Prophets Belong in Community

CAC teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes describes our natural resistance to prophets in our midst: 

Prophets are difficult to have around. No one wants to claim the title or do the work because of it. In this postmodern age, everybody is uncomfortable with prophets. They yell when you don’t want them to. They ask for trouble when you could avoid it. They don’t have a politically correct bone in their bodies….

Prophets are leaders, but not leaders of their own choosing. Inevitably, they have some sort of divine encounter. A burning bush, a ram in the bush, a call in the night, visions, dreams. They’re quirky and more than a little weird. Take Jeremiah as an example, crying all the time. And Isaiah fasting and lying in the dirt, and John the Baptist eating locusts, and Huldah prophesying doom. Finally, one of the most important characteristics of prophets is that they are dangerous to the system….

In bringing messages from God—and God doesn’t mince words—God speaks directly through them. They have a relationship and intimacy with the Divine. They communicate with God through prayer, direct speech; God walks and talks with them. Maybe not literally but in other ways. They have gifts, and they offer signs and wonders associated with the verification of the presence of God. They have communal connections. They act on behalf of community, not for their own gain, and are dependent on the community for help when they need it.

Holmes emphasizes the communal nature of the prophetic role:

This is a neglected but important aspect of the prophetic call. In Numbers 11:24–29, Moses is exhausted with the people. Basically, God says “Okay, okay, assemble the elders. Look to the community. You were never supposed to do this alone. I told you to do it; I didn’t tell you to do it alone.” How many of us are carrying burdens that are not ours, and we’re feeling pretty righteous about it? The work of living and dying and raising children, leading congregations, was never meant to be solitary work. So after the elders assemble, Joshua tells Moses that the elders are prophesying, and he says, “Moses, make this stop!” And Moses’ reply in Numbers 11:29 is, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that God would put God’s Spirit on them!”

Let’s just sit with that for a minute. Have you ever felt as if God’s Spirit was on you? Although many of the prophets in the Bible are presented as single carriers of God’s word, often there was a community of other prophets that they came from or were associated with. And so, who is your community? … If you’re called to the prophetic task, and I think in some aspects all of us are—where is your prophetic community that will feed you and support you and guide you and help you?

THE DIVINE HOURS

A form of prayer at specified times to be used by individuals or groups. The Divine Hours includes morning, midday, vespers (evening) and compline (before retiring) offices, having roots in the biblical tradition. By default the Divine Hours below is displayed based on Eastern Standard Time, U.S. You can use these links to view in another U.S. timezone:  CST  |  MST  |  PST

Other time zones will be added as requested.

You may find it helpful to read the introduction by the author, Phyllis Tickle.

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The Morning Office

To Be Observed on the Hour or Half Hour Between 6 and 9 a.m.

The Call to Prayer

Love the LORD, all you who worship him;* the LORD protects the faithful, but repays to the full those who act haughtily.

Psalm 31:23

The Request for Presence

Early in the morning I cry out to you,* for in your word is my trust.

Psalm 119:147

The Greeting

â??You are my God, and I will thank you;* you are my God, and I will exalt you.â??

Psalm 118:28

The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Our help is in the Name of the LORD,* the maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 124:8

A Reading

Of John the Baptizer it is written: â??When the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, â??Who are you?â?? He declared, he did not deny but declared, â??I am not the Christ . . . I am, as Isaiah prophesied: A voice of one that cries out in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord. Make his paths straight.â?? Now those who had been sent were Pharisees, and they put this question to him, â??Why are you baptizing if you are not the Christ, and not Elijah, and not the Prophet?â?? John answered them, â??I baptize with water, but standing among youâ??unknown to youâ??is the one who is coming after me; and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandal.â?? This happened at Bethany, on the far side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.â??

John 1:19â??20, 23â??28

The Refrain

Our help is in the Name of the LORD,* the maker of heaven and earth.

