesus left them in a world of shattered dreams, a world of darkness, confusion and hopelessness. Then they too experienced him among them saying ‘Presente’. They rose into a new experience of joy, hope and love that was so strong that they could face even the enemy, death, smiling.

That experience of Jesus as Risen Lord present to his followers and sharing with them his victory over fear and death was, above all, a love experience. The Jesus who suffered, died and rose for them is present among them because he cares, because he loves them. They feel precious and lovable in his eyes, and he is God. The experience of being loved in this way, despite their weakness, is the source of extraordinary new courage, power and joy. This love, and the power it beings, will sustain them in all of life’s trials and sorrows. Ultimately, only love can give the power to endure everything. Jesus is that love in the lives of those early followers. We are told that when Peter and the Apostles were flogged for speaking to the people about Jesus, they considered it a great honour to suffer for the Lord (Acts 5:41). St. Paul had his life turned upside down on the Damascus road when he was convinced that Jesus was alive and not dead and, much more, that Jesus knew his name, loved him and had died for him. From now on this love is the great reality in Paul’s life. The values that had previously motivated him are as nothing compared to Christ’s love. ‘I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ’ (Philippians 3:8)

As it was for those first friends, so it must be for all Christ’s followers of any and every age. For each of us Jesus died, is risen and is with us in love. That love must be the source of all our power to bear life’s sorrows. It must also be the love story that brings sunshine, warmth and joy into our lives. Over the years, it is to be hoped that this love will grow and become our treasure. The growth may be slow and gradual because we are weak. That’s all right. Paul accepts this for himself and for us when he says that we carry this treasure which is Christ in ‘earthenware jars’ (2 Corinthians 4:7). But gradually we begin to realise that Christ’s steadfast love is real treasure beside which the world’s wealth and pleasures love much of their attraction.

'One evening a pilgrim, known for holiness, arrived at the outskirts of an Indian village. He spread his prayer mat and had begun to pray when a man from the village came through the bush, approached him and said: ‘Holy man, I have had a dream about you and in the dream was told to ask you for a very special stone you carry.’ The pilgrim at first seemed puzzled but then his face brightened and he began to rummage in the leather bag which carried all his possessions. As he was doing so, he said he had found an unusual stone on the forest path. He then took out from the bag a large shining diamond. Holding it up, he said: ‘It is indeed unusual and beautiful. Do you want it?’ The villager tried to conceal his desire and joy ‘Yes! Yes, that’s the stone. May I have it?’ The pilgrim handed him the diamond. The villager grabbed it and rushed off, fearing the pilgrim might change his mind, but the holy man was already absorbed in prayer. Next morning, as the pilgrim was at morning prayer, he was again distracted by someone coming through the bush. He looked up and saw the same villager standing there with the diamond in his hand. This time, the villager went down on his knees beside the pilgrim and said he wished to return the diamond. ‘Oh’, said the pilgrim, ‘Do you not like it?’ The villager answered ‘It is beautiful and valuable, but I wish to return it. You see, all night, I have not slept wondering what treasure you must possess that enables you to give away a most precious diamond with such ease and peace. I now beg you humbly to share this other treasure with me.’'

For the Christian believer, the other treasure is surely the personal love of Jesus for each of us. That love is unconditional. It is offered to us because we are his, because we belong to him and he sees us as lovable. We say his love in unconditional, but in fact, there is one condition we must fulfil before we can experience this love. That condition may seem easy, but for many it seems to prove difficult. The condition is that we accept the love that is offered. Why is it that we are so slow to accept this love in a childlike way? One reason, I believe, is that we feel we are not worthy of it. If only we could realise that the whole point about unconditional love is that we do not have to be worthy. Indeed, it is a contradiction to speak of being worthy of unconditional love. It’s like asking about the price of a free gift! A gift is given because we are loved, not because we pay a price. 

8

COME WITHOUT MONEY

We live in anno domini, the time of Christ our Lord. This year is his year. Our destiny, earthly and eternal, is bound up with him. We are chosen in him before time began. He is among us, offering us a teaching which gives meaning to our lives, but he offers much more. He offers his life. He invites us into a personal love relationship with him. This love is the source of the new life and power which can be ours. One of the great stumbling-blocks to our experiencing this loving, empowering presence, to our growing in a deepening love relationship with Jesus, is our sense of unworthiness. We feel we are not worthy of this love. How could people so small and insignificant as us be noticed and desired by the Lord? How could people so sinful and unfaithful as us be offered this relationship of love and power?

