Palm Sunday: Repentance and the Last Things.

Repentance and the Last Things.

Some unsavoury words from the Pope

Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the Catholic teaching on sin and the existence of hell in a homily given on his visit to a Roman church, Sta. Felicita, on the fifth Sunday of Lent. Responses to this homily have been interesting to say the least. Traditionalists have lauded the restatement of these beliefs while to some liberal minded Catholics this was a retrograde and disturbing homily out of step with contemporary theology. The main issue seems to be about hell.

Biblical and historical images of hell as a ‘place’ of fire, brimstone, suffering (somehow physical) are engraved in our culture, art and imagery. We forget that they are only metaphors; attempts to express a belief in language and imagery of the time. The strange thing is that imagery and metaphor become concrete. Take a different example, no one believes literally that ‘my love is like a red, red rose, newly sprung in June’. We know it is metaphor, yet somehow we take the religious imagery of another time and culture as ‘real’. It gets in the way.

In his homily the Pope reaffirmed the reality of sin, judgment, hell and acknowledged that these were ‘not spoken about much in our time’. Amongst some theologians these are almost dirty words, so much is the contemporary emphasis on God’s accepting love and the influence of an individualistic society. It is as if a sense of sin has been replaced with a quasi-psychologised sense of inadequacy.

Benedict posed his statements about hell, sin and eternity in the context of God’s desire for our redemption. He said, ‘Christ came to tell us that he desires all of us in heaven and that hell, which isn’t spoken about much in our time, exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to his love.’ On sin, he said, ‘if he (God) hates sin, it’s because he loves each person infinitely.’

Hell from God’s perspective

Perhaps this contentious homily is an opportunity to express this belief from a different perspective.

I don’t believe God ‘sends’ us to hell, nor is hell is a state in which God rejects the person. I believe that it is the exact opposite.

The Biblical images of God are not images of a dispassionate, detached, unfeeling being sitting up in his air-conditioned heaven like some remote quizmaster ticking off what we get right and what we get wrong. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is passionate and passionately in love and involved with people and all creation.

Let’s look at our human experience of love. When one spouse is unfaithful to the other, the ‘wronged’ person is powerless to prevent their spouse from being unfaithful to and rejecting the love bond they have committed themselves to in their marriage. A parent is powerless to prevent their child going down the path of drug use or criminality.

In both examples, no matter how much the spouse or parent offers the possibility of support, encouragement, forgiveness and abiding love, unless the other turns from the path they have set themselves upon they are unable to ‘receive’ that forgiving, rebuilding, reconciling love. Over a time of many small infidelities, they have taken a path that leads to isolation and turning in on oneself and an inability to understand the consequences of their rejection on others. A genuine sense of community is lost.

So the one who offers the abiding, forgiving love in a sense is powerless because they can’t force the other to change. Until the wanderer spouse or child wants to return, it is in a very real sense that they are closed off from receiving that love. The love offered may never be rescinded. It may abide until death, always offering, waiting, longing, suffering, desiring the beloved wander to return.

To use another image, it is not unlike our current drought damaged soil that becomes unable to receive and absorb the water. Without soil care, the water just runs off.

If this is the heart of our human experience of love at its most abiding and forgiving, it is also a reflection of how God loves us – after all, we are the image and likeness of God.

When we choose to keep wandering and not turn to the love offered, we sit in darkness and the shadow of death – the very place Jesus would shine God’s light (cf. Lk 1:79 – the Benedictus).

Think of the unfaithful spouse, the broken child who, through many choices has ignored the love offered and remains shut out from that warmth. In the end, they choose the ego-isolation, loneliness and destruction of the relationship. And love is powerless – except to suffer and abide in hope, always ready to run out to meet the beloved as did the prodigal son’s father.

If we see hell, sin and repentance in this context, God is the one who suffers and grieves for the loss of the beloved but always waits, always offers, constantly seeks. In the end, given the non-coercive nature of love, there must be a ‘state’ that allows us to wander our own way from God and life and communion with those who love us.

However, in the really real end, God knows our hearts and perhaps eternally seeks us, even after we have made the rejection and as enough rain will make the dry impermeable soil permeable again, perhaps God’s persistence will turn the most closed of hearts. This is the God of Jesus.

A Sense of Sin

The Pope spoke about God hating sin ‘because he loves each person infinitely’. Sin gets in the way of returning love for love. In the Gospel of the day in which the Pope’s homily was set, Jesus says to the woman taken in adultery, ‘Go, sin no more.’ Jesus did not say, ‘There, there dear, it doesn’t matter.’ What we do does matter. It has consequences. In admonishing her to change her behaviour, Jesus both acknowledges the reality of her acts as well as the reality of forgiveness and change.

