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.

Wounded by Love?

MAGNIFICAT's "Meditation of the Day", for 26 August 2011, caught my attention firstly for its title: The Pining of the Wise Virgins. It comes from the Paulist Press edition of the complete works of Blessed Angela of Foligno and helps me with my difficulty in facing the "dark night" imagery of St. John of the Cross, which although it may not strike me as esoteric certainly hits me as less than universally applicable as a description of the obligatory hurdles the ordinary Christian must clear in his search for the living God. As far as I am concerned Bl. Angela is on to something.

Let me share this lovely piece, just in case you are not a MAGNIFICAT person:

"Love has various properties. Because of love, and in it, the soul first grows tender, then it pines and grows weak, and afterward finds strength. When the soul feels the heat of divine love, it cries out and moans... Assurance of God's presence engenders tenderness in the soul. In this state it is satisfied with consolations and other similar gifts. But in the absence of these, love grows and begins to seek the loved one. If it does not find him, the soul pines. It is then no longer satisfied with consolations, for it seeks only the beloved. The more the soul receives consolations and feels God, the more its  love grows, but the more, likewise, it pines in the absence of the beloved.

But once the soul is perfectly united to God, it is placed in the seat of truth, for truth is the seat of the soul. It then no longer cries out nor complains about God, nor grows tender or pines away. On the contrary, it acknowledges itself to be unworthy of every good and every gift of God, and only worthy of a hell more horrible than the one which exists. Wisdom and maturity are established in the soul. As a result the soul becomes ordered and so strengthened that it can face death. It possesses God to the fullness of its capacity. And God even expands the soul so that it may hold all that he wishes to place in it. The soul then sees the one who is, and it sees that all else is nothing except insofar as it takes its being from him." 

I particularly treasure the image of wisdom and maturity being established in the soul through genuine love. May the Bridegroom draw us to Himself!

properantes adventum diei dei

Praying for the Peace of Jerusalem

What is the Love of God?

On today’s feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, I took the time to read his treatise entitled On Loving God in part as an act of reverence or homage toward this great doctor of the faith, but also a bit by way of wanting to reassure myself once again in the face of so many people who can’t do other than heap blame on his head from preaching a crusade…

Bernard is timeless and can teach us so much about loving God as we should:

“But it will be well to note what class of people takes comfort in the thought of God. Surely not that perverse and crooked generation to whom it was said, "Woe unto you that are rich; for ye have received your consolation" (Luke 6:24). Rather, those who can say with truth, "My soul refuseth comfort" (Psalm 77:2). For it is meet that those who are not satisfied by the present should be sustained by the thought of the future, and that the contemplation of eternal happiness should solace those who scorn to drink from the river of transitory joys. That is the generation of them that seek the Lord, even of them that seek, not their own, but the face of the God of Jacob. To them that long for the presence of the living God, the thought of Him is sweetest itself: but there is no satiety, rather an ever-increasing appetite, even as the Scripture bears witness, "they that eat me shall yet be hungry" (Ecclus.24:21); and if the one an-hungred spake, "When I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." Yea, blessed even now are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they, and they only, shall be filled.” (Kindle Highlight Loc. 168-77)

Watching World Youth Day 2011 from Madrid, Spain, I cannot help but pray, borrowing words from St. Bernard, that our youth all over the world and throughout the Church might be that “generation” which “…not satisfied by the present should be sustained by the thought of the future, and that the contemplation of eternal happiness should solace those who scorn to drink from the river of transitory joys.  May it be so, please God!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI