SAILING OF ANOTHER SORT
1. Jesus, walking along the Sea of Galilee touches the hearts of Peter and his brother Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee, John and James. Amenable to Our Lord's authoritative call (Gk. exousia), these fishermen abandon their boats and provincial aspirations to cast their nets in the realm of the spirit. Still, the disciples will return to fish on the Sea of Galilee any number of times in the years ahead.
2. What then, did the disciples actually relinquish when they agreed to follow Jesus as disciples? James and John, Andrew and Peter certainly surrendered personal control of their destinies. They walked away from the rhythmic, orderly, habitual life of fishing to learn sailing and fishing of another sort. “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men,” said Jesus to Simon. The gospel suggests that the fishermen were decisive in abandoning the sea to follow the Lord.
3. The gospel does not say that they were devoid of uncertainty. But the Holy Spirit has a way welding such disparate things together, and despite their reservations and the inevitable resentments of family members for having made such impulsive, radical life changes, Jesus' new disciples intuit that following him was crucial to the meaning of their lives, the realization of which, it would seem, of their individual aspirations and human dignity. By accepting Jesus’ invitation, the new disciples signal their readiness to enter the procession of God's saving plan wherever that might lead. DIVINE PROCESSION
4. The apostles were reasonably convinced that Israel's fate and the world's destiny depended on the divine procession which has, as its head, Jesus. All who enter this procession with Christ move from potency to act, from latency to fulfillment, from nature to Spirit. This is not to suggest, however, that human fulfillment is formulaic, made up of parts or halves, or that conflict and uncertainty are necessary pre-conditions to understanding the meaning of human personhood.
5. To the contrary. Integration of body and spirit, trust and worthiness, love and sacrifice, seeking and finding, words and deeds, reality and dreams, present and future, mortality and eternity—indeed all these and countless other incipient signs of God's Kingdom are planted in every human soul at the moment of conception. Moreover, these incipient signs are magnified in the Law—the Decalogue its highest expression—and are brought to fulfillment by the more perfect ministry of Jesus Christ the high priest, one “who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven” [Heb 8:1] who proclaimed a new covenant in his own name.
INSTRUMENT OF REVELATION
6. The new covenant made in Christ's name lays bare what is concealed under signs, unveiling the truth hidden in parables. It illuminates the mysteries of salvation and propels the Kingdom of God suddenly near to human beings. While not disclosing fully the mysteries of faith, the new covenant makes their existence self-evident. Moreover, the believer’s covenant bond with Christ is the relationship through which the sacred order of God's kingdom is revealed to humbles hearts.
7. Lest any disciple fail to see things as they really are and assume that Jesus’ is proposing a new comfortableness, he declares unequivocally: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." [Mt 5:17-18]
8. What needs to be accomplished is both universal and particular. God’s creation, eagerly awaiting its liberation from futility and decay, will be perfected when the Lord’s faithful disciples receive “adoption” and the redemption of their bodies. [cf. Rom 8:23] Merely waiting and receiving will not do, however. Disciples are to patiently await a great transformation. They whom no one esteems on earth will be warmly cherished by their heavenly father as children in his own mansion. God will adopt into his household those who, possessing the "first fruits of the Spirit" [Rom 8:23], wait patiently for their inheritance as would a first-born son. [cf. Rom 8:19-23]
9. To experience transformation, the disciple’s cooperation with God is paramount. He must emigrate from death to life on the path of “spirit and truth” [Jn 4:23], renouncing all self-centeredness to worship God as father knowledgeably and devoutly. The human longing for God is echoed in the age-old quest. How can the human spirit break the fetters of mortality to soar in perfect freedom as a bird takes flight in the midday sun? More to the point, how does mortal man commune with God in his eternal Kingdom? And the metaphysical mystery, How does human flesh image God?
BOND OF SEEN AND UNSEEN
10. When one experiences love, he naturally points to his volatile heart. Indeed the great passion within a lover’s breast makes a mockery of the mind and heart’s day-to-day peaceable communion. Snared in a no-man’s land between possessiveness and thanksgiving, the lover realizes the insignificance of his own human powers. He becomes painfully aware that his beloved’s beauty insists on his own perfection. The unexpected is an invitation to humility.
11. The lover’s heart of flesh evokes the intangible, immortal virtue of love. The juxtaposition of spirit and flesh is an old one. St. Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth, observes that the human body is meant to be a temple for God's Holy Spirit. [cf. 1Cor 3:16-17] Writing to women in the early Church, St. Peter cautions all disciples, especially Christians of this conflicted generation:
LET NOT yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. [1Pet 3:4]
12. This bond of seen and unseen [cf. 2Cor 4:18] is unprecedented. Of all creatures, only the human creature answers to earth and heaven. Ancient Hebrews, uniquely aware of God’s true form, looked up and beyond the material world. They understood that the unseen God dwells mysteriously in the glorious and terrifying heavens above. Heaven is more excellent than earth. The powers of heavens are superior to the things of creation.