The Morning Psalm

Tremble, O Earth, at the Presence of the LORD

Hallelujah! When Israel came out of Egypt,* the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech, Judah became Godâ??s sanctuary* and Israel his dominion. The sea beheld it and fled;* Jordan turned and went back. The mountains skipped like rams,* and the little hills like young sheep. What ailed you, O sea, that you fled?* O Jordan, that you turned back? You mountains, that you skipped like rams?* you little hills like young sheep? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,* at the presence of the God of Jacob, Who turned the hard rock into a pool of water* and flint-stone into a flowing spring.

Psalm 114

The Refrain

Our help is in the Name of the LORD,* the maker of heaven and earth.

The Cry of the Church

Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your Name. May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for yours are the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Concluding Prayer of the Church

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: Preserve me with your mighty power, that I may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me to the fulfilling of your pur- pose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.â? 

The Divine Hours are reprinted here with permission of Doubleday and Phyllis Tickle. Not for distribution without permission from the author.
Buy The Divine Hours from Amazon.com

The Divine Hours © Copyright 2003 Phyllis Tickle www.phyllistickle.com

Choosing the Prophetic Path

On this New Year’s Day, we invite you to explore the theme for this year’s Daily Meditations: The Prophetic Path. We begin with Father Richard’s understanding of the theme and what it means to him: 

Our Daily Meditation theme this year is called The Prophetic Path, and I don’t think it’s an accidental phrase. I offer it in contrast to what most of us were trained to think of as Christianity in general—not as a prophetic path, but as a contest, which immediately frames reality in terms of win-lose, winners and losers. The prophetic path says there’s a way of moving toward winning that includes losing. It doesn’t exclude it. Can we see the genius of that? It’s what you’ve often heard me call perfection as the inclusion of imperfection. Sin is part of the journey towards salvation. Once you hear it, I hope you can say, “Of course, that’s obvious!”

Most of us prefer the language of courtroom and judgment and contest, where there are a few winners and lots of losers. This has not served history well. The prophetic path talks about a journey of two steps forward that necessarily continues to include one step backward. That falling, that failing, that suffering—use whatever word—becomes the energy for the next two steps forward. This is wisdom literature as opposed to contest literature. We’re going to use the meditations this year to try to illustrate that the Christian way is a prophetic path. [1]

Father Richard has long described the prophets as those who offer a “third way” beyond competitive, us-and-them thinking: 

There is a third way beyond fight or flight, conservative or liberal, and it probably is a way of “kneeling.” Most people would just call it “wisdom,” which is always distinguished from mere intelligence. It demands a transformation of consciousness and a move beyond the dualistic win/lose mind. 

We come to this “third way” of the prophetic path only over time. In the words of W. H. Auden, “For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it / Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.” [2] The gospel accepts this essentially tragic nature of human existence; it is willing to bear the contradictions that are imprinted on all of reality. It will always be a road less traveled. Let’s call it “unstable stability”! But for some reason, it is only the real stability, because it is a truthful map of reality, and it is always the truth that sets us free. It is contact with Reality that finally heals us. And contemplation, quite simply, is meeting reality in its most simple, immediate, and contradictory form. It is the resolving of those immense contradictions that characterizes the mystics, the saints, the prophets, and all those who pray. The result is always a “third something.” [3]

A Journey to the Heart of God

For Father Richard, the power of the prophetic path lies in the tradition and example of the Hebrew prophets. In this excerpt from a series recorded in 1980, Richard describes how a prophetic imagination keeps the church and our faith alive: 

In many ways, I think part of the explanation for perhaps the powerlessness of much of modern Christianity has been that it has lost touch with the Hebrew Scriptures. In particular, we have lost touch with the prophets. When we lose the sense of the prophets and their vision, we enter into a very overly spiritualized interpretation of Christianity. The prophets kept the word of God earthy. They kept it whole. They kept it real. They would not let us divide earth from heaven. They put heaven and earth together and they said, “It’s all one.”

The prophets speak out of a deep experience of God. It seems, somehow, that they’ve entered into the heart of God. They’re bold enough and brazen enough to almost dare to say, “I’ve seen God. I know what God thinks. I’m going to tell you what God thinks.” It takes a strange kind of self-confidence, and even inspiration, to be able to speak with the self-assurance of the Jewish prophets. I think what they give us are, among other things, new images. They give us new images by which we can capture and grasp reality. It seems that a failure of the modern church, maybe of the church in every age, has been a failure of imagination. The prophets explode our imaginations if we can learn how to listen to them and learn to understand the images and metaphors with which they speak.

