οὐ γὰρ ἔχομεν ὧδε μένουσαν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μέλλουσαν ἐπιζητοῦμεν.
Non enim habemus hic manentem civitatem, sed futuram inquirimus.
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.
Hebrews 13:14
There is a nice play on words in the original Greek that the Latin and English translations don't capture. In the Greek, the words for "lasting" (menousan)and "future" (mellousan), translated in this English version as "the one to come", differ only in a single consonant.
There is a book entitled No Abiding City, written by a priest of the Order of Preachers. I believe his name was Bede Jarrett. I remember seeing in Dorothy Day's autobiography that she used to read this work to a dying friend, who drew great comfort from it. That piqued my interest, so I obtained the book through interlibrary loan and wrote out extensive passages from it in a notebook. Unfortunately, that notebook has gone astray. But one of the Dominican author's remarks that always sticks with me is that much of the suffering, the sadness, the discontent we experience in life comes from forgetting that we are pilgrims on the earth. The world can only wound us if we mistake it for home and try to settle down in it. And this is, as Father Neuhaus points out, an ever-recurring temptation: "Although all Christians are in exile,some are more at home in their exile than others. And some times and places are more home-like than others. This can be a great comfort, and a great temptation. The temptation is to unpack, settle down in the present, and forget about the pilgrimage" (American Babylon, p.120). St. Teresa of Avila encapsulates this idea of life as pilgrimage in her pithy remark: "Life is a night in an uncomfortable inn." Jarrett maintains that the pains and tribulations of life are robbed of half their sting if we bear in mind that we are on a journey. It is right and proper for pilgrims on a journey to be uncomfortable on the road. Jarrett addresses his reader with these words of encouragement, which must have been a great solace to Dorothy Day's friend (I'm relying on my memory here, so this is almost certainly not an exact quote, but you'll get the general idea): "You are sad, you are in pain? You feel that you cannot go on? Of course you can go on! It is only a journey. Of course you can go on. It will have an end. When you see the lights of your destination on the road ahead of you, it gives you strength to go on."
Let's keep our eyes on our destination, which is, as Father Neuhaus says, "not so much a place as a person," Jesus Christ, Our Risen Lord and Saviour.
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"All the members ought to be molded in the likeness of Him, until Christ be formed in them. For this reason we, who have been made to conform with Him, who have died with Him and risen with Him, are taken up into the mysteries of His life, until we will reign together with Him. On earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land, tracing in trial and in oppression the paths He trod, we are made one with His sufferings like the body is one with the Head, suffering with Him, that with Him we may be glorified" (Lumen Gentium 7)
ReplyDeleteJesus never lost confidence in the Father... the JOY that comes with confidence! Even in His most agonizing moments, He beheld the wood of the cross with passion...with joy. "It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to me that ever I suffered my Passion for you; and if I could suffer more, I should suffer more" (Julian of Norwich) I think you know how I got this quote... :)
How to integrate both the joys and the sufferings that are proper to the night of faith... how to be confident but not comfortable... that is the question! To whom must we look as our model?
"How great, how heroic then is the obedience of faith shown by Mary in the face of God's 'unsearchable judgments'! How completely she 'abandons herself to God without reserve, 'offering the full assent of the intellect and the will' to him whose 'ways are inscrutable.... Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with Christ in his self- emptying.... At the foot of the Cross Mary shares through faith in the shocking mystery of this self-emptying. This is perhaps the deepest 'kenosis' of faith in human history. Through faith the Mother shares in the death of her Son, in his redeeming death.... as a sharing in the sacrifice of Christ--the new Adam--it becomes in a certain sense the counterpoise to the disobedience and disbelief embodied in the sin of our first parents. Thus teach the Fathers of the Church and especially St. Irenaeus, quoted by the Constitution Lumen gentium: 'The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith.'" (John Paul II. Encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, March 25, 1987. AAS 79. 382. 83. Vatican Press Translation)
...that's like my favorite excerpt EVER.
Some of Sister Lucia's cool words about our Lady: "Thus, in the closest union possible between two human beings, Christ began, with Mary, the work of our salvation. The Christ's heart-beats are those of the heart of Mary, the prayer of Christ is the prayer of Mary, the joys of Christ are the joys of Mary; it was from Mary that Christ received the Body and Blood that are to be poured out and offered for the salvation of the world. Hence, Mary, made one with Christ, is the Co-redemptrix of the human race. With Christ in her womb, with Jesus Christ in her arms, with Christ at Nazareth and in his public life; with Christ she climbed the hill of Calvary, she suffered and agonized with Him, receiving into her Immaculate Heart the last sufferings of Christ, his last words, his last agony and the last drops of his Blood, in order to offer them to the Father"
Mary, Advocate! Pray that our hearts might beat in unison with your Immaculate heart and the Most Sacred Heart of your Son. May we humbly receive all the JOYS and SORROWS that come along with the journey to the cross, so that we may join you in heaven and finally behold Him in an eternal face to face.
I wrote all about the cross, because the cross is the only way to the Beatific Vision... to be a pilgrim is nothing other than to embrace the cross... and although it requires us to suffer much, we should always be overflowing with the joy of the Resurrection. We are Christians, are we not!?
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