First of all, let us be aware that all we have been speaking about is known to us only by revelation. It is not a human programme, it is not a religious ideology proposed by Church leaders. It is not the end-product of the reasoning of some noble human philosopher. We are speaking of good news revealed to us by the transcendent God. We speak of a message, an invitation from God’s own heart, a message spoken many times through holy messengers and prophets and now, in our day, through his beloved Son (Hebrews1:1-2).

Ask yourself whom Jesus was addressing when he spoke the good news and revealed the secrets of his Father’s heart. He was talking to the most ordinary simple people, country folk, village and town dwellers. Most were illiterate and without formal education. Many were poor, oppressed and marginalised. They were acquainted with human weakness and failure. They were familiar with fear, anger, hatred, poverty, prostitution, guilt and corruption.

This is the human condition, then, now, always. And Jesus knew all this. We can see from the great variety of characters in his many stories how well he understood the complexity of the human heart. It is to these very people that he comes with his message of new life and his offer of love.

And he rejoices to have this mission. ‘It was then that, filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, he said, "I will bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children."’ (Luke 10:21) To such people he offers a new intimacy with God. If anyone accepts him and tried to follow the way he shows them, ‘my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him’ (John 14:23). What news for people who made annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and considered it a privilege and a glory to be able to enter the great temple, the very house of Yahweh!

'How I rejoiced when they said to me,
 ‘Let us go to the house of Yahweh!’
 And now our feet are standing
 in your gateways, Jerusalem.'
 Psalm 122:1-2

And now they are told that they themselves can be the very house of God and that God rejoices to enter that temple which is their heart, as much as they rejoice to stand in the temple of Jerusalem.

At the Last Supper, Jesus again speaks about this joyful mission given to him to reveal his Father’s love to simple people. He looks around at his twelve friends. Do not glamorise these men. They were not wearing haloes at that meal. They are as human, weak and broken as we are, as all people are. Jesus looks around at them and prays for them. What does he say in his prayer? ‘Father, I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them’ (John 17:26). And we too are included in this prayer: ‘Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me’ (John 17:20). Surely, what Jesus said elsewhere – that kings and prophets desired to hear these things but did not hear – is true.

I was going to say let us put away this very misleading idea of our unworthiness. But I suggest we do something else. Let us explore it more deeply and when we do dig down deep here we can strike a rich vein of gold hiding in this dark idea of unworthiness. I do not deny my unworthiness. I cannot. I accept that I am unworthy. I am totally unworthy but I am still loved in this incredible way by God. It is when I realise that his love has nothing to do with my worthiness, but everything to do with his goodness that I am on the way to being transformed. He loves me not for what I have or do, but for what I am. And what am I? I am his. He loves me because I am his, as a young mother loves her newborn baby, not for what it can do for her, but simply because the baby is hers, is part of her.

'Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Isaiah 43:2

We could put it this way. The notion of being unworthy can come either from Satan or from the Holy Spirit. When Satan reminds us of our unworthiness, he gives it an ugly twist. His suggestion goes like this: ‘You are unworthy (which is true!) but it’s your own fault. You could be worthy (which is false!). If you were a better person and more faithful to God you could be worthy of the love he offers (i.e. you could be worthy by your own efforts – which is totally false!). When the thought of unworthiness comes from the Holy Spirit it floods us with immense joy and gratitude and can even lead to tears. The spirit says ‘You are unworthy and nothing you can ever do can make you worthy of receiving God’s love, but God is in love with you the way you are and offers you, as you are now, the embrace of his unconditional love.’

And so the very concept of my unworthiness, which seemed to be the great stumbling-block to enjoying God’s love and power, can become the springboard into new life, new wonder and deep joy which no person or thing can take from me, because it doesn’t depend on any person or thing, but only on the faithful love of God who says, ‘For the mountains may depart, the hills be shaken but my love for you will never leave you’ (Isaiah 54:10). The place of my unworthiness where I can feel so hopeless and helpless, that dark place can lead me on like a tunnel out into the light, into open space, into joy and celebration.