Imagination is largely a matter of being able to re-image life in new ways. It is not to be caught or trapped in old images of hopelessness. When we’re trapped in old images, we keep living out of them, fighting against them, resisting them, and even saying they don’t work. But it seems we are incapable oftentimes of creating or even accepting new images and living out of those new images.

The prophets give us a sense of the possible. They give us a sense of the impossible, too. That’s why, frankly, they are so hard to listen to—because they explode our minds and push back the limits of our imagination. They increase our capacity to feel. They intensify our capacity for suffering. That’s why people don’t want to listen to them, because prophets increase our ability to feel what God is feeling. To feel God’s pain, God’s desire, God’s longing, and even God’s anger, if you’ll allow.

The prophetic path is a journey into the heart of God. 

In this homily, Father Richard illustrates our inherent union with God—and the small self that keeps us separate.

We go through our lives, our years on this earth, thinking of ourselves as separate. That sense of separateness basically causes every stupid, sinful, silly thing we ever do. The little, separate self takes offense when people don’t show us proper respect. The separate self lies and steals and does unkind things to other people. When we’re separate, everything becomes about protecting and defending ourselves. It can consume our lives.

One word for overcoming that false sense of separateness, that illusory self, is heaven, and, quite frankly, that is what death offers us. It is simply returning to the Source from which we came, where all things are One. The whole gospel message is radical union with God, with neighbor, and even with ourselves. I think that’s why so many of us are drawn to church each week—to receive communion and to eventually, hopefully, realize that we are in communion.

Probably no gospel story says this more clearly and forthrightly than the parable of the vine and the branches (John 15:1–10). Jesus says, “I’m the vine, God is the vine grower, and you (we) are the branches.” As long as we remain in that relationship, we are in love and in union. Whenever we do anything unloving, at that moment, we’re out of union. Even if it’s just a negative, angry, or judgmental thought, we’re doing that out of a sense of disunion—always! And Jesus is very clear. He says that state is useless. Once the branch is cut off from the vine, we might as well throw it into the fire because it’s not going to bear any fruit. He’s not making a threat. He’s just talking practically, as if he were the vineyard owner.

Now, that’s a pretty strong statement about us and the choices we make from that unnecessary state of separateness. We have never been separate from God except in our thoughts, but our thoughts don’t make it true! Nor are we separate from anyone else. Whatever separates us from one another—nationality, religion, ethnicity, economics, language—those are all just accidentals that will all pass away. We are One in God, with Christ and with one another. “I am the vine and you are the branches” (John 15:5). If only we could live that way every hour!

We all pull back into ourselves. We pout and complain and resent and fear. That’s what the little self does. The little self, the branch cut off from the vine, can do nothing according to this gospel. So Jesus says, “Remain in me as I remain in you” (John 15:4).  The promise is constant from God’s side. The only question is from our side. Do we choose to live in that union? Every time we do something with respect, with love, with sympathy, with compassion, with caring, with service, we are operating in union.

____________________________

Sarah Young

Trust Me with every fiber of your being. What I can accomplish through you is proportional to how much you depend on Me. Trust Me in all your decisions and circumstances. Surrender, connect with Me in all your circumstances and live through connection.

Psalm 40:4 Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust, And does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies

Psalm 56:3-4 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise— in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?

Psalm 62:8 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

Isaiah 26:3-4 You will keep in perfect peace. those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. 4 Trust in the Lord forever,

A Capacity for Communion

Catholic spirituality author Judy Cannato writes that our freedom, gifts, and interdependence bring us to a holy obligation:

In Jesus’ final discourse he found it necessary to speak to his disciples about unity, “That they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11, 22). To add emphasis Jesus prays these words twice. Indeed, they are the heart of his mission and message. Jesus’ radical unity with the Holy One defined his life, and his prayer indicates that he wants that same radical unity to define those who follow. . . .

Connectedness is fundamental to our reality. No matter which sphere of life we observe, from the physical to the spiritual, we are connected to others. . . . Many of the social and ecological problems that confront us today stem from our delusion that we are separate from, better, or more significant than, other members of creation—from other groups of people we encounter to the air we breathe. Our lack of openness to all may very well mean our demise.

If we are to expand our hearts to include all creation we need to embrace our capacity for communion. . . . Relationship is something that all life requires, even inorganic life. Our vitality depends upon the connections we establish and the communion we share. [1]

Minister and faith leader Jen Bailey writes to encourage the “misfits,” those on society’s edges, to see themselves as essential to a healthy, sustaining, and interdependent future: 

All around us things are shifting, systems are collapsing, and institutions are failing. This should not surprise us. Around the world, elders across cultures and peoples were predicting this time would come. It is a time of great uncovering in which Mother Earth and Father Sky are pushing us into a divine reckoning about what it means to be in right relationship with one another and all sentient beings in the twenty-first century and beyond. It is clear to me that the actions we take now will have deep and irreversible consequences for the generations to come.

The good news is that this time is made for misfits.

When you are at the center of a circle, it is impossible to see what is at the perimeter—if you are even aware that there is a perimeter. As misfits who were pushed to the edges and in-between places, we are able to see what is on the horizon and collectively discern what is needed to meet the challenges ahead. We are called to be the gardeners who will compost and tend to the soil upon which future generations will sow seeds that will one day blossom. . . .

The great news is we do not have to take on these challenges alone. In the words of the great prayer created in honor of Bishop Oscar Romero, “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.” [2] [3]

Jesus’ Person-to-Person Ministry

Richard writes about how Jesus’ ministry reveals that true conversion stems from relationship, not words; from experience, not belief: 

The ego loves to use words, but the primary way we communicate “the reign of God is at hand” is by our presence. Jesus clearly modeled this. It seems that Jesus and his disciples took up residence in people’s homes and lived as closely as possible to the people. In their ministry, healing and preaching are so intertwined that we could say that there has been no real proclaiming of the kingdom, no authentic conversion, unless there is healing in some real sense.

Understandably, many of us have come to rely on an impersonal medium like the printed word. But the only way words can have any effect on our lives is if a person is coming across through this medium. When I am preaching, teaching, or writing, I have to try to give myself away; I have to let others encounter me in some real way. That’s the only experience that will make any of my words halfway believable. Jesus gave us words, but more significantly, he gave his “flesh” for the life of the world—in the way he lived and the way he died.

In Luke’s Gospel, all of Jesus’ rules of ministry—his “tips for the road”—are very interpersonal. They are based on putting people in touch with people. Person-to-person is the way the gospel was originally communicated. Person-in-love-with-person, person-respecting-person, person-forgiving-person, person-touching-person, person-crying-with-person, person-hugging-person: that’s where the Spirit is so beautifully present. [1]

Brian McLaren describes how Jesus’ invitation to participate in “God’s kingdom” impacts relationships, person by person: 

The same thing happens with teachers, politicians, lawyers, engineers, and salespeople who take seriously their identity as participants in the kingdom of God. The way they teach, the way they develop public policies, the way they seek justice, the way they design and work with resources from God’s creation, the way they buy and sell—all of these are given dignity in the context of God’s kingdom, and soon, transformation begins to happen. After all, when you see your students, constituency, clients, or customers as people who are loved by God and as your fellow citizens in God’s kingdom, it becomes harder to rip them off or give them second best. And when enough people begin to live with that viewpoint, in little ways as well as big ones, over long periods of time, things truly change. . . .

Life for them now is about an interactive relationship—reconciled to God, reconciled to one another—and so they see their entire lives as an opportunity to make the beautiful music of God’s kingdom so that more and more people will be drawn into it, and so that the world will be changed by their growing influence. Everyone can have a role in this expanding kingdom. [2]

Father Greg Boyle is the Founder of Homeboy Industries, which offers jobs, services, and dignity to former gang members. He has witnessed the healing that comes from having reverence for reality—which is where we bump into God.  

