Christ be our Light!

I always appreciate the Holy Rosary and the many fruits I find come from such this particular prayer to our Blessed Mother. This morning’s prayers were particular enlightening and fulfilling, and so, I thought, why not share the fruits of my prayer with my fellow blog-o-philes.

The Luminous Mysteries are by far my favorite series of mysteries to pray. Today, I began my meditation of the First Mystery, the Baptism of our Lord, by thinking about the particular water that touched our Lord. Usually anything water comes into contact with will adulterate the water—water brings a certain amount of purity to a blemish and losses its own purity in order to purify the blemished (i.e. clean water touches a dirty dish, washes and cleans the dish, but at the expense of becoming dirty water). Yet, perhaps for the first time in the history of water, on the day of our Lord’s baptism, it touched something even more pure than itself—the head and body of Jesus Christ!

Imagine the very water that did this! It is so invigorating to think of the individual drops which rolled off the sinless body of Christ, as if they met a frictionless surface that propelled them and speed them toward a greater purity to fall back into a muddy Jordan only to continue to purify the water’s captive filth. The water cycle teaches us that water is preserved over time, albeit in ever morphing form, but the muddy water of the Jordan before Christ stepped into it likely contained a molecule (at least) of water that was or touched another molecule of water that played such miraculous and crucial roles throughout salvation history—the water that drowned the sinful world and set Noah’s ark afloat; the water that destroyed Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, &c.

Water has a particular symbolism in Judaism—the seas being a tumult of chaos to be feared and avoided, and why not if for all of salvation history water consumes the sin of man?! Each once-pure molecule drowns sin somehow and rightfully the sea is viewed as a churning cesspool, a deep abyss of darkness. Until, of course, the purity of Christ’s own Being touches the water that touches Him. If water could think, how perplexed it would be! To touch something pure for once!

It is this water’s encounter with Christ that got my prayer-wheels turning—where deep cries out to deep—the abyss of darkness that is the raging waters is met by the Abyss of Mercy and Love—the Light of the world. This took me back to the very beginning, when the earth was “a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the waters.” But, in Christ’s Baptism, God’s Spirit is not only hovering over the water, but actually in the water! And in the beginning, the empty, dark, formless deep is given definition and shape when God says, “Let there be light.” Christ is the light of the world, the Light that, again, redefines the water—purifying a sinful substance, essentially changing a substance’s essence from what it was to something new.

And isn’t this the real lesson of the Luminous Mysteries?! How Christ as the Light of the World transforms, transubstantiates?! The first three mysteries (His Baptism, the Wedding Feast at Cana, and the Proclamation of the Kingdom) show what a living encounter with Christ can do to the physical world. He can transform it! How does he transform it? By being the light that the fourth mystery (His Transfiguration) so clearly illustrates that He is—He is the shining, radiant beacon of Light—the Word of God, which is God’s first words in the Bible—“Let there be light.” God utters this phrase first to give shape, to disclose reality, to make His Creation of Heaven and Earth known—things are changed by moving from formless voids, dark and deep, because they encounter the Light.

Indeed, each of the first four mysteries leads to the ultimate illustration of Christ’s transformative power in the Institution of the Holy Eucharist where he transubstantiates bread and wine into His Body and Blood. And why does he do this?! To rival Houdini?! Because He was bored at the table and had ill manners, and so thought He would play with His food?! No! Certainly not. The fourth mystery shows what Christ is: the Light. The first three show what an encounter with Christ can do, as does the fifth (He can change things). But the fifth points to a personal economy with God. The first three mysteries are historical facts showing a pattern. The fifth mystery is an invitation to have faith in Christ’s historic track record of transforming things. In this final mystery Christ changes common things into Himself so that we (common things) can have a historic encounter with Him repeatedly, over time, and so be ever-conformed to Him, changed into Him.

The Light of the World that in the very beginning is called upon by God to cement Creation by giving it definition, shape, form, and illumination is allowed to shine on us, nay, shine in us through the Eucharist! He can save us beyond some shallow gilding or mere pity—He can save us, nay, He does save us by transforming us through His very Self. Just as in the First Mystery He changes the water molecules from mere sin-soaking sponges to sin-eradicating enzymes by immersing Himself into them and confounding the very substance, so too, he does with us! He immerses Himself in us through the fruits of the Fifth Mystery and confounds us by His Mercy and His Love, seizing our hearts and souls as He calls us to Himself. Deep, again, cries out to deep— our abyss of sinfulness longs for so great a Redeemer who has come to not simply forgive the unworthy, but somehow make us worthy by His very Self. We are changed from sin-stricken, Fallen humanity to glorified Divinity. Our darkened, hardened hearts are set afire by an encounter with Christ, with the Light of the World.