When this truth sinks in, then I am hearing the good news with my heart. I am not just hearing sounds with my ears but I hear the meaning with my heart. Surely this was why the people who listened to Jesus hung on his words, even forgot about food and said to one another, ‘No one ever spoke like this man’. Those people, just like you and me, knew they were hearing Truth itself speak. Their own inner spirit, which was good and true because made in God’s image, echoed Jesus’s words. ‘God dresses the flowers and feeds the birds. Are you not more precious?’ When he said it they knew that they were. Jesus loves these people. He comes to them because he loves them. He comes to tell them they are loved by the Father because they belong to the Father, not because of any unworthiness. He knows are human hearts have difficulty in understanding unconditional love. Can we not see that it is precisely because we are helpless, broken sinners, and because we feel unworthy that he comes with this good news? He comes himself with the news because we could not have believed it if anyone less than God told us. Coming from any other than God the news would have been too good to be true.

Isaiah, in a beautiful passage, describes God inviting us to come and be nourished and refreshed by his word of love:

'O come to the water all you who are thirsty;
though you have no money, come!
Buy corn without money, and eat,
and, at no cost, wine and milk.'
Isaiah 55:1

Why are we invited? Because we are thirsty and hungry, because we need love and healing. It is not because we have money and can pay. It is our very thirst and hunger that guarantee that we shall be nourished and refreshed. Our wounds are our chief claim to healing. All we have to do is ‘come’, ‘drink’, ‘eat’. And the prophet knows that God’s living word will not fail in its task. ‘Yes, as the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do’ (Isaiah 55:10).

Look at the love between the rain and earth. It is only when they are united in love that the earth can bear fruit. The earth alone, without the rain, will remain barren. The rain looking down on the earth does not say, ‘When you, dry earth, become fresh and green and fruitful, I shall fall upon you as a reward.’ The good rain knows the earth cannot become fruitful unless it falls upon it in love. Our good God knows we cannot be fruitful without him. He does not say, ‘When you begin to be fruitful in loving one another I will come to reward you.'’ We cannot love one another without him. It is our very dryness and hardness that draw him to us.

God’s unconditional love softens our hearts and enables us to grow. True love is that which is given, not because we are worthy or have earned it, but because we need it. It is given, not in the hope of receiving anything in return, but simply because it is the very nature of love to give itself. And while we often fail to love like that, still our deep-down good self tells us that this is true and that such love is possible for us. Our deepest self is made in the image of the God who loves unconditionally. That is why we can believe in it and also believe, despite our failures, that it is possible for us. When we meet this kind of love in others, out hearts can be transformed. Here is a story:

In the desert there lived a saintly hermit called Anthony. All who came to ask his prayers and guidance were struck by the deep peace of the cave where he lived. One evening, a wandering preacher came by and asked for hospitality for the night. Anthony received him graciously and, after sharing his food with him, invited the visitor to join him in evening prayer. Anthony opened a box and took out his most precious possession, a book of the Holy Scripture. It was beautifully bound and decorated. This was Anthony’s one and only treasure. As they prayed, the preacher looked at the book and could see it was something special and clearly very valuable. He was tempted. Greed entered his heart and, that night, as Anthony slept, the preacher stole the book and left. He went to a nearby town, found a merchant and offered him the book for twenty gold coins. The merchant asked for time so he could consult an expert about its value. The preacher reluctantly agreed to return the next day. The merchant then went to the desert to consult Anthony who, he felt sure, would know the value of the holy book. He reached the cave and showed Anthony the book and explained that a man wanted to sell it for twenty gold coins, but he was not sure if it was worth that much.

Anthony looked at his own precious book and said it was indeed that much. The merchant thanked him and left. When the preacher returned the next day, the merchant said he would buy the book. The preacher, out of curiosity, asked how he knew its value. The merchant said he had consulted a holy hermit called Anthony who knew the value of such objects. The preacher was stunned. ‘You consulted Anthony!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes’, said the merchant. ‘And what did he say?’ asked the preacher. ‘I told you’, said the merchant, ‘He said it was worth twenty gold coins.’ ‘Yes, I heard you, but what else did he say when he saw the book?’ shouted the preacher. ‘He said nothing’, replied the merchant, ‘He handled it rather fondly and simply and said it was worth the money, so now we can close the deal.’ By now, the preacher, visibly upset and disturbed, cried out, ‘No! Give me back the book. I’ve changed my mind.’ He took the book and, in confusion and repentance of heart, hurried back to Anthony’s cave. He entered with great new reverence and respect, threw himself at Anthony’s feet, begged forgiveness and asked to be accepted as his disciple.

