A Flower for you on your day!

The Second Reading of the Office from the 2^nd Saturday in Lent, From the treatise on Flight from the World by Saint Ambrose, bishop, labeled “Hold fast to God, the one true good”, captivated me this morning and channeled a rush of thoughts which have been mine and I've been trying to sort out now for some time. Permit me a rather lengthy excerpt:

“Where a man’s heart is, there is his treasure also. God is not accustomed to refusing a good gift to those who ask for one. Since he is good, and especially to those who are faithful to him, let us hold fast to him with all our soul, our heart, our strength, and so enjoy his light and see his glory and possess the grace of supernatural joy. Let us reach out with our hearts to possess that good, let us exist in it and live in it, let us hold fast to it, that good which is beyond all we can know or see and is marked by perpetual peace and tranquility, a peace which is beyond all we can know or understand.

This is the good that permeates creation. In it we all live, on it we all depend. It has nothing above it; it is divine. No one is good but God alone. What is good is therefore divine, what is divine is therefore good. Scripture says: When you open your hand all things will be filled with goodness. It is through God’s goodness that all that is truly good is given us, and in it there is no admixture of evil. …

Since God is our refuge, God who is in heaven and above the heavens, we must take refuge from this world in that place where there is peace, where there is rest from toil, where we can celebrate the great sabbath, as Moses said: The sabbaths of the land will provide you with food. To rest in the Lord and to see his joy is like a banquet, and full of gladness and tranquility.”

Such words, despite our shortcomings, bring joy and encouragement to a believer’s heart. They cannot help but be tainted or better certainly tinged with a bit of anxiousness as we who believe in the Creator and Redeemer of the world wonder about their impact on a massive part of that world made up of nominal Catholics or Christians, not to mention the omnipresent throng still not washed clean of sin in the waters of Baptism and still very much in the grasp of a supposed light-bearer (Lucifer), who is none at all.

My thoughts, as I say, have been filled with "what if's" about (among other things) a certain democratic (?) administration's dogged determination to engineer society and press certain goals even if it means denying certain fundamental human rights and destroying really while they are at it space in general society for truth and human dignity, and either corrupting entirely or banning the Catholic Church from the public square in the course of getting it done. How do you confront such a power play? Do you stage a revolution? Stalin, they say, was capable of calculating his chances of success on the basis of a head count of the divisions at his enemy's disposal. A liberal establishment is pushing ahead confident in their own head count I am sure. Do we shout? Do we rebel? Will our appeal to the masses succeed? Can we muster the "troops" at the ballot box, given that the wily liberal establishment is convinced we do not and cannot command the numbers needed to make a difference?

I think we would do better to rest in the Lord, that is, once we've made our appeal and made our stance known, to take refuge in the Lord, font of love, beauty itself, source of all truth. Let me anticipate your question and respond that I really do not understand why such an approach like that of St. Ambrose is referred to as "flight from the world". Conceding to anyone or to any group of people or nation a fairly successful record of fighting tyranny, even so the victory of truth lies elsewhere, it does indeed lie in God's hand, it is His gift. Taking up arms and revolting against wrong is not in and of itself the way things are concluded. I cannot help but note that the most positive balance (one year later) I have heard and that anyone is drawing from the "Arab Spring" is that the cards have been reshuffled. Things will not necessarily be better with the further passage of time just because of those clashes and that bloodshed of now over a year ago. The "gods" don't necessarily demand their sacrifice. These uprisings do not depart much from patterns of revolution (for the good or for the bad) which have recurred over the course of centuries now starting with the French Revolution, where even guillotines didn't help much ultimately in clearing the playing floor in the contest for the minds and hearts of people, and for the sake of the triumph of justice and of truth.

Is there not more good out there than one would be led to believe? Certainly! Hence, while on the one hand it seems a tragedy to be resigned to the tyranny of that which is lowest in the human spirit, on the other hand I really can't point to enduring accomplishments from any revolution nor can I sustain a theory about some type of butterfly effect from every smile or good deed done. Mine is not a naive discourse on human perfectibility, but an invitation to reasoned discourse as preferable to armed clashes and ethnic cleansing for the sake of furthering a cause. My witness by a holy life to the primacy of God in the world He created and saved is more eloquent than standing on the barricades and shouting, no matter how youthful and sincere my posture.