We remember the sacred by our reverence. . . . This is the esteem we extend to the reality revealed to us. Jesus didn’t abandon his reality, he lived it. He ran away from nothing and sought some wise path through everything. He engaged in it all with acceptance. He had an eye out always for cherishing his reality. A homie, Leo, wrote me: “I’m going to trust God’s constancy of love to hover over my crazy ass. I’m fervent in my efforts to cultivate holy desires.” This is how we find this other kind of stride and joyful engagement in our cherished reality. The holy rests in every single thing. Yes, it hovers, over our crazy asses. . . .

I always liked that Saint Kateri Tekakwitha’s name “Tekakwitha” means “she who bumps into things.” What if holiness is a contact sport and we are meant to bump into things? This is what it means to embrace a contemplative, mystical way of seeing wholeness. It gives a window into complexity and keeps us from judging and scapegoating and demonizing. If we allow ourselves to “bump into things,” then we quit measuring. We cease to Bubble-Wrap ourselves against reality. We stop trying to “homeschool” our way through the world so that the world won’t touch us. Hard to embrace the world . . . if we are so protective and defensively shielded from it. A homie told me once, “It’s taken me all these years to see the real world. And once ya see it—there’s only God there.”

Boyle closes the gap between the secular and the sacred:

We don’t want to distance the secular but always bring it closer. It’s only then that ordinary things and moments become epiphanies of God’s presence. Some man said to me once, “I want to become more spiritual.” Yet God is inviting us to inhabit the fullness of our humanity. God holds out wholeness to us. Let’s not settle for just spiritual. We are sacramental to our core when we think that everything is holy. The holy not just found in the supernatural but in the Incarnational here and now. The truth is that sacraments are happening all the time if we have the eyes to see. . . .

The point of the Incarnation is that Jesus is one of us in the ordinary. Jesus is God’s declaration that the Infinite is present in it all. . . .

Our mystical “diving in” is at the heart of the Incarnation. Jesus ONLY referred to himself as the Son of Man, which means the Human One. It must be important. It shows up eighty-seven times in the Bible. “Never say it’s not God,” if it’s human, in the flesh, and ever-present.

__________________________________

Sarah Young

As you ponder the majestic mystery of the incarnation, relax in My everlasting arms. Do not try to understand, simply surrender, worship and follow Me. I am the light that guides you to peace and tranquility.

Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” In this verse, John is communicating that Jesus (the Word) is the entire message, the complete message, God wanted to send to earth.

Matthew 2:10-11 NKJV When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Luke 1:78-79 because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:78–79 — King James Version (KJV 1900) 78 Through the tender mercy of our God;

Incarnation at the Edge

In this Christmas homily, Father Richard speaks of the surprising nature of Incarnation. We find God in all the places we don’t expect. 

We see in the original Gospel stories of Jesus’ birth that there’s really nothing pretty about the first Christmas. The only way human beings can understand spiritual things is that they have to be presented in physical, material form. We can’t get it otherwise. We have to see it and we have to touch it. How God comes into the world would also seem to be very important, as if to say to us: this is where God is to be found. The great question has always been, “What is God? Who is God? Where is this God hiding?” because initially, God isn’t really obvious to most people. The mystery we celebrate at Christmas is saying that the divine has chosen its hiding place in the world, and it’s in all material things. And that all becomes summed up now in the body of Jesus.

Where is this God being revealed? Not in the safe world, but at the edge, at the bottom, among those where we don’t want to find God, where we don’t look for God, where we don’t expect God. The way we’ve created Christianity, it seems like it’s all about being nice, pretty, middle class, “normal” and under the law. Here we have in the Gospel stories Jesus, Mary, and Joseph being none of those things. It might just be telling us we should be looking elsewhere. [1]

Writer and organizer Kelley Nikondeha describes how the context of Jesus’ birth demonstrates God’s Incarnation amongst those who suffer and are oppressed: 

The advent narratives demand we take the political and economic world of Roman Palestine seriously. The Gospel writers named the empires of Caesar and Herod not for dramatic effect; they didn’t mention a census or massacre for literary flourish. The Gospel writers used contextual markers to describe in concrete ways the turmoil of the times that hosted the first advent.