Christ be our Light!

Saints & Lunatics

The Catholic Faith is riddled with mysteries. Our souls drive to penetrate and understand, to be satiated for a moment only to discover that every answer carries with it a new depth which begs to explained. And so God, the Infinite and Eternal, shows the truth attested to by St. Thomas Aquinas, that despite how much we might know about God, we do not know even the half of it.

A recent romance with the Faith has been thinking about and considering mystics and prayers. We all are familiar with numerous saints who were clearly (and comfortably called) mystics. We are familiar with stories about apparitions and divine messages handed down to particular folks in bygone eras. We are quick to accept the miraculous when it is distant. But what happens when the miraculous or the normally unbelievable occurs in your sphere of influence? What happens when your life is intersected by the inexplicable?

St. Francis of Assisi is a respected and venerated saint. Described as the “most admired and least imitated,” we all know the story of the suffering, humble servant of Christ. I am curious, though, whether he would be so well admired if he were your neighbor, right this very instant. Would we believe him a saint, or a lunatic?! Would we suggest he see a shrink, or describe him charitably as “simple-minded?” Would our skeptical mentality see his stigmata and immediately posit they are either self-inflicted, or the source of a particular, acute medical condition?

You see, I am guilty of assuming that the typical spiritual posture is akin to my own. We all, I think, peg ourselves as the standard for normalcy and label anything else outside our pattern of prayer and charity as “a bit off-the-rocker,” so to speak. Yet none of the Faithful are without reprieve. Flannery O’Connor said that the with Jesus, “you will know the Truth and the Truth will make you odd.” Any degree of faithfulness in this world plagued by relativism, nihilism, hopelessness and greed makes you a freak—whether you pray quietly at a prie dieu or ramble away in tongues.

I do not suggest that any self-purported posture of prayer is legitimate, but only note that the realm of possibility must exceed my own experience. When confronted with some of those possibilities one might marvel rather than condemn; be intrigued rather than skeptical; appreciate rather than shun. The Angel of Darkness certainly appears as an angel of light, but sometimes the Angel of Light really is the Angel of Light! And the mysterious depths of God are equally capable of being portrayed by the multitude of eclectic saints who sometimes have little in common except for their faith in Christ and His Church.

I’ve never had God speak to me in a booming voice either externally or in my own mind. Grace for me is felt rather than seen or heard. Probably the greatest barometer for me in knowing God’s presence is the hair on the back of my neck, or the tingling, almost levitating feeling that suddenly accompanies certain situations. This is really the extent of my mystical experience, the most clear way God speaks to me. Yet, for some God may send His saints and angels to appear. Who am I to judge? The real heart of the matter is not the means by which the message is conveyed, but the disposition of the heart and soul that the message reaches and the corresponding result of the message. What makes the prayer believable is their willingness to follow and believe what they say they have been told. When one is willing to endure hardship for the sake of their belief, then we have certain degree of affirmation.

The difference between a snake oil salesman and a prophet is their willingness to suffer ridicule, condemnation, poverty, and persecution. The preacher who posits divine revelation disclosed to him that the world would end last weekend isn’t a fool because he proposes God spoke to him, but he is a fool because he expects us to believe God spoke to him when he doesn’t even believe it—he reaped a multi-million dollar stream of revenue and planned on going into work on Monday after his proposed end-of-time deadline passed. The fanatic Waco Branch-Davidian is not an idiot because he says God speaks to him, but because the fanatic claims God told him he was God, the Messiah. The true prayer is the one whose prayers lead him to Calvary—not the bank, not the throne. Genuineness lies in our accepting the Cross joyfully, willingly, and humbly for the sanctity of souls. We are going to be asked to give by God, for we owe Him our entire selves. This is the mark, the touchstone by which to gauge the prayer. He calls me to Him one way, He calls others to Him in other ways—but each way is as equally stark, raving mad. The bottom line is if St. Francis were alive today, I would think him a lunatic and a saint—because quite frankly, I am not sure there is a difference. So, let’s all be nuts (saints) together and aim for the loony-bin in the sky (Heaven)!