{"id":22273,"date":"2023-04-05T09:23:05","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T13:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22273"},"modified":"2023-04-05T10:01:43","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T14:01:43","slug":"a-transforming-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22273","title":{"rendered":"A Transforming Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Will Reagan &amp; United Pursuit - Lay It All Down (lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lzKW9fQshXE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In Holy Week, we know that <\/em><strong>resurrection and hope are on their way, but not before we face with Jesus the despair of betrayal, abandonment, and death.<\/strong><em> Brother John of Taiz\u00e9 compares Jesus\u2019 passion to Jonah\u2019s experience of the deep sea:\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus is brought to the lowest place, that place where the all-loving God seems infinitely distant. He enters a universe of utter solitude, meaninglessness, and fragmentation. Like the prophet Jonah, he is overwhelmed by chaos: \u201cYou cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood surrounded me; all your billows and waves have submerged me \u2026&nbsp;The waters closed over me; the deep engulfed me\u201d (Jonah 2:3, 5; Matthew 12:39\u201340).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does this mean that hope has been extinguished once and for all? Is the mission of Jesus a failure? [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>For CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault, the passion of Jesus reveals a wisdom that enables us to \u201cturn the tide\u201d from despair to empowerment in our own lives:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word \u201cpassion\u201d here we mean the events which end Jesus\u2019s earthly life: his betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death.\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So much bad, manipulative, guilt-inducing theology has been based on it that it\u2019s fair to wonder whether there is any hope of starting afresh. I believe wisdom does open up that possibility<strong>. The key lies in \u2026 reading Jesus\u2019s life as a sacrament: a sacred mystery whose real purpose is not to arouse empathy but to\u00a0<em>create empowerment<\/em>. <\/strong>In other words, <strong>Jesus is not particularly interested in increasing either your guilt or your devotion, but rather, in deepening your personal capacity to make the passage into unitive life\u2026.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Jesus] certainly lived in a very intense way the ordeals of betrayal, abandonment, homelessness, and death. Did it have to be like that? If he were indeed here on a divine mission, it would seem that he could have been given an easier career path: chief priest, political leader, the Messiah that people expected him to be\u2026. But none of these opportunities materialized. Why not?<strong>\u00a0<em>Because the path he\u00a0<\/em>did<em>\u00a0walk is precisely the one that would most fully unleash the transformative power of his teaching<\/em><\/strong><em>.<\/em>\u00a0It both modeled and consecrated the eye of the needle [<em>DM team: or the belly of the whale<\/em>] that <strong>each one of us must personally pass through in order to accomplish the \u201cone thing necessary\u201d here, according to his teaching: to die to self.<\/strong> I am not talking about literal crucifixion, of course, but\u00a0<em>I am<\/em>\u00a0talking about the literal laying down of our \u201clife,\u201d at least as we usually recognize it. Our <strong>only truly essential human task here, Jesus teaches, is to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood. His mission was to show us how to do this.<\/strong> [2]\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-500x364.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22278\" width=\"787\" height=\"573\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-500x364.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-300x219.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-768x559.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-1536x1119.png 1536w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image.png 1848w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 787px) 100vw, 787px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Holy Week, we know that resurrection and hope are on their way, but not before we face with Jesus the despair of betrayal, abandonment, and death. Brother John of Taiz\u00e9 compares Jesus\u2019 passion to Jonah\u2019s experience of the deep sea:\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus is brought to the lowest place, that place where the all-loving God seems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22273"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22279,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273\/revisions\/22279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}