GOD KNEELS
13. Image and likeness seek their origin, the one from whose fullness they have been formed. Man is created like God to draw near to God, his perfected spirit and flesh to dwell in peace within God’s incomprehensible divinity. He must search for God, because in the core of his being he shares something vital with God. He cannot contemplate the divine mind apart from his own feeble intellect. He cannot will nor act as a human being except as an analogue to God’s divine personhood. To transcend his sinful nature, he must reckon with God's goodness.
14. The human soul desires to be perfect as God is perfect. The esteem in which God holds human beings—his incomparable creation of spirit and flesh—is attested by the narrative of Genesis. God kneels in the mist which clouds the earth. "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." [Gen 2:6-7] The human person's divine imprint is not remote: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." [Jn 4:23]
CHILL OF MORTALITY
15. Accordingly, man images God in his spirit. He reflects God's likeness in the perfect union of his spirit and flesh. More than mere analogy, however, man’s likeness to God is intended to characterize intimacy as signified by the fraternal act of God condescending to walk with him "in the garden in the cool of the day". [Gen 3:8] By muzzling their consciences and jettisoning God's truth, the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened. [cf. Gen 3:7] Beholding for the first time the full extent of their creaturely frailty, they hide from God. Fatally compromised, they forfeit the priceless intimacy God shares with them. Moreover, by cooperating with sin, Adam and Eve degrade their humanity fundamentally and irrevocably. Fear devours them.
16. The shock of inadequacy proves stronger than their trust in God. Confounded by their nakedness, Adam and Eve "sew fig leaves together and make themselves aprons". [Gen 3:7] Tragically, sin causes both man and woman to regard their heavenly father as a threat to their well-being. No longer impeccable in body—"so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate" [Gen 3:6]—they are incapable of imaging God in toto (Lat. fully, completely). Through strained and dispirited eyes, they behold God's garden bathed in a cold, autumnal light; they shiver in the chill wind of their terrible transgression. They are mortal. They will know decay and death.
GOD KNOWS
17. Few expressions are more succinct and evocative than God knows. Nothing, whether microscopic or marvelous, escapes the divine awareness, not a reed swaying in the wind [cf. Mt 11:7], nor a hair on one's head or a single sparrow. [cf. Lk 12:6-7] In the instant of Adam and Eve’s sin, God knows the Son of Man crowned with thorns and led away to be crucified. [cf. Jn 19:5-18] God knows all:
AND THEY heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, Where are you?" [Gen 3:8-9]
18. Falling into the abyss of shame, Adam and Eve obey its voice: Do not seek God. Do not wait for him. Do not go near him. You must never show yourself. The Lord who knows everything has no need to ask, yet he searches diligently for Adam and Eve. Into the gloom of their sinful hearts, for the sake of the beauty which together they had enjoyed, he calls out to the man. Where are you? asks God, Where are you?
IDOL OF FLESH
19. At the instant man makes an idol of his own flesh, or demands the irrevocable subservience of God, or acts as if he were a god, or hypothesizes that his hands are powerful enough to extinguish the God-question, he desolates his own beautiful humanity. He effectively destroys his union with God. Moreover, he consents to be the very instrument by which the extraction of his goodness is accomplished by Satan:
WOE TO those who hide deep from the Lord their counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, Who sees us? Who knows us? You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay; that the thing made should say of its maker, He did not make me; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, He has no understanding? [Isa 29:15-16]
20. Severed from life-giving and sustaining communion with God, and dismembered in his own personhood, man forsakes his place of honor in the hierarchy of creation. He plummets from pinnacle of spirit even as Lucifer was cast down from heaven: "They will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness." [Isa 8:22] Given over to malice and predation, the lawless man gives himself over to a desperate despair, supposing that the silence of the grave will absolve his agitated soul.