It is this very context that makes the advent narratives contemporary—whether in Israel-Palestine or lands beyond. Our troubled times, shaped by all manner of injustice, cause continued suffering, making the loud cries of lament and cries for peace timely, as they are answered by advent. . . .

The Incarnation positions Jesus among the most vulnerable people, the bereft and threatened of society. The first advent shows God wrestling with the struggles common to many the world over. And from this disadvantaged stance, Jesus lives out God’s peace agenda as a counter-testimony to Caesar’s peace.

This is the story of advent: we join Jesus as incarnations of God’s peace on this earth for however long it takes. God walks in deep solidarity with humanity, sharing in our sufferings and moments of hope. Amid our hardship, God is with us. Emmanuel remains the name on our lips in troubled times. [2]

The First Incarnation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. —John 1:1, 3

Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Richard Rohr views Incarnation as beginning first with the birth of the cosmos, long before the birth of Jesus:

What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began, or is there even such a thing as “before”? Why did God create at all? What was God’s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it—like Jesus himself?

Let’s admit that we will probably never know the “how” or even the “when” of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the “why.” Is there any evidence for why God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal, or do we even need a creator “God” to explain the universe?

Most of the perennial traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this: Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit. This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and human beings. This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus.

When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. But I want to suggest that the first Incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation.

The Incarnation, then, is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ we continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling.

“Christ” is a word for the Primordial Template (Logos or Word) through whom “all things came into being, and not one thing had its being except through him” (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity’s unique contribution among the world religions.

The Second Incarnation Flows from the First

Father Richard writes of the Incarnation of Christ in the person of Jesus:

Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally outflowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world (see Romans 8:19–25). Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God. Since the very beginning of time, God’s Spirit has been revealing its glory and goodness through the physical creation.

Christians believe that this universal Christ presence was later “born of a woman under the law” (Galatians 4:4) in a moment of chronological time. This is the great Christian leap of faith.

We daringly believe that God’s presence was poured into a single human being, so that humanity and divinity can be seen to be operating as one in him—and therefore in us! But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world. The second Incarnation flowed out of the first, out of God’s loving union with physical creation. [1]

Jesus offered the world a living example of fully embodied Love that emerged out of our ordinary, limited life situations. For me, this is the real import of Paul’s statement that Jesus was “born of a woman under the law.” In Jesus, God became part of our small, homely world and entered into human limits and ordinariness—and remained anonymous and largely invisible for his first thirty years. Throughout his life, Jesus himself spent no time climbing, but a lot of time descending, “emptying himself and becoming as all humans are” (Philippians 2:7), “tempted in every way that we are” (Hebrews 4:15) and “living in the limitations of weakness” (Hebrews 5:2).

Jesus walked, enjoyed, and suffered the entire human journey, and he told us that we could and should do the same. His life exemplified the unfolding mystery in all of its stages—from a hidden, divine conception, to a regular adult life full of love and problems, punctuated by a few moments of transfiguration and enlightenment, and all leading to glorious ascension and final return. As Hebrews 4:15 states, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who was like us in every way, experienced every temptation, and never backtracked” (my translation). We do not need to be afraid of the depths and breadths of our own lives, of what this world offers us or asks of us. We are given permission to become intimate with our own experiences, learn from them, and allow ourselves to descend to the depth of things, even our mistakes, before we try too quickly to transcend it all in the name of some idealized purity or superiority. God hides in the depths and is not seen as long as we stay on the surface of anything—even the depths of our sins. [2]

God for us, we call you Father. God alongside us, we call you Jesus. God within us, we call you Holy Spirit. —Richard Rohr

For Richard Rohr, the Trinity provides the foundation of a benevolent universe. Here Richard reflects on the meaning of “Father” in Trinitarian theology:

God for us is my understanding of, and code word for, the Father. It tells us that reality is foundationally benevolent. Reality is on our side. It’s not a scary universe. It tells us that God, like a good father, is for us and is protective of us. You can just as easily call God Mother, or Inherent Goodness, or Primal Love. God within us is my code word for the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is that inner aliveness that heals people and awakens them from their wounds. I often call the Spirit an interior homing device. For all our stupidity and mistakes, we have a deep internal intuition that we are children of God. It’s called the divine indwelling.

