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The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.    (Matthew 22:39)

7/10/2016

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In Matthew's version of the Greatest Commandment, he emphasizes the similarity of loving Neighbor as Self to loving God with your whole self (all you heart, your soul and your mind). As I've commented on previously, there are three persons involved in these two commandments; God, Neighbor and Self. It's been my experience that to fully love God or to fully love Neighbor, requires, first, that I fully love Self; you can't give what you don't have!

This year I've embraced Non Violent Living which I believe is the epitome of this commandment. As I reflect on my daily struggles to do this, I've recognized that to love myself in the fullest way and therefore be able to love God and Neighbor, I must first recognize and embrace my own dignity!  Through my Christian Contemplative Spirituality and practice I've come to know that God dwells in me (and in everyone / everything else). The very fact that God is the deepest part of my soul grants to me a dignity that I can never lose. I am, of course, fully human and so subject to the Human Condition, as such, I operate from motivations that I'm largely unconscious of. It's when I'm drawn to blindly operate from these largely hidden motivations, that I can "sin" (i.e. to operate in a way that belies my fundamental dignity) or as St Paul writes:  "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate." Romans 7:15.

Being conscious that nothing I do can diminish the fundamental dignity inherent to God's presence in me, allows me to be present to my "sin" and the motivations of my shadow self. This frees me from projection (he/she caused me to act or feel this way), any victim mentality (I act this way because), or denial or repression (that was nothing) to justify my actions. Trusting in my inherent dignity allows me to be genuinely present and learn from my shadow self and the inner pain or difficulty I experience that causes me to act badly. For me, presence to such pain and difficulty is only possible with the graces of the Indwelling God. This dependence on God serves to both fortify my loving relationship with God and to increase my own humility. This process allows me to experience the gradual acceptance and transformation of my own shadow self. 


Once I embrace my own dignity, am present to enough of my shadow and have been able to work through the transformation process with God, I begin to know that the same dignity and unconscious motivation toward acting badly exists in others. As I develop more compassion for myself and humble reliance upon God in this process, I develop more compassion and patience for others as well. Now when I look at others, I begin to see them like myself at an even deeper level; I'm able to embrace their dignity inherent in God dwelling within them as well as their own unique struggle with the Human Condition. I can begin to genuinely love them more deeply.

So to me, living a Non Violent life starts with recognizing and trusting in my own inherent dignity. This allows me to be consciously present to my own struggles with the Human Condition and shadow self and my own dependence upon God to assist in the transformation process. In this way I diminish my need to blame another and, instead, can be present to an awareness of the inherent dignity we share through God.  Living a Non Violent life permits me to assist God in the transformation process of love that's at the heart of this Greatest Commandment.
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No one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father... (John 6:65)

8/24/2015

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It's the custom in the Centering Prayer groups I facilitate to choose a portion of the upcoming Sunday Gospel reading to Lectio Divina. This week's Sunday reading was John 6:60-69. As the group shared their reflections and inspirations on this Gospel a few folks mentioned how troubled they were by the exclusivity expressed in the portion of the reading highlighted in the title of this Blog entry. To many, it's as if only some of God's creation are pre-destined by for "salvation". 

I personally don't understand God as being this exclusive. I believe that God desires a personal, deep relationship with all of His creation and it is through the depth of that relationship that we're spiritually nourished. As I see it, the purpose of our lives is to provide us with opportunities to grow into that deeper relationship. If there is any exclusivity, it's our resisting the deepening relationship with God; excluding Him from our lives.

At the end of our time together that evening I privately shared how this particular passage spoke to me with someone who seemed particularly troubled. That's what I'd like to do below in an expanded form.

For me, it's helpful, to start with a larger context for this reading. Jesus (John 6:1-15) had just performed the miracle of feeding the 5,000 men with 5 barley loaves and 2 fishes.

Further in the Gospel (John 6:26-35) Jesus begins to provide some clarity:

26 ... “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. 27 Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.... 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent.” ... 32 So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

Then the shocking message begins to be revealed in John 6:47-59:

47 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; 50 this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” ...  53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

As his audience hears this they react as I imagine anyone who is thinking about a purely physical existence would:

60 Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” 61 Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? ... 63 It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ... 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.”...65 And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”  66 As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. 67 Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." 

