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Crucified In the Middle

The fact that Christ was crucified in the middle is highly symbolic. To hold the center is to suffer for the common good.

There will always be radical and diabolical forces attempting to pull us apart. Who among us will suffer the tension of holding the middle?

To hold the center is to live the incarnation, with all its limitations and it’s inevitable pascal mystery.

To hold the center is to follow the person of Jesus, including a commitment to both his mystical body and His flawed institutional church.

To hold the center is to become Christ in the world through our own kenosis, our own act of self-emptying love for humanity.

To hold the center is to resist escaping into ideology and conspiracy, and to ground ourselves in the Word made flesh, and accept our own humanity.

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Kenotic Energy

Phil 2:2 “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant”

We know from science that our entire physiology runs on electro-chemical energy. When this flow of energy is impeded our very life is in peril. All forms of energy involve a potential difference or “charge” held between polls that has a certain flow direction or “polarity” from a higher to lower state.

At the center of the Christian faith is the Kenosis of God, where he empties himself in love to bring us into intimate communion with himself. This primordial love energy that is the cause of our vast expanding universe is demonstrated in its most particular form in the incarnation. This is our point of invitation to join in the divine kenosis, to get into this great flow of energy. This means connecting our unique expression of self-emptying love (our vocation) with God’s universal self emptying love (the Pascal mystery). The energy flow is always from a higher to a lower state, and this is why humility is the electrolyte of love.

The opposite of this flow is self-centeredness, which is an attempt to reverse the polarity of God’s image in us. In so doing we impede or resist the divine-human flow of energy. We are in a sense resisting the incarnation. The result is a negative inflammatory response within us that will lead to division, illnesses, and disorder. We become dammed-up and unable to experience the full flow of kenotic energy the we were made for.

To let go and enter the Kenotic flow is to discover true happiness and joy. It can also be a path of vulnerability and suffering, but the type of suffering that is unitive, creative and flowing outward, not stuck, dammed up or bitter.

This kenotic energy is self-actualizing in the sense that we find our true self only when are able to release our grip on self, just as Christ “did not count equality with God as something to be grasped”. Saint John Paul 2 phased it this way: “We only discover our self in the gift of our self” (JP2).

How do we practice this Kenotic energy, this Christic-Yoga? Its simple:

Be a servant: “I came to serve, not to be served”.

Become aware and compassionate: “My food is to do the will of God”

Be in communion and community: “I do nothing on my own”

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No Resume Required

We go through life building our resumes, as if they are our true identity. Even in our religious obligations, and our service we are unconsciously collecting our little badges and points. What we often fail to realize is that at our Baptism God throws away our resume, because we have become his beloved child. We no longer need a resume, just like a child does not need a resume to be accepted in his own home. If we can understand this simple message, that what the Father said to Jesus at his baptism was also meant for us:

“This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased”,

then we have everything we need to succeed in life’s journey.

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The Best Wine is for Weddings

The Wedding Feast of Cana is the first sign or miracle of Jesus. The fact that it takes place at a wedding is significant. Marriage is the icon of God’s approach to man. As the prophet says “your builder wishes to marry you” (Isiah 62:5). And through Hosea the Lords says:
“I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord”(Hosea 2:19)

If Jesus came to reveal the Father’s love for us, and His great desire is to be fully united with us, then it is fitting and prophetic that His ministry begins at a wedding.

Wine is a symbol of joy, and the highest joy is the nuptial union because it points us to the union of Christ and His spouse-which is us.

Marriage is an icon of God’s love for His creation, and wine is a symbol of the intoxicating joy that such a covenant love provides.

Jesus initiates this New Covenant with us by turning the water of the old covenant used for ritual cleansing into the New Wine of the Holy Spirit so that we might enter into the joy of the Lord. That we might have intimacy with God.

The best wine is reserved for last, to point us to the wedding feast of God and man which is eternal life.

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Behold the Eucharist

When we look upon the elevated bread, two realities are becoming one. Our life and Christ’s life are held up before us.

And as we gaze upon the altar, two other realities are merging: the table of feasting and thanksgiving with the altar of sacrifice and worship.

This encounter happens in one particular place and time but it also opens out onto a vast terrace of all times, places, and persons.

When the priest’s fingers grasp the host to lift it, so too our God is holding us and elevating us. As the bread is broken open, so to is our life. We all must leave the womb of security to be birthed into this vulnerable and broken world, and as we break into this life, we are also broken for the world, and thus become bread for each other. It is the Christ who reveals to us this purpose for humanity and invites us to join in.