9

DON’T CHANGE, GROW

The rain falls on the dry earth and makes it blossom. It comes because it is needed. It does not wait for the earth to change. During Advent we pray that the heavens may open and that the Lord may come upon us like spring rain. This he does, coming to us as we are, not waiting for us to change. Indeed, he does not even come to change us. It may seem strange to say that God does not come to change us. But when you think of it, true love must be like that. In a way it’s obvious. If I say to you, ‘I love you and I want to change you to be better or different’, this is a contradiction. It means, in face, that I do not love you. I love some image of you, some other version of you which I have created. If I desire to change somebody, I do not really love that person. If you accept someone on condition that they change, that they be different, then in fact you are not accepting them. The only real love is unconditional love, which is God’s kind of loving.

In saying we should not try to change people, we are not saying that we must pretend there is no evil in the person. There is evil in every person, evil in me, evil in you. Eyes of love will not be blind to the evil, but they will see much more. Love will see past the evil to the real you. Love will not identify you with the evil in you. In the presence of love, which is also truth, you and I will not be led into any hypocrisy or pretence about evil. I believe that there will remain a real sense of the existence of evil. Indeed, I believe there will be an even sharper awareness of that evil in the presence of true love, but simultaneously there will be an awareness of something greater, something overwhelmingly greater which robs the awareness of evil of its sting, of its power to demolish me. I will realise that the love is greater, that I am still totally accepted, even as I am. A healing takes place in that moment. This helps me to understand the saints. They had both these insights at the same moment, an acute awareness of sin and a joyful certainty of loving acceptance. This resulted for many of them in tears, the tears of Magdalen. These are tears not of sadness but of great wonder and joy.

Jesus loves in this way. Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus, the only one who has a right to put a condition on love, puts none? Jesus, the only one qualified to judge, does not judge? Jesus, the only one free from co-operation with evil, does not let his eyes stay on our evil, but goes past it to the good of our deepest selves! In the gospel story it was Simon the Pharisee who was saying to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is that is touching him and what a bad name she has’ (Luke 7:39). Simon is so conscious of Magdalen’s sins he can see nothing else. It is Jesus who is aware of her love. Have you noticed that in the story of the prodigal son it is only the elder brother who speaks about the evil in his young brother? It is he who rants about the disgrace, the waste of money, the prostitution. The father makes no mention of the young lad’s failure. The father is love. Notice also that when the father runs down the road to welcome the young son, he embraced him in his rags of sin. He did not wait for the boy to have a shower and change into the best robe!

God can cope with us exactly as we are. Maybe it’s because he alone sees us exactly as we are. Looking at us with eyes of love he sees more than we see. ‘God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but Yahweh looks at the heart.’ (1 Samuel 16:7) We judge ourselves and each other. God does not. God simply loves. And he loves us with his whole heart and being; as he has asked us to love. This love of his does not grow. It cannot, because he loves with his whole heart. I will never be more acceptable to God than I am right now, whether I am in the depth of sin or the height of sanctity. His love will not grow. All that can grow is my awareness of the mystery of that love. It is when I accept that mystery that, hopefully, my love for him may start to grow. Here is a lovely word from Charles de Foucauld. ‘To love anyone is to hope in him for always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from the moment at which we identify him with what we know of him and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him and he ceases to be able to be better.’ Jesus would say Amen to that.

God comes to us in Jesus because he sees our beauty which, unfortunately, is often hidden and obscured by sin and evil. He comes to reveal that beauty. He wants to help us dig in the field of our lives and uncover the treasure buried there. He knows that if we glimpse that treasure, then we might be ready to sell all to keep it. Our deep, hidden selves, made in God’s image, are treasure that all the money in the world could not buy. One day Jesus was teaching those simple, humble, broken people who flocked to hear him. He put a question to them: ‘What, then, will a man gain if he wins the whole world and ruins his life? Or what has a man to offer in exchange for his life?’ (Matthew 16:26) I always used to read these words as a kind of warning, as if Jesus were saying, ‘Don’t risk hell for all the money in the world; don’t sell your soul for pleasure or money and risk exchanging heaven for hell, that would be a bad bargain.’ This meaning is still there, but I now find other rich meaning in these words. Jesus is asking us to see the wonder and mystery of our own beings. He wants us to reflect on our own beauty, value, worth. So he is asking these people whom he loves, ‘What would you exchange for your own self? What value do you put on yourself? Do you think the wealth of the whole world would be enough to buy you?’ We can imagine Jesus looking around at the faces of those listeners. He speaks with such sincerity and power. ‘If you put yourself in one scale of the balance and put all the riches of the world in the other scale, then the balance will tip in your favour. You are worth more than the world and if you sold yourself even for the whole world, it would be a bad bargain.’ And the listeners knew he meant it and they knew it was true.