INNER MAN OF EVERY MAN
21. God who quickens man with life empowers him with personhood. From the beginning man was a perfect union of spirit and flesh. What God joined in goodness, man divided in sin. Thus, original sin makes two of what formerly was one. That which is divided succumbs to death. St. Paul, writing to the Romans, acknowledges the ambivalence and strife experienced by every soul:
FOR I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. [Rom 7:18-21]
22. Evil metastasizes man’s pride, it plasticizes the human heart, it embalms him in a bath of lies. Ambivalence and strife, indeed all manifestations of the evil we do not want are precursors of sin’s ultimate consequence, death. Man, in the shadow of mortality, indulges himself in destructive ways. All definitions are prophecies. Construing authentic personhood in terms of material wants, he is devoured ironically by his own appetites. When one perceives his personhood as a swarm of appetites, he cannot be trusted to act graciously and nobly. Hence, the Lord God exiled the man and woman from the garden and, "at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life". [Gen 3:24]
IMMIGRATE OUTWARDLY
23. From the soul, the human person’s true form, emerges a hunger for divine truth, a longing to return to Eden, a yearning for humanity fulfilled. Man's longing for perfection properly leads him to immigrate, not inwardly within the sorrows of his wounded heart, but outwardly to the loving heart of God his creator. Love's longing for fulfillment impels every human being to seek God and having discovered him, to quickly grasp that the well-being of his relationship with God demands the purification of human love.
24. This is to acknowledge the impossibility of being reconciled with God while remaining divided within one’s own self. Seeking God, therefore, requires a purification. Paradoxically, a faithful disciple makes of himself a worthy temple in which God may dwell even as he moves beyond himself to discover God who calls him. The cherubim and flaming sword obviously thwart man from returning to Eden. What is less obvious is the fact that the presence of these guardians signifies a momentous change in the way God relates to his human creatures.
SANCTUARY OF TRUTH
25. Nature is no longer the seminal mode by which God’s glory is revealed to man. Never again will the normative setting for the divine-human encounter be a grove of trees. Man must sojourn with God, not as through a garden, but into the loving heart of God himself. To this end, God reveals to Moses that holiness is his true sanctuary and its proper conservator is his eternal, unchanging truth—both inseparable from the splendor of the divine nature.
26. Unfortunately the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai proves more a stumbling block than a stepping stone to the fulfillment of God's covenant relationship with the people of Israel: "...the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me". [Rom 7:10] Though not barred to fallen man, the gate to God's sanctuary is narrow and the way that leads to his heart is arduous, and those who attain it are few. [cf. Mt 7:13-14] Nevertheless, he who submits to reconciliation with God has a basis for his hope—the saving passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!
INDISPENSABLE CONDITION
27. When one repents of his sinful ways, and takes up his cross to follow Christ, he opens his heart to God. Divine truth frees him from servitude to evil. By welcoming God into the mystery of his humanity, the disciple fulfills the indispensable condition for setting out on the spiritual way to beatific holiness and sanctuary in our heavenly father’s loving heart. As Jesus' ministry progresses towards transfiguration and crucifixion, the twelve apostles grow increasingly distressed and attempt to cling to him. Our Lord insists that their welfare depends on welcoming the Spirit who will counsel them on the excellent way [cf. 1Cor 12:31 ff] and "convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment". [Jn 16:8]
28. The counselor, the Spirit, in whose name the followers of Christ are birthed into perfection, confirms that “to all who receive (Christ), who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God; who are born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” [Jn 1:12-13] To be given sanctuary within God's divine holiness, the faithful disciple must be pure in body and soul, for flesh is to man as holiness is to God. Our Lord wills that man's body be a worthy temple for his own Holy Spirit. [cf. 1Cor 3:16-17]
INWARD TO OUTWARD
29. St. Paul, ever mindful of the price that Christ paid for our redemption, confronts all who would be complacent in the community of faith: "You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." [1Cor 6:19-20] For the human body is given to man to confess the holiness of God, and thus by imaging the Creator to the fullest, be guided to God’s perfect love. At the heart of the mystery of salvation is a tabernacle in which is reposed the incomparable gift of divine-human filiation. Who kneels before God is loved by God. Who is crucified before man is loved by man.
30. The personalism of the inward-outward paradigm validates Christianity's uniqueness among the world's religions. Christian anthropology safeguards the mystery of salvation by its emphasis on the incomparable dignity of the personhood of man and his divine destiny. God's personal love for every human being evidences the all-embracing character of his redemptive plan and protects the gospel proclamation from frivolous, cabalistic distortions. To every human being, God directs his personal word, enjoining each of us to answer the question he once asked of Adam: Where are you? Prompted by the Spirit who guides our human journey, we pray to answer confidently with an antiphon no less personal: "Teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God! Let thy good spirit lead me on a level path! For thy name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life!" [Psa 143:10-11]
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[1] Cycle A /Third Sunday in Ordinary Time /Isa 8:23-9:3 /1Cor 1:10-13,17 /Mt 4:12-23.