Profound sin does not ‘just happen’, neither does profound virtue. Both of them happen as a result of many, many acts, thoughts and directions over a lifetime that directs our love – either to self-in-isolation or self-in-communion. It is a lifetime journey in which both exist within us. Over time, one grows stronger.

A healthy sense of sin is a sense that the communion is violated to a greater or lesser degree, love is betrayed. It takes on a sense of responsibility for one’s actions rather than trying to justify them through some quasi-psychological inadequacy or by blaming someone else (from mother to the government) for one’s actions. (I am not talking here of genuine psychological or psychiatric issues.)

A healthy sense of sin a gift from God. It enables us to actually see our behaviour, thoughts and ideas in the context of our relationship with God and with our creation community. It is as if the unfaithful spouse can at long last see how his/her behaviour is destroying something good or when the wayward child stops, sees their destructive way and turns to family for help and a new start. Sin is inseparable from responsibility for one’s behaviour and repentance for the hurt and pain given.

Repentance – a Joyful Gift

Repentance is a great Lenten gift. It is about recognising this passionate, abiding love which is always there, seeing the ‘footprints’ of that love in every moment of our lives and in returning to our true home. It is recognising that we are indeed people who wander off in our own directions, that in big or small ways put selfishness before wholeness i.e. self-in-isolation or self-in-communion with all creation and God.

When a disloyal spouse returns to committed love, or a drug-clean child returns to family, the sign of repentance is gratitude (we used to call it reparation) that desires to give back to the one who has stood by in abiding love.

Repentance is about celebrating, rejoicing and starting again. That the love bond is again reciprocal and strong. It is about profoundly realising the consequences of our behaviour and gratefully and joyfully returning to the one who has shown us, helps us change, forgives and offers absolutely new life.

The Last Things

Traditionally the Church has taught that the last things for a person are death, judgment, heaven, hell. However, I do not believe these just happen when we die. They happen now with every judgment, choice and act we make. Heaven, that is communion, is now and hell, that is isolation is now. Repentance is that honest look we give ourselves and return to communion with God and all things. So repentance, like the prodigal son’s return is tearful, joyful and life giving for both the son and his father.

Holy Week, this most profound, solemn and joyful celebration of the liturgical year is upon us. Let’s repent of whatever turns us away from living consciously and reverently in the community of creation in God (hell) and turn with trust to the God of Jesus for healing, forgiveness and direction (heaven). Thus we die (death) to what drives us to isolation and live to what drives us to communion. In this way we allow the judgment of God to be active – Genesis (read in the Easter Vigil) has the great refrain, ‘God saw all that he had made, and God saw that it was very good.’ This asks us to grow in maturity and honest communion.

Some Questions

Is there a hell? Well, yes - a state in which love is continually rejected and the person turns in on themselves is profound isolation. The freedom of love cannot coerce.

What’s it like? Don’t know. All images are metaphor for the loneliness and pain of someone turned in upon themselves to the extent that divine, abiding love can no longer ‘permeate’ because the person can no longer turn outward to communion.

Is it eternal? This is difficult because of the whole idea of what is eternity. However, it would be fearfully difficult not to be changed by love continually offered. Eternity is a long time for God to ‘non-coercively pursue’ the lost beloved.

Finally, does God worry about hell? You bet. The whole Gospel delights in the sinner returning to life. In the end, I think it is God who grieves and suffers over someone in such a state of exclusion far more than we could imagine.

Easter

As we celebrate Holy Week and Easter, may we rejoice in the life-death-resurrection of Jesus in whom this passionate, abiding attachment of God to us is not just revealed, but shouted about – loudly and passionately.

PS

In The Last Battle, the last of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis tells a superb story of the difference between heaven and hell. The difference, in this story is that the people in hell can’t see the beauty and abundance with which they are surrounded.

Second Sunday of Lent:: Fasting? Is it still ‘in’?

Second Sunday of Lent: Fasting? Is it still ‘in’?

What’s the point of it all?

Recently I asked a few people what were they were ‘doing for Lent’; what were they ‘giving up’. Some rattled off the usual Project Compassion, some just looked bewildered as if I had asked something quite odd – particularly the ‘giving up’ bit.

I realised that we don’t seem to talk too much about it these days. Time was when fasting and abstinence during Lent and the traditional ashes of Ash Wednesday were part of a Catholic identity. (I did see some ashen foreheads in the shopping centre on Ash Wednesday.) Things have changed. There is nothing wrong with that, but the responses of my friends got me thinking about the traditional disciplines of Lent, particularly that of fasting.

Before I launch into my reflections, it is important to remember that the word ‘discipline’ is related to ‘disciple’ and really means ‘to listen’.