Jesus says the same to you and me now. He comes to reveal my own inmost self, the deeper beauty, the hidden treasure. It is when I listen and believe and agree with what he tells me about myself that I begin to live and grow. Jesus does not come to change me but to invite me to grow. This growth happens when I accept his love for me as I am. He invites me to become more and more my true self. I cannot grow and become myself until I first accept myself with his acceptance of me. Paul says if our hidden self is to grow it must be ‘planted in love’ (Ephesians 3:17).

Notice that I reject the world ‘change’ and choose the word ‘grow’. Change can suggest becoming someone else. Growth suggests plan, direction. We say a seed ‘grows’. We do not say it ‘changes’, even though a fantastic change takes place. The seed grows and brings forth all the wonder of the shape, design, colour and perfume of the flower that is already hidden within it. All this beauty is already there potentially and the gardener ‘sees’ it because he looks with loving eyes. Jesus says in one parable, ‘My Father is the gardener’ (John 15:1)

So when Jesus met the sinner, he did not scold or lecture them about sin. He did not even make them aware of their sin. Most of them were already depressingly aware of their sins. He moved with them in genuine acceptance and this friendship touched new springs of growth. And when he rose from the dead, he remained the same compassionate, understanding friend. When he came back to his friends after the Resurrection, we can imagine how miserable and ashamed they must have been, yet we do not find any sense of guilt, but rather total joy and deep peace. Why? Because Jesus took them as he found them. His love always gives what we need, not what we deserve. These friends needed encouragement and healing. So there was no scolding. He did not ask them where were they last Friday! Indeed he made no reference to his terrible ordeal, the kind of thing we would to arouse guilt in a friend who had let us down. It is the same Risen Lord who comes to us now, accepting us as he finds us.

10

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

'Let us set ourselves to know Yahweh;
that he will come is as certain as the dawn,
he will come to us as showers come,
like spring rains watering the earth'.
Hosea 6:3

The prophet Hosea here affirms what we have been saying. Our God is one who comes to us. He comes to us just as we are, because we belong to him and he knows we need him. His coming is always very gentle because he knows we are fragile. He comes like spring rain to make us fruitful. He comes to help us discover our own true selves. It is this very precious self that he visits.

I do not have to change and become someone else to receive him and experience his nourishing love. Isaiah reflects on this when he says:

'Let the wilderness and the dry lands exult,
let the wasteland rejoice and bloom,
let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil,
let it rejoice and sing for joy.'
Isaiah 35:1-2

Notice that it is the very wasteland, the very desert that will bloom: The Lord does not say: ‘You must move house, you must move elsewhere so that we can make a beautiful garden.’ No! He says: ‘Let us work on this apparent wasteland, the desert of your poor dry heart.’ To this dry heart he sends the refreshing spring rain of his love. There he sees the seeds, waiting for his gentle touch. This desert place will be covered with waving, golden daffodils.

It does not mean that God ignores the sin and evil in me, but that he can reveal himself to me without making me feel crushed with shame and guilt. Again the touch is gentle. He sees these sins as wounds needing healing. Hosea says: 'He will heal us; he will bandage our wounds’ (Hosea 6:2). Our sin and failure lose their sting and poison as he bends over us to pour in oil and balm and bandage the wounds. When he was accused by self-righteous men of taking sin too lightly, Jesus defended himself by saying: ‘It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick’ (Luke 5:32). He has come to bandage our wounds. This coming is always gentle, always healing. Its fruit is peace. A lovely verse from an anonymous fifteenth-century poet tells us how we will recognise the presence of the Lord:

'Thou shalt know him when he comes
Not by any din of drums
Nor by the vantage of his airs
Nor by anything he wears
Neither by his crown
Nor his gown.
For his presence known shall be
By the holy harmony
That his coming makes in thee.'