I've highlighted the words that help me make sense of this. Jesus differentiate between our physical and material needs (the flesh) and our deeper, internal needs (the spirit). I don't see Jesus saying that the physical and material needs are unnecessary (many of his miracles are about taking care of people's physical needs such as the feeding of the 5,000 that beings this chapter of John) just that our attachment to satisfying them is overly exaggerated!. 

To me, Jesus is saying that spending all our time and energy taking care of physical and material needs is insufficient, we need to feed our interior, spiritual selves which supports our authentic life at a deeper and more satisfying level and which allows us to share in this authentic life with others thus sustaining them and us.

We can, and must, have physical nourishment to exist physically and have to take care of our material needs. However, we all know that we eat and after a while we'll eat again when we're hungry. When we get something new materially (perhaps a new car or a bigger, nicer house) we're satisfied with it and then that satisfaction wears off and we begin to pursue something else. This is an endless pattern we follow until our physical bodies age and wel eventually die. 

When we feed our spirit (our inner self), we are nourishing the part of us that gives us deeper existence and satisfaction. This satisfaction is something that deepens and, overtime, satisfies us in a richer way. Unlike our physical existence, which is temporary, our spiritual existence continues into eternity. So nourishing and developing this self has lasting value. It sustains us as it also sustains those in the world ("the life of the the world.")

Furthermore, I understand this spiritual food to be beyond Jesus' words or even just his actions, it's his very life. For me, the life of Jesus' (his being and how he lived) is the "bread that comes down from heaven" . "Eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood" is his complete offer of the entirety of his being to us. We are called to take him in completely and in so doing be transformed into Christ fully alive in us. (As described in Symeon the New Theologian's writing in my last Blog entry.) This is our awakening to Christ living through us, with us and in us in our daily lives and actions. This intimate union with Christ is so that we become his flesh and blood in the world and realize his spirit into eternity.   

As his listeners in the Gospel (and perhaps us as well) say : "This saying is hard, who can accept it." and "as a result many of his disciples returned to their former way of life". Jesus asks "Does this shock you?". He provides the necessary clarity which leads to the point that is perhaps most often misunderstood: "For this reason I have told you, no one can come to me unless granted by my Father." 

Jesus is helping us recognize the truth that we cannot live the "shocking" demands of a deeply Spiritual life by ourselves. To do so requires God's grace and intimate relationship. It's easy to have an external faith based on receiving God's outward, physical assistance and consolations ("you are looking for me ... because you ate the loaves and were filled") ; this, however, requires little transformation from us. 

But, to live our live the radical example of the life Jesus lived, requires us to develop an intimate relationship with God and the help of his grace. Through the consent and surrender of our will we open ourselves to be able to embrace the life Jesus exemplified. It's through the power of God's grace that allows us to commit and follow through. 

As Jesus shows through this Gospel, there's no backing down from this striking truth, and most of us are not ready, willing or able yet to surrender and accept it. For many of us, radical consent and surrender requires some event or life circumstance that completely challenges our own belief and reliance in ourselves and in our ordinary physical and material experience of reality. This "dying" to what we have taken as certain, necessary and comfortable, helps us to know the words of Simon Peter in this Gospel: "to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." 

It's at the point of crisis in our lives when we are most open to a genuine relationship to God and his graces. Those moments are when our real spiritual life begins and when we begin to receive genuine spiritual nourishment. These moments of opening to God graces occur at different points in people's lives. We only embrace these opportunities we're ready for them, until then we "return to our former way of life" once we get past the issue at hand. However, I believe God is patiently waiting for us, inviting us and ready to deepen His relationship with us and share his graces whenever we're truly ready.

The Contemplative teaching and my own experiences of True Self / false Self are very helpful to me for exploring and informing my understanding of this particular Gospel passage further.
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Grant us, almighty God, that we may be ... transformed into what we consume

7/14/2015

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Since becoming an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, I have developed a more profound connection with the Eucharist. In preparing for conducting a Communion Service at a retirement community almost a year ago, I was struck by the Prayer after Communion for the 27th Sunday or Ordinary time: 
Grant us, almighty God, that we may be refreshed and nourished by the Sacrament which we have received, so as to be transformed into what we consume. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
As I reflected upon and looked further into this prayer I found that it echoed the spirit of two well-known quotes by St. Augustine regarding the Eucharist: 

 "Behold what you are, become what you receive."  

