Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Thirty-Six: Life as Participation
Being Instruments of God
Almost twenty years ago, I gave a series of talks called Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, which I still think is one of the most important sets I ever made. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–6) was dramatic and utterly life-changing. In my opinion, the resulting insights from this initial experience became central to all he taught for the rest of his life. While most of us experience many smaller transformations throughout our lives, the result should be the same. With only a few updates to my language, this is how I described it:
Before conversion, we tend to think that God is out there. After transformation, God is not out thereand we don’t look at reality. We look from reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what I call the mystery of participation. Paul is obsessed by the idea that we’re all already participating in something. I’m not writing the story by myself. I’m a character inside of a story that is being written in cooperation with God and the rest of humanity. This changes everything about how we see our lives. If we’re writing the story on our own, we think we’ve got to write it right. We’ve got to be clever, we’ve got to figure it out. If anything goes wrong, we’ve only got ourselves to blame. That’s a terrible way to live, even though a high degree of Christians do. And I would call that bad news.
The good news is a completely different experience of life. A participatory theology says, “I am being used, I am actively being chosen, I am being led.” It is not about joining a new denomination or having an ecstatic moment. After authentic conversion, you know that your life is not about you; you are about life! You’re an instance in this agony and ecstasy of God that is already happening inside you, and all you can do is say yes to it. That’s all. That’s conversion and it changes everything.
This idea of participating in the goodness and continual unfolding of God’s creation reminds me of the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that begins, “Make me a channel (or instrument) of your peace.” I remember being so delighted when I learned my last name, “Rohr,” is the German word for “conduit” or “pipe”! As I’ve often said, I’m just a mouth in the Body of Christ. That’s my only gift. Before talks I try to pray that God will get me out of the way so God’s message will get through.
Looking back on my life, I can see that God did everything. God even used my mistakes to bring me to God and God’s wisdom to others! I hope this week will inspire you to look at what has happened when you also said yes to participating as God’s instrument in the world.
Participating in Original Goodness
Everyone and every thing is created in the “image of God.” This is the objective connection or “divine DNA” given by God equally to all creatures at the moment of their conception. The philosopher Owen Barfield (1898–1997) called this phenomenon “original participation.” [1] We could also call it original innocence, unwoundedness, or use Matthew Fox’s brilliant term, “original blessing.” As Genesis 1 clearly and repeatedly states, creation is good. So how do we first see and then practice this original goodness?
Paul gives us an answer. He says, “There are only three things that last: faith, hope, and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). In Roman Catholic theology we called these three essential attitudes the “theological virtues,” because they are a “participation in the very life of God.” They are given freely by God, “infused” into us at our conception. In this understanding, faith, hope, and love are far more defining of the human person than the “moral virtues,” which are the various good behaviors we learn as we grow older. For all of their poor formulations, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity still offer humanity a foundationally positive anthropology. We are made out of the faith, hope, and love of God—to increase faith, hope, and love in this world. If you have a negative anthropology, as some Reformers, and many cynical Catholics do, even a good theology cannot really undo it.
From the very beginning, faith, hope, and love are planted deep within our nature—indeed they are our very nature (Romans 5:5; 8:14–17). The Christian life is simply a matter of becoming who we already are (1 John 3:1–2; 2 Peter 1:3–4). But we have to awaken, allow, and advance this core identity by saying a conscious yes to it and drawing upon it as a reliable and Absolute Source. Again, image must become likeness. We must participate in the process!
I offer these words from Ilia Delio who draws her insights from her deep study of the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955):
Teilhard held that God is at the heart of cosmological and biological life, the depth and center of everything that exists. . . . Our nature is already endowed with grace, and thus our task is to be attentive to that which is within and that which is without—mind and heart—so that we may contribute to building up the world in love. Every action can be sacred action if [it] is rooted in love, and in this way, both Christians and non-Christians can participate in the emerging body of Christ. . . .
Our lives have meaning and purpose. . . . We either help build this world up in love or tear it apart. Either way, we bear the responsibility for the world’s future, and thus we bear responsibility for God’s life as well. [2]
In other words, we matter. We simply have to choose to trust reality, which is to finally trust both ourselves and God. They must work as one.
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