It is the sick who need the doctor. it is the hurt and wounded traveller by the roadside who needs a good Samaritan. Jesus himself is the first Good Samaritan. The point about the story of the Good Samaritan is that it does not follow reason or logic. In the story the unfortunate victim who had been mugged and robbed was a Jew. As he lay there helpless, he could reasonably have hoped for help from the first two people to come along. They were fellow Jews and professional religious, people who had reason to help. But they passed by. Then came a Samaritan, the one who had best reason for passing by. The fierce enmity between Jew and Samaritan was known to all. At the end of the story, when Jesus asks his questioner, a Jewish lawyer, which of the three was the neighbour, the lawyer will not even say the word ‘Samaritan’. He answers, ‘The one who took pity on him’ (Luke 10:37). In the story then, contrary to all reason, it is the Samaritan who helps. The truth is that we are talking here about something more elevated than reason. The Samaritan helps the wounded Jew not because it is the reasonable thing to do, but because it is the loving thing to do. He is moved not by reason, but by pity. ‘But a Samaritan traveller who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them’ (Luke 10:33-34).

On one occasion, the enemies of Jesus, wishing to insult him, called him a madman, a Samaritan (John 8:48). Little did they know how close they were to the truth. For Jesus is the original Good Samaritan. he saw us lying by the wayside of life, attacked and wounded by fear, guilt, sin, doubt and self-hatred. We lay bleeding, powerless, with no one to help us. He saw self-righteous people hurry by, busy about so-called religious duties. And he was moved to pity and came and knelt right down there on the road beside us. He poured the soothing balm of love over our wound, bandaged us, lifted us up and carried us to a safe place and paid for our upkeep and further healing. He paid not a few coins but his own precious blood. You see, our sufferings have the power to move our God to compassion, as the suffering of the prodigal son moved first the father’s heart and then the whole person. And remember that the young lad brought his sufferings on himself. The Good Samaritan reminds us of the Good Shepherd. He goes out into dangerous wild places after a silly stray sheep. When he finds it, there is no scolding, kicking or beating. He takes it joyfully on his shoulders and carries it to safety. Our ‘reasonable’ charity does not cover this kind of behaviour. God acts out of love and love has no limits, no rules.

We find the very same gentleness and healing love in Jesus after the Resurrection. See him again, the Good Samaritan on the road to Emmaus, as he joins two very hurt disciples. These two men are wounded by disappointment, by shame, by fear. Jesus joins them on the way. He need not have done so. He walks at their pace. He asks why they are so sad. Gently he opens their eyes to the wonder of all that had happened. How did these two men describe their experience? They said, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road?’ (Luke 24:32). God is so extravagant we are almost shocked! Indeed we have always had religious people who seem to feel it is their duty to keep God’s generosity within reasonable bounds! Karl Rahner has an apt comment on this. He writes, ‘Some theologians seem to think that grace would not be grace if God was too liberal with it.’

Maybe one subtle reason why we are almost shocked by the extravagance of God’s love is that deep within us we know we are called to be like him in whose image and likeness we are created. The prophet says, ‘Be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God, am holy’ (Leviticus 19:2). And Jesus tells us to be like out heavenly Father. These words seem to propose an impossible ideal. Yet, if we explore them, we will find in these very words a gleam of hope that what we are called to is not impossible but is our very deepest fulfilment. Notice that God does not put his invitation to holiness in the context of reward and punishment. He does not say, ‘Be holy, be like your father and, if you are, I will reward you, but if you are not, I will punish you.’ He says something quite different. He says, ‘Be holy, for I, your God, am holy.’ ‘Be like your Father.’ The primary communication here is ‘Remember who you are, you belong to me. I am your God. I am your Father. You are part of the family. You have received the Holy Spirit of our family. You can be holy.’

And the first-born in our family, Jesus Christ, shows us that it is possible. Often not easy, but possible. And, even more, as we have said, he offers us power to live and love like him. It is possible if we live and abide in the love of that Saviour.

11

GOD’S KIND OF HOLINESS

‘The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it is open’ These homely words of wisdom have great force when we think of the mind’s search to understand God. God is infinite mystery. The human mind can not comprehend him, but it is made to search for him with its companion, the heart. In this search it must always remain open to wonder and surprise. Paul prays that we may come to know the ‘love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge’ (Ephesians 3:19). The Psalmist ponders the mystery of God’s love present and active in every place and