This pascal mystery is all around us and within us. Just consider the bread we consume, with its supply chain of brokenness and self emptying love. First the earth must be broken open in order to accept the seed, and then the seed must fall and die, and then the sky must also break open and let go of the water she has stored so the broken seed might spout, and the farmer must suffer the hard labor of Cain to gather and harvest the wheat, and the grain must endure the threshing, crushing and grinding down.

Why so much falling, breaking and letting go? Is this what we must bring to the table of abundance and joy? Perhaps it is our self-emptying love joined to His that prepares the table of abundance before us. And what is left, but to give Thanks.

We sit and gaze upon this unfathomable mystery of bread transformed into a real divine presence. And we reflect on the mystery of our own lives offered up and joined into God’s life.

Does it seem strange that the highest form of worship is a meal together, a feast of thanksgiving that is at the same time a memorial of sacrifice?

And what do we make of this cup that is lifted up? This wine mingled with water. The wine of intoxication, and of the Holy Spirit and joy; but also the blood of sacrifice. And the tiny drop of water, our human nature, falling into the cup, being united with a vast sea of divinity. This is the cup of your life that is being held up before you. Can you accept it ? Will you drink all of it? Can you recognize the divine nature within the brokenness, and growing ever fuller within you? Can you see how everything comes together at this table, both the joy and the sorrow? This is the Eucharist, the joyous gift of communion, of becoming one, and of giving thanks?

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“Everyone will be Salted with Fire” Mark 9:49

What a strange phrase. Salt is used here as a verb, “Salted”, to imply you will be preserved or saved by fire. Both salt and fire can burn us and cause us pain, but the similarity ends there, because salt preserves while fire consumes and transforms.

We are Baptized in the Holy Spirit and with fire. In other words, we are filled with God’s Love, which is a form of energy that burns within us and transforms us.

Our path to safety and wholeness is paradoxically not to try and protect ourselves behinds walls of wealth and power, but to empty ourselves, and allow ourselves to be consumed by Love.

To be “salted with fire” is to become Christ in the world, to become love. Allowing this Love to burn us up will not only save and preserve us, but it will enable others around us to be saved. Christ’s self-emptying love is what enables us to be “salted with fire”, to be baptized into Christ.

“Everyone” is offered this salting with fire. God comes to us disguised as our life, weather we have the privilege of baptism or not. And we can choose to become the love that approaches us or to self-isolate, protect and defend our ourselves against it. The path that seems like a dying is the saving one. The losing of ones self in the fire of God’s love is the only way to preserve our true self and others.

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Your Promise Lord

“I am carried away by anger
for my foes forget your word.
Your promise is tried in the fire,
the delight of your servant. Ps 119:137

Living by faith can be an uncomfortable and vulnerable state. It is easy to become angry with a seemingly silent God standing by while injustice and suffering continue.

The psalmist is being honest and so must we. It is okay to express our anger with God, but once the emotion is vented we must shift to the real crux of the issue which is God’s promise. If God is truly faithful and just, then its His own promise that is being tried by fire within our hearts.

Every time we face a set back or failure or injustice, we have a choice to remain angry, as if we are supposed to be in control, or we let go and lean into the unshakable covenant promises of God. We can’t solve the worlds problems but we can trust in God.

The Servant who can cling to Gods promise as he goes through this fire experiences the simple “delight” of being a servant of the most high. He can’t avoid the fire because he is in Love and he lives in the world, and yet as he learns not to lean on his own strength or his own understanding and he discovers a liberating joy amidst the fire.

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Love Answering Love’s Call

The Christian story is essentially about Love answering loves call. This is who God is, and why the Son of God emptied himself and took on our humanity. It is why God suffered in Christ for us. 

Just as love responds to love within God, it also echoes within the interior landscape of each soul. Love is always calling and waiting for a response. The Father calls to the Son, and the Christ within each human person is invited to respond. The formless and hidden God continues to incarnate His Word in the world through our love.

As the psalm says, “deep calls to deep in the roar of waters.” This is the divine love stirring deep within us, and seeking a response from us. We only have to say yes, for it is God’s Love responding to God’s Love within us.  Our yes is Love’s expansion. 

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Threshold

When you crossed the threshold I wish I could have been with you.

When you took your last breath I wish I could have held your hand.

When you were finally free, I wish you could have rejoiced with me.

I wish you could slip a message across the threshold, to say everything is okay.

I would like to know how you spend your time where there is no time.

With your crossing I now live on this threshold, because a part of me has crossed with you, and a part of you has remained with me.

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Joy

Joy is about connection and acceptance.

Joy is about knowing and being known.

Joy is about loving and being loved.

Joy is about laughter, and irony, and the ability to play.

Joy is about having a sense of security without being in control.

Joy is about discovering the enchantment of ordinary things.

Joy is about kissing the lips of the present moment.