International Women's Day (March 8) is a national holiday in Ukraine; the next day (March 9) is the birthday of Ukraine's great patriot, Taras Shevchenko (2012 marks his 198th birth anniversary). Both events are celebrated here with flowers or better with a flower. On the street these days almost every lady was carrying on her way, but different than usual, on her day she was clutching her flower. Yesterday, Shevchenko's monument in front of the university which bears his name was surrounded by national flags and flowers. My own personal reading of these days, speeches and advertising aside, is a positive one. I am genuinely impressed by all of the tender and truly noble sentiment I have encountered in passing, viewing strangers on the street, and in brief exchanges with people, citizens, speaking their mind especially about what Taras Shevchenko means to them.

In the course of our education, we learned about people like Cincinnatus, who left off on plowing his field to answer the call of the Roman Senate to defend his people and when the job accomplished he returned to his plowing, or like the so-called philosopher king, who would govern his people best. Since we have not here a lasting dwelling place, I suppose some would find it sufficient to continue organizing ourselves for voting out, throwing out or rebelling against tyrants or those who do not rule in the best interests of their people. I don't think that Taras Shevchenko would have made a very good "president for life"; his gift to his people and to the world was another and far more precious; it was a timeless gift as well. One need only take up his writings again to appreciate the wisdom of a true patriot and the noble love for country yet today this man can continue to foster for the building up of a people.

A flower doesn't necessarily resolve domestic tensions or even guarantee full respect for the dignity of women; one man's poetry and thought is not a blueprint for the life of the nation. They are both great, however, in their own way. Such goodness, such greatness needs more cultivation. I firmly believe that what I advocate is not quietism. It is obviously subversive, as it has always provoked the wrath of the Stalins of this world, bearers of a light which is none but their own.

" Let us reach out with our hearts to possess that good, let us exist in it and live in it, let us hold fast to it, that good which is beyond all we can know or see and is marked by perpetual peace and tranquility, a peace which is beyond all we can know or understand."

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

 

To the Heights of Moriah and Tabor

Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

Romans 8:31b-34

Mark 9:2-10

"If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? 

Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who acquits us, who will condemn? Christ Jesus it is who died - or, rather, was raised - who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us." [Romans 8:31b-34]

For this Second Sunday of Lent in each year of the three year lectionary cycle, the Church yokes a different Old Testament passage referring to Abraham to a synoptic account of the Transfiguration. In Year B we are on top of Mount Moriah where Abraham obediently prepares to fulfill God's command and sacrifice his only son Isaac, the son of the promise. On both Moriah and Tabor God sheds light on His Will for our salvation in most striking ways. We really should let ourselves be dumbfounded by this all. The yoking, the juxtaposing in the light of these couple sentences from the Second Reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans is enough upon reflection and discovery to confound us more perhaps than Peter, James and John were overwhelmed by what they were witnessing.

How do we, how do I paint myself into the scene? That's really what we are called to do, I think: find our place in the action of Moriah/Tabor. We certainly have course to contemplate from close up the son of Abraham and the Son of God and to contemplate their predicament and ultimate risk facing the Will of Almighty God. We can see them both, Isaac to a lesser degree and Jesus fully so, as bearers of the promise for us who are in no way excluded or intruding, but invited into the scene.

Granted, the Church Fathers generally spoke of Moriah and Sion or Calvary in the same breath, and tradition would have them as one and the same place of sacrifice. Nonetheless, Tabor and Moriah are indeed one, however, as neither Abraham nor Peter, James and John are to be written out of the scene, out of this great teaching about God's love for us, His chosen ones, demonstrated through the sacrifice of His one and only Son. The lesson is certainly about time and eternity, about the recovery by the new Adam, at the Place of the Skull, of God's order in God's love. 

Certainly, the Second Sunday of Lent is there to strengthen us all to face the scandal of the Cross, to assure us of God's love for us in the Sacrifice of His Son. Any and every Sunday Eucharist is an experience on the heights of Moriah and Tabor; this Sunday is a special admonition never to doubt God's love. Moriah puts us back in perspective in terms not only of what be the sacrifice from creature acceptable to the Creator, but most importantly in terms of the Creator's Will to foster the creature who chooses obedience to that Will. With Tabor we pass through the veil of the flesh into a Tabernacle not made by human hands, once and for all assured of God's love beyond all telling and for all times.