While I was working on the first essay, #5A, I come across a meditation in Magnificat by Father Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. Who spent 23 years in Soviet prisons, “convicted of being a ‘Vatican Spy.’” His final comment in the meditation is central to an understanding of the faith:
”Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next. That is the fact of the matter….It is the first truth of the faith, and those who have faith accept it….I do not apologize for my faith, nor am I ashamed of it.” Ciszek’s comment reminded me of what the catechism defines as man’s purpose, his final cause: “to praise God and enjoy him for ever.” I like the way that ties in with Edwards’ description of the conversion experience.
The second passage I would refer to is found in the Gospel of John; the entire Gospel is magnificent in establishing from the very beginning who Jesus really is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And the Gospel goes from there. The passage I would cite comes at the identity of Christ, in a sense, from the human side, and is what I have always understood as the “last resort.” Chapter 6 of John contains the great Eucharistic statements by Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” That sounds literal to me; Jesus means what he says; that is how the Catholic Church throughout history has understood it. Not a metaphor!
Look at the way in which “many of his disciples” respond: “That is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” And look at the echo of the Matthew 16 passage here: “Do you take offense at this?….It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” The narrative continues with Jesus responding to his insight concerning those disciples that do not believe and those who will betray him: “And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’”
At this point many of his disciples “drew back and no longer went about with him.” Thus, Jesus pointedly asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” And in another echo of both the Mark 8 and Matthew 16 passages, Simon Peter (humbly? meekly?) ”answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’” The echoes here are delicious (my mixed metaphors), and I had not heard them until I started to write my explanation today. Wow! That’s why I loved doing preparations when I was teaching; preparations forced me to confront the texts and to see what was truly there, in so far as I was capable.
When I come to the end of things, spiritually, in my present life, and despair and doubt threaten, I always remember “Simon Peter’s” responses, especially, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed…” Without Jesus, without his words, there is only the Void, but Jesus (and Peter) present a solid foundation. So. John, the entire Gospel, is #2 in my hierarchy of significant texts, but essentially Chapter 6: 68-69; note Jesus’ eternally significant response, referring to the twelve, “Did I not choose you?” Including Judas. “And one of you is a devil.” “The twelve,” in my imagination or reading, expands to include all of us, faithful or unfaithful; we were chosen by Jesus too, but one of us is a devil.
The third text I would cite in my textual hierarchy [when I mention “hierarchy” I immediately think of the nine ranks of angels] is in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where, according to the Biblical scholars, Paul is quoting an early hymn, one of the earliest texts in the New Testament: Chapter 2: 5-11.
”Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That’s the central condition: “every knee bow” [Milton uses that image in his heaven in PL; some of the angels won’t take a knee]; “every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord”; there’s the heart of our credal statements.
So many meaningful passages stand out that I could keep doing this citing for a month of Sundays, or more. Romans 8, for example, or Luke 1 and 2; all of Mark; all of Genesis; Exodus 3; Isaiah 6, 40+; etc. However, I want to end this section with an OT book that I read On a daily basis: Psalms. The importance of Psalms is that what’s at the heart of these verses is that very human desire for an intimate relationship with God; an awareness that the Other is real and that we would be one with Him in our lives and in our understanding. Sometimes we want that Other Reality to smite our enemies, not us at our best actually, but the best moments in the Psalms come when the author, poet, David, whoever, focuses that desire for union with God: 8; 42, 84; 51; 23; 24; 90; 130; all my favorites, so to speak; 63; 119. The Psalmists come back time and again to the two central realities of that relationship: steadfast love and faithfulness. A sample might be apt: in 108, for example, the Psalmist writes,
”My heart is steadfast, O God,/ my heart is steadfast! / I will sing and make melody! Awake, my soul!…/I will give thanks to thee, O Lord,/ among the peoples, I will sing praises to thee among the nations./ For thy steadfast love is great above the heavens,/ thy faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” Or,
”As a hart longs/ for flowing streams,/ so longs my soul/ for thee, O God./ My soul thirsts for God,/ for the living God./ When shall I come and behold/ the face of God?” (42: 1-2)
St. Augustine rightly said in the Confessions that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The Psalmists know that too, and so do we as their language takes us with them in amazing metaphors and similes. In English a hart is also a heart, reminding me somewhat again of Edwards, and the way in which ideas and images echo, reoccur, throughout texts and history.
”O God, thou art my God, I seek thee;/ my soul thirsts for thee;/ my flesh faints for thee,/ as in a dry and weary land where no water is.” (63: 1)
”Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!/ Lord, hear my voice!/ Let thy ears be attentive/ to the voice of my supplications!” (130: 1-2)
Every life needs to be centered in reality, in the really real, I discovered long ago. I cannot ever imagine denying that which I found to be true when seated at my kitchen table, so very long ago: “Jesus is Lord.”
All the Biblical quotes here are from the RSV, 1973.
“Even death on a cross.”