I understand Jesus as God alongside us. Jesus is the accompanying God who walks with us, especially through the mystery of death and resurrection. The paschal mystery is the summary of all of Jesus’ teaching and experience. Jesus is the manifest one who comes forth from the unmanifest and reveals the divine pattern. The pattern that Jesus the manifest one reveals is that the divine pattern is loss and renewal, death and resurrection. There is no other way. We dare not try to define any universe where there is no death and where there is no loss.

Unfortunately, very few people really want to believe in the paschal mystery. By and large, what human beings want is resurrection without death, answers without doubt, the conclusion without the process. We don’t like Jesus in this sense, leading us through this mystery.

When trust in God as Father is missing, there is a foundational scariness and insecurity to our experience of reality. In that sense, we could say that we are living in a world without the Father. It’s not a safe universe. It’s not a benevolent universe. We think there is an enemy behind every rock and that we’ve got to protect our lives at all costs because no one else will. It’s all on us. It’s understandable why people get so paranoid and preoccupied with security systems of every form and shape. When we don’t know God as the One who most desires our goodness, safety, and growth, there is no underlying “okayness” to the world and to our own lives. There’s no sense that reality is on our side, so we of course try to save ourselves.

Engaging with this mystery of the Trinity leads us into a desperate and dangerous love affair with God. It’s a love affair that’s always going on inside of us, almost in spite of us, and all we can do is start saying yes and start recognizing and honoring it.

_____________________________

Sarah Young

Your longing for heaven is an extension of your longing for Me. The hope of heaven is meant to strengthen you with wonderous joy. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope of heaven keeps you spiritual alive during dark times. This hope leads us to surrender, connection and gives us the ability to live out of that.

Romans 8:23-25 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope.

Hebrews 6:18-19 18 So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. 19 This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.

Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

Evolution: God’s Love in Action 

Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio finds evidence for a benevolent universe in evolutionary change driven by love:

To say “God is love” is to say that the name God refers to the divine energy of love that is dynamic, relational, personal, and unitive. God does what God is—love. Rather than seeing God as a separate being over the world, we can say that love-energy is the stuff of existence. . . . Where there is energy of attraction, union, generativity, and life, there is God. . . .

God is the name of personal divine love emerging in evolution, as consciousness complexifies and persons unite: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Evolution reveals a newness to God because love is always expressing itself in new patterns of relationships. . . . The dynamic fountain fullness of divine love means forever the newness of world; God is ever newness in love, and thus the world is ever new as well. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said that “you cannot step into the same river twice,” meaning change is inherent to life; every act bears an essential newness. . . . Divine love is not a river of stagnant water but a fountain fullness of overflowing love, love that is forever awakening to new life. [1]

Delio seeks to reconcile a good and loving God with the ever-present suffering in the world: 

There is no doubt that suffering and violence abound in the crevices of life, but suffering is not a punishment of a vengeful God. God does not abandon us; we abandon God by . . . running after little gods. God lives deep within us, as the center of love, but we are often [dismissive of] this inner center and drawn by the little gods of power, success, status, and wealth, everything we create for ourselves. . . . The theodicy question is not why God allows bad things to happen to good people but why we abandon God in the face of suffering. If God is love, then our only real hope is in God, because hope is the openness of love to infinite possibilities and new life. . . . This God of love appears in Jesus of Nazareth, a God who gets radically involved in the messiness of the world to be God for us. . . .

To have faith in a God of unconditional love is to realize how intimately close God is. So close we forget God’s presence. In his own day Jesus was immersed in a violent culture, a culture of conflict and anxiety. But he also knew of the deeper truth hidden beneath the surface of human judgment, namely that this broken, anxious world is oozing with God. He asked us to have faith, to believe that the reign of God is among us and within us. [2]