As we speak, one of my brothers is having open heart surgery. He has strong opinions, as do I, and we have argued quite a bit and not always congenially. We have not descended into not talking to each other or anything harsh, but some residual resentment has remained – until now. Now, in light of life-threatening illness and major surgery, all that seems so small and pointless. That, I realize, is the realty of our greater situation. So much of our resentments and arguments are really nothing compared to the big issues of life and death and family loyalty and health. So much of conflict is no more than a self-serving ego boost; so much of life is treated as a basketball game where we must win at the buzzer - until life itself is at stake.
There is a venerable tradition in the Catholic Church called “adoration,” where a consecrated host is placed in the center of a cross-shaped holder (the “monstrance”) and worshiped very, very respectfully by the faithful, as in the Church the host is taken to be the actual body of Christ. In our church, this takes place every Thursday in a small chapel besides the main building, and there people come in, pray silently (or crawl slowly towards the Eucharist, as one Mexican woman does every week), and leave. At times as I sit there I do feel a little foolish. After all, to the non-believer, we are praying and kneeling to a piece of unleavened bread. But if one sits there and convinces oneself that it IS God in the flesh, and then meditates with increasing inner silence, funny things begin to happen. Pieces of the past show up explained in novel ways, or a quiet voice speaks of its love for you, or a solution to a problem pops up. For this reason, I always ask for some gift, some insight, some anything that might come from Christ, and always I am rewarded, if not right then, then within minutes of leaving the chapel.
So it was a few weeks ago when I sat in the delicious silence of the holy, that the “voice” – not really a voice but a knowledge transformed by myself into a voice – gave me something remarkable. More than a voice, it showed me in deep feeling what true charity is: it is the strong desire to give everything we have to others out of love. Most importantly for me, this giving is done with gratitude and with joy; and this giving, done in love, is seen and felt as the greatest gift of all for the giver, a rare blessing bestowed on a privileged few.
Of course, this certain inner sense disappeared within me in minutes, but the memory and implications of it have remained. I know now why truly holy people give, just as I know now that such a state of being is truly a gift beyond price. In it, there is no more competition, no more anxiety over status or worry about jobs or university degrees or winning arguments. In this state we live the way we were meant to live, and through it we forgo the worst forms of suffering to which we subject ourselves. It is a state where we finally live within true realty, where life is valued over all other things and opinions.
As life becomes a miracle when accompanied by faith, I was not surprised when a book I recently bought as a present for my wife, which I finished just last night, told me much more about this revelation. Titled The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Father Henri Nouwen, it is a treatise on the famed parable in the New Testament, a treatise so beautiful in its authenticity that it cannot help but impart a sense of holiness to the reader. It is not an academic exercise, but rather a meditation on Nouwen’s own life after he first sees the painting (a reproduction) of the same name by Rembrandt, in an institution for the mentally challenged. There in the muted shadows and flashes of light of the picture, he notes the nearly blind eyes of the father as he hugs his returned son, as well as the hands that he has placed upon the kneeling son’s back. He is drawn to this as to nothing else in art that he has previously seen, so much so that his meditation upon it gradually opens his own aging eyes to his own difficult spiritual journey.
As with anything of importance, a flash of genius or a turn of mind does not complete the message, but rather begins the process. For Nouwen, the meditation began with the obvious searing love of the father as he clasps the back of his penitent son. There is nothing but forgiveness and gratefulness in the old man for the son’s return, even though the son had committed a horrible offense by grabbing his inheritance before the death of the father. There is no wagging finger or remonstrations or hurdles to leap before the son is taken back. Rather, the fatted calf is slaughtered and a magnificent feast begins because, as the song goes that is taken from this parable, his son was “lost, but now is found.” In this, we find not the God who demands and who sends lost souls to hell, but one who is open to complete love to those who choose to return. Like the old man in his final years, God has nothing to lose by forgiveness, only something to gain.
Author Father Nouwen knows, however, that his journey through the painting was not completed by marveling at the love of the father. Rather, he then sees himself as the younger, wayward son who must still repent of his sins on a personal basis so that he might feel that he personally deserves the love of the father. This is the character that he believes most of us identify with. Later, his attention is drawn to the eldest son, who stands by watching the reunion with skeptical eyes. Why, this son asks in the parable, does the father celebrate the wayward son when he, the elder, has always done as he was told? The father replies that the elder son has always had everything, but that the younger had become as if dead to the family. Here, Nouwen has us understand both the sorrow of the prodigal son and the resentment of the elder son, and how we all share in both traits, as sinners and as those who feel life’s injustice. Why do bad things happen to us even when we have been good? Why did we not get the promotion we deserved, or the respect or the love that should have been ours? The elder son, then, is in all of us, too.
In the end, Nouwen tells us that he has forgone his job at a prestigious university to oversee a home for the mentally handicapped. There he sees both open love as well as open resentment and hurt, expressed clearly by people with no guile. There he understands, now as an old man himself, that his role – and all of our roles – is to become the old man, the father (or mother, naturally). This was his calling in the priesthood, as it is the calling for us all: to realize that, in the end, we all will have nothing, not health or usable wealth, except for our individual selves. At this he understands what Jesus meant when he claimed: “Anyone who loses his life for my sake…will save it.” When we have nothing to lose, as God does and as every dying person does, we are able to let loose the world and open our arms to everyone. For humans, there is in this the ultimate pain of existence - the loss of everything; but in this is also the ultimate blessing: an ability to love unconditionally, as we no longer have anything to gain from the world or lose. What good would any other attitude do at this point for us or for others?
It was this realization that happened naturally when my elder brother went in to surgery; and it was this realization that was given as I meditated upon the stale bread that I believe to be the body of Christ. What use have we for greed or malice (the younger son), or spiteful resentment (the older son), in light of the dark certainty of death? As with the imagination of the Eucharist, it is in the imagining of our own death that the reality of our situation becomes clear – along with the solution to our problems.
It took Father Nouwen six years after first seeing Rembrandt’s painting to discover his true calling and what he must do to fulfill it, and he had been a priest for many decades prior. It is not an easy thing to let go and open up without resentments or conditions, but such a decision speaks to truth and to our greatest assignment for our time on earth. It is through this decision that the sorrows and frustrations and losses of life are replaced by the beginnings of joy, where nothing else matters but this loving joy itself. After everything, we will all become the nearly sightless old man whose only desire will be for the return of what was once lost.
As we speak, one of my brothers is having open heart surgery. He has strong opinions, as do I, and we have argued quite a bit and not always congenially. We have not descended into not talking to each other or anything harsh, but some residual resentment has remained – until now. Now, in light of life-threatening illness and major surgery, all that seems so small and pointless. That, I realize, is the realty of our greater situation. So much of our resentments and arguments are really nothing compared to the big issues of life and death and family loyalty and health. So much of conflict is no more than a self-serving ego boost; so much of life is treated as a basketball game where we must win at the buzzer - until life itself is at stake.
There is a venerable tradition in the Catholic Church called “adoration,” where a consecrated host is placed in the center of a cross-shaped holder (the “monstrance”) and worshiped very, very respectfully by the faithful, as in the Church the host is taken to be the actual body of Christ. In our church, this takes place every Thursday in a small chapel besides the main building, and there people come in, pray silently (or crawl slowly towards the Eucharist, as one Mexican woman does every week), and leave. At times as I sit there I do feel a little foolish. After all, to the non-believer, we are praying and kneeling to a piece of unleavened bread. But if one sits there and convinces oneself that it IS God in the flesh, and then meditates with increasing inner silence, funny things begin to happen. Pieces of the past show up explained in novel ways, or a quiet voice speaks of its love for you, or a solution to a problem pops up. For this reason, I always ask for some gift, some insight, some anything that might come from Christ, and always I am rewarded, if not right then, then within minutes of leaving the chapel.
So it was a few weeks ago when I sat in the delicious silence of the holy, that the “voice” – not really a voice but a knowledge transformed by myself into a voice – gave me something remarkable. More than a voice, it showed me in deep feeling what true charity is: it is the strong desire to give everything we have to others out of love. Most importantly for me, this giving is done with gratitude and with joy; and this giving, done in love, is seen and felt as the greatest gift of all for the giver, a rare blessing bestowed on a privileged few.
Of course, this certain inner sense disappeared within me in minutes, but the memory and implications of it have remained. I know now why truly holy people give, just as I know now that such a state of being is truly a gift beyond price. In it, there is no more competition, no more anxiety over status or worry about jobs or university degrees or winning arguments. In this state we live the way we were meant to live, and through it we forgo the worst forms of suffering to which we subject ourselves. It is a state where we finally live within true realty, where life is valued over all other things and opinions.
As life becomes a miracle when accompanied by faith, I was not surprised when a book I recently bought as a present for my wife, which I finished just last night, told me much more about this revelation. Titled The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Father Henri Nouwen, it is a treatise on the famed parable in the New Testament, a treatise so beautiful in its authenticity that it cannot help but impart a sense of holiness to the reader. It is not an academic exercise, but rather a meditation on Nouwen’s own life after he first sees the painting (a reproduction) of the same name by Rembrandt, in an institution for the mentally challenged. There in the muted shadows and flashes of light of the picture, he notes the nearly blind eyes of the father as he hugs his returned son, as well as the hands that he has placed upon the kneeling son’s back. He is drawn to this as to nothing else in art that he has previously seen, so much so that his meditation upon it gradually opens his own aging eyes to his own difficult spiritual journey.
As with anything of importance, a flash of genius or a turn of mind does not complete the message, but rather begins the process. For Nouwen, the meditation began with the obvious searing love of the father as he clasps the back of his penitent son. There is nothing but forgiveness and gratefulness in the old man for the son’s return, even though the son had committed a horrible offense by grabbing his inheritance before the death of the father. There is no wagging finger or remonstrations or hurdles to leap before the son is taken back. Rather, the fatted calf is slaughtered and a magnificent feast begins because, as the song goes that is taken from this parable, his son was “lost, but now is found.” In this, we find not the God who demands and who sends lost souls to hell, but one who is open to complete love to those who choose to return. Like the old man in his final years, God has nothing to lose by forgiveness, only something to gain.
Author Father Nouwen knows, however, that his journey through the painting was not completed by marveling at the love of the father. Rather, he then sees himself as the younger, wayward son who must still repent of his sins on a personal basis so that he might feel that he personally deserves the love of the father. This is the character that he believes most of us identify with. Later, his attention is drawn to the eldest son, who stands by watching the reunion with skeptical eyes. Why, this son asks in the parable, does the father celebrate the wayward son when he, the elder, has always done as he was told? The father replies that the elder son has always had everything, but that the younger had become as if dead to the family. Here, Nouwen has us understand both the sorrow of the prodigal son and the resentment of the elder son, and how we all share in both traits, as sinners and as those who feel life’s injustice. Why do bad things happen to us even when we have been good? Why did we not get the promotion we deserved, or the respect or the love that should have been ours? The elder son, then, is in all of us, too.
In the end, Nouwen tells us that he has forgone his job at a prestigious university to oversee a home for the mentally handicapped. There he sees both open love as well as open resentment and hurt, expressed clearly by people with no guile. There he understands, now as an old man himself, that his role – and all of our roles – is to become the old man, the father (or mother, naturally). This was his calling in the priesthood, as it is the calling for us all: to realize that, in the end, we all will have nothing, not health or usable wealth, except for our individual selves. At this he understands what Jesus meant when he claimed: “Anyone who loses his life for my sake…will save it.” When we have nothing to lose, as God does and as every dying person does, we are able to let loose the world and open our arms to everyone. For humans, there is in this the ultimate pain of existence - the loss of everything; but in this is also the ultimate blessing: an ability to love unconditionally, as we no longer have anything to gain from the world or lose. What good would any other attitude do at this point for us or for others?
It was this realization that happened naturally when my elder brother went in to surgery; and it was this realization that was given as I meditated upon the stale bread that I believe to be the body of Christ. What use have we for greed or malice (the younger son), or spiteful resentment (the older son), in light of the dark certainty of death? As with the imagination of the Eucharist, it is in the imagining of our own death that the reality of our situation becomes clear – along with the solution to our problems.
It took Father Nouwen six years after first seeing Rembrandt’s painting to discover his true calling and what he must do to fulfill it, and he had been a priest for many decades prior. It is not an easy thing to let go and open up without resentments or conditions, but such a decision speaks to truth and to our greatest assignment for our time on earth. It is through this decision that the sorrows and frustrations and losses of life are replaced by the beginnings of joy, where nothing else matters but this loving joy itself. After everything, we will all become the nearly sightless old man whose only desire will be for the return of what was once lost.
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