The Promise…

We are in the Easter glow. We have just celebrated Mercy Sunday. Once more we are invited to stand with mouths open in wonder at what the resurrection of Jesus means for each of us.

 We remember marveling in the past as we watched Star Wars when we heard the words, “Beam me up, Scotty!” Sci-fi worked its wonders when the human in the spaceship reappeared on the planet surface. We were watching a physics which we knew didn’t yet exist transport humans from one place to another. But this Easter season brings us a pledge of what does already exist.

What does the risen Jesus, seen by over five hundred people, come to tell us? He comes to give us the first glimpse of a promise.

 The risen Jesus is no ghost. He is a transformed human, wounds shining like badges of honor. He reveals a physics we know nothing of yet, a physics of what self-giving love does to the human being. He gave a glimpse of this to Peter, James, and John in the Transfiguration, when they could barely look at him for the brilliance. For just a while the veil lifted and they were shown the beauty of who they were dealing with. But then came the suffering, and that has the habit of dousing wonder and joy. But the resurrection was permanent. The veil was gone - forever. He was making them, and us, a promise. As he is so shall we be, because that is what love does. It makes you beautiful.

Is it you – really?

And it will be me…really?

Then the struggle is worth it.

I have your word for it.

 

The Two Trees

 Lent is more than half over. We are approaching Holy Week. The trees are starting to burst with buds. So, let’s reflect on trees…two of them.

 The first is made of two crossbeams. It’s called the cross. It’s an instrument of execution, one of the most painful invented by humans. The victim slowly bleeds to death while suffocating. The weight of the torso so pulls the body downward that the lungs cannot fill with air.

 Why are we reflecting on such a hideous image? Because our God, in the person of the Word-in-our-flesh, chose deliberately to suffer death this way. Not by firing squad, not by beheading.

 Now why, you say, would the God of heaven and earth chose such a thing? Because history reveals that we do the most dastardly things to one another. This God-who-is-unconditional-love, is making a statement. This God has a final Word for us: “No matter what you do to one another, no matter how full of despair you are, no matter… I will be there loving you, and my love will win over all the sin you can invent.”

 It all began in a garden. There were two trees. One was the Tree of Life, the other the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said not to eat of the fruit…maybe it was not ripe? It would ‘kill’ them. They were tempted and ate it anyway. Their relationship with God died, and they hid feeling the nakedness of themselves without the garment of God’s affection. All of history unfolded, wracked with sorrow, evil, abuse, war, and despair. The ‘fruit’ had indeed poisoned humans.

 So God started over with an antidote. There was a garden. There was a second tree in the form of a cross. God’s beloved Word was the fruit on this tree. The Word was hushed to whispers, so his Body spoke…blood pouring out. Now we are told, “Take and eat…this is my Body given for you…I am the healing of your poison…I am the Life to wipe away your death…” The cross is Love’s answer to our sin. Catherine of Siena heard God saying it this way in her Dialogue:

 Imagine a circle traced on the ground,

and in its center a tree sprouting…

Think of the soul as a tree made for love and living only by love….

The circle in which this tree’s root, the soul’s love, must grow

is true knowledge of herself, knowledge that is joined to me,

who like the circle have either beginning nor end.

 

Dialogue, 10.

 

A Pause…

 We’re going to take pause this month in our reflections on Francis’ Let Us Dream text. Several of you have been online for the Synodal Sessions for Religious Life sponsored by the National Catholic Reporter and the Global Sisters’ Forum. (I’ve seen your dear faces on-screen!) I’m going to pick up two significant questions that came from the March 31 session.

 1.     Isn’t the Synodal Listening Process just moving the Church to be a Democracy where the majority rules?

No. The Church is not a democracy in the sense the Greeks proposed it as a form of government. The Church is s Spirit-ocracy. It is a community permeated by the Holy Spirit where the charisms or Gifts of the Spirit are shining everywhere for those with eyes to see. Two of these communal gifts are infallibility and indefectibility. The first guides the Church to eventually discern the fuller truth on an issue, and the latter guides the Church to eventually discern how to shake off the sin that daily infects the Church. This is because the risen Christ in his Spirit is the heart of the Church and tolerates no error or sin. The Synod is tuning the Church to listen to these charisms in the whole Body of the Church in a global way for the first time. Make no mistake: that listening is going to bring forth both great wisdom and a lot of bias. The Spirit’s presence helps us to discern the ego/bias when it appears: blaming, complaining, shaming; worry, whining, and withdrawal. Guess what the Spirit will keep, and what the Spirit will guide us to put aside? Yes…wisdom. This is more than democracy…this is Spirit-ocracy at work.

 2.     Will there be a breakthrough in regard to the leadership gifts of women, e.g the Female Diaconate?

Maybe so. But in my view we need to take care of some unfinished business. The Church has not been able to produce a solid Theology of the Woman for our time. What is the role of woman in the cultures of the world, and in the Church? Until this question is addressed, we women continue to think we will become heard and visible if we imitate what men are doing. The norm is still the male. No…we need to come into our own, and we need women to do it…theologically trained women. I believe this is calling to Dominican women today for clarification and articulation.

 More on Let Us Dream next month…!