"You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members. If, therefore, you are the Body of Christ and His members, your mystery is presented at the table of the Lord, you receive your mystery. To that which you are, you answer: `Amen'; and by answering, you subscribe to it. For you hear: `The Body of Christ!' and you answer: `Amen!' Be a member of Christ's Body, so that your `Amen' may be the truth."

Reflecting on these quotes it became more apparent to me that my personal expression of Amen (I Believe or So Be It) as I am about to receive the Eucharist is my personal acknowledgement that the same Christ that is in the Bread I am receiving is also in me. When I distribute the Eucharist, I am acknowledging the Christ in the host is also in those approaching to receive it. In the celebration of Communion and indeed the celebration of entire mass, as everyone joins together in community we join together as the Body of Christ. 

My intent to keep the Amen I profess during the Eucharist authentic now helps me to keep focused on revealing the Christ in myself and seeing the Christ in others even after I exit the Church and return to everyday life. By doing so, I do my part living as Body of Christ. I rarely succeed as well as I'd like to at this, but by trying to be true to my understanding I have a deeper awareness and the inspiration to continue trying.
It is interesting to read Symeon the New Theologian's (949-1022) a Byzantine Christian monk and mystic revered to this day by Eastern Christians, mystical insight on awakening into Christ's Body: 

We awaken in Christ's body,
As Christ awakens our bodies
There I look down and my poor hand is Christ,
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.
I move my hand and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ,
Becomes all of Him.
I move my foot and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous to you?
--Then open your heart to Him.
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ's body
Where all our body all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
And He makes us utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged
Is in Him transformed.
And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His light,
We awaken as the beloved
In every last part of our body. 
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16)

3/3/2015

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Lent is the time that we Christians focus on our relationship with God and in particular on the meaning of the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

At the beginning of this Lenten season I'm drawn to the work of the early Franciscan theologian, Bl. John Dun Scotus (c.1265-1308). Dun Scotus' insight is that the human incarnation of Christ in the person of Jesus is the work of God's plan from the beginning of time. This is formally known as the Doctrine of the Absolute Primacy of Christ in the Universe.  According to Dun Scotus, sin was not the motivation for Divine intervention, instead it was God's plan of perfect love. In this way God is always and consistently acting out of supreme love and not merely re-acting to fallen human nature or using Jesus as the only worthy sacrifice of atonement to Himself. Dun Scotus' doctrine has become a foundation of Franciscan Spirituality.
 
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM has summarized Dun Scotus' understanding as: "Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God" or even more succinctly as "God does not love us because we are that good, God loves us because God is good."

Dun Scotus' doctrine appears to support Jesus' announcement of the in-breaking Kingdom of God (as something happening now, not just later, after we die.)  If we see Jesus as being sent because of God's love for us, then the life of humility and love he lived was intended as the example for how humans are to live according to God's will. Ultimately, this means that the purpose of Jesus' life is not something to be in awe of, thankful for or worshiped at a distance but is how God intends us to live our lives.

So,the salvation Jesus offers us is, by his example and teaching, the proper way of living.  His teachings on the greatest Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount among others and his deep compassion which prompted countless miracles provide us the pattern.for our lives. He is a living witness to the total love and humility of God.

Jesus faithfully lived and taught in solidarity with all of humanity fully sharing in joy and in sorrow and
 impacting all of those around him. God's love was shown in Jesus' solidarity with humanity that continued even in the face of chaos and the worst of human brutality and personal suffering; the experience of Jesus' passion and death.  By Jesus' resurrection, God shows that His faithful love will ultimately transform humanity and allow it to rise above the worst of it's nature.

During Lent I will continue to reflect on God's redeeming love and the example of salvation that was Jesus' life, passion, death and resurrection. My own challenge of salvation, for Lent and beyond, is whether I can follow Jesus' example by allowing Christ to work in me and through me. Is my relationship with / love of God important enough and deep enough that I can genuinely be open to live like Jesus?
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    The Road to Emmaus is one of my favorite scripture passages (Luke 24:13-35). It captures many essential elements of the Spiritual Journey.
     

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    Mike Smoolca in cooperation with others.

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