For many years I could not satisfy myself with any rationale for fasting and voluntarily depriving myself of food. After all, I was not a glutton, I worked hard for God. Metaphorical fasting, yes. Fasting of the harsh, destructive word, fasting by giving of my material goods and wealth to others. It seemed to me, to be more enlightened to actually do something useful, rather than just deprive myself of food. After all, getting the shakes with hunger did not seem very productive and fish on Friday was probably more expensive than eating meat and well, really, not much of a sacrifice anyway.

All in all, there seemed to be no point, really. I also had a sneaking suspicion that the contemporary Church also had an ambiguous attitude to it. Days of fast and abstinence were reduced in the post-Vatican II church; we were encouraged to give to Project Compassion and to do something ‘extra’ rather than fast. All these things are important. However, in reality how often have they dwindled down to tokenism. How many of us have ‘topped up’ the Project Compassion box at the end of Lent because we forgot all about it?

The irony of all this is that we actually live in a society obsessed with fasting, but we call it dieting. Obesity has become the secular sin and we seem to be creating so much ambivalence and guilt around food that anyone with insight should hear warning bells ringing in their minds. Yet self-deprivation, even mild delaying gratification is not encouraged. Very mixed messages.

Fasting and the Scriptures

Fasting has good Biblical credentials. Israel was exhorted to fasting, repentance and acts of justice by the prophets. Jonah was miffed with God because pagan Nineveh repented with fasting, sackcloth and ashes – including the animals. Jesus did it; he recommended it to his disciples if they were to be effective in their ministry.

Biblical fasting is about depriving oneself of food. Real, physical, hold in the hand, chewable, sustaining food. Like all things human it is open for us to experience it as a moment of transcendence or abuse. (We all know of the saints who lived on a lettuce leaf – but that’s for another blog) The prophets were well aware of our human propensities. That is why fasting is always in the context of how we live with each other. Fasting, like all spiritual disciplines must be congruent with charity, compassion, social justice. All disciplines are subject to Love. It must also be undertaken with intentionality rather than as a thing of rote. Throughout the whole of Scripture this is clear.

So, why fast? Why deprive myself of perfectly good food for some intangible reason?

Food is more than food:

Eating is one of our deepest human drives for survival. At its most basic level it is about my individual survival. No food – I die. Stories of people sharing food in dire situations so that others might live, stir and inspire us.

Food, however, has other spiritual and psychological dimensions. The Jewish people understood this – to share food was a sacred trust. Giving food to another is giving life to another. Think of the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath of Sidon (1 Kings 17:7f). Elijah asked her to give him her last bit of food for herself and her son. What an act of trust this woman had? In a drought induced famine, it seems foolhardy, to say the least. This woman, a widow and a gentile understood the power and reverence of giving food to another.

When a society loses this sense of sharing food as self-less survival, of generosity of life and of community, it is culturally poorer in so many ways. It becomes too easy to return to ‘selfish survival’.

Well then, what is the point?

Food, whether we are conscious of it or not, is so much more than physical survival and nourishment.

The rational reasons for or against are important because we are rational people, but we are also people of spirit and heart and fasting, like all things of heart and undertaken in faith, touches the very core of our life with God, our relationship with all God’s creation and our therefore our self-identity.

To return to my ambivalence about physical fasting. Like most of our spiritual disciplines, it has to be actually done in order to be understood fully. We admire and are inspired by the heroic self-giving of people and can only marvel at what such self-giving may take. But sometimes we find the small self-giving moments of love and respect between people of little account, because, from the outside, they don’t seem to take much human effort. However those small self-giving moments happen because of a lifetime of loving self-discipline, a lifetime of learning respect, of learning we belong to each other. Fasting is like that. Whether fasting in small things or grand fasts, it teaches us to step away from our isolated ego to the Self that finds relationship in all things.

Fasting undertaken prayerfully, without fuss, in conscious awareness of the presence of God and all creation, is saying ‘no’ to my individualistic ego survival. It touches that essential human drive to survive and asks, ‘How do I survive?’. Is my survival over against others, at the cost of others or is it with others? To experience this, fasting does not have to be epic. Giving up a small thing – legitimate, enjoyable and rewarding – done with love, respect and generosity of heart, opens us to the same experience.

My fasting this Lent is not life-threatening on the physical level, but each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego, each time I fantasise about eating it, I am reminded that God has created us in an intimate community with each other. How fortunate am I that I can deprive myself and not face desperate survival as too many of my sisters and brothers face in the world. So, the Project Compassion box gets filled.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego, I am aware of the mystery of God who has given us to each other and that is terrifying and beautiful. It asks things of me. So, I spend more time praying for those who have asked me and I try to hold back my intolerance.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego I remember that the ultimate ‘fasting’ is Jesus’ self-giving that came to the cross and ultimately to his Resurrection. His life as promise. So, I am enlivened with hope.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego I laugh at myself for my fears about allowing God’s commitment to me and all things to change how I ‘survive’, live and use my gifts.

And God laughs back, delighted.