In the time between his resurrection and his ascension into the heavens, Jesus makes several statements about how he has come and how is going, and about how the Holy Spirit will come after him. It raises a question about how God “comes and goes” at all, given His omnipresence. We can perhaps overlook this question with regard to Jesus, as Jesus is also human and humans come and go all the time. It makes sense for Jesus. But Jesus uses this “coming and going” language with regard to the Father and the Spirit as well. So how can this be? When we try to contemplate God, who He is, what He is like, how He interacts with Creation, and so on, it’s very easy to imagine the god of the philosophers. The Supreme Being, the Absolute, the Prime Mover, the Source. This Absolute is omnipresent, not only present everywhere but constantly interacting with all things and engaged in everything that is by His very nature. There is no room in this God for “coming and going” for this God already is everywhere. The very notion of “coming and going” makes no sense. This is where Jesus challenges us. He tells us that when we look upon him, we see the Father. Jesus reveals the hidden God to us. This isn’t just to challenge and overturn our misguided notions of God as like any of the pagan gods, but also to overturn our highest intellectual attempts at conceptualizing God (namely, the Absolute). If we approach from our human perspective, the God Christ speaks of is incompatible with the Absolute. But he forces us to rethink our perspective. Jesus speaks of God coming and going, and therefore those are things which are proper to God. “The God so conceived [the Absolute] would be pure, sublime, worthy of adoration; but it would destroy the reality given us by Christ’s personal revelation. His Father is precisely that God who ‘comes’ and ‘goes,’ ‘speaks’ and ‘acts.’ Certainly, God is omnipresent, exalted over time and space; yet he also can come when it pleases him; can live among us, and when the hour has struck, can depart and return—with a new countenance.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") We see this throughout Scripture, not only in the life of Jesus (though it perhaps becomes more clear to us when we view the totality of Scripture through the lens of Christ). God, though omnipresent, chooses specific moments in history to act: the covenant with Abraham, the burning bush with Moses, the hanging of the sun in the sky with Joshua, the Incarnation of the Son, and so on. There are also times when He seems absent, such as during the Babylonian Exile. This God most certainly comes at times when it pleases Him to do so, and departs the same. Our minds falter at the attempt to understand a God such as this, and yet this is the God which has revealed Himself to us. He is supreme mystery, always to be contemplated yet never able to be comprehended. Thus our intellect must give way to love—specifically, love of Christ, who is the only person capable of penetrating that divine mystery. “In communion with Christ’s heart, our own is suddenly able to experience that of which it is incapable alone. Our spirit stretches to measure up to Christ’s, and thereby grasps much that it never could have grasped by itself. He who believes in Christ thinks through him, feels the mysterious God who reveals himself in Revelation, the God of mystery and yet so familiar, so divinely superior both to ‘the gods’ and the ‘Supreme Being’ of human conception.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") Love Christ so that we can love his Father, for the Father lies in inaccessibility and our only access to Him is through the Son. And Christ’s Father is just that: a father. Not merely the Absolute. You cannot love the Absolute. You cannot pray to the Absolute for this or that thing. But you can do so with a father. A father lowers his ear to hear the words and desires of his children, he stoops down to meet them, and he rises again to leave them when he feels it is necessary. He is always there, always ready and able to care for the child. But he also comes and goes as he pleases.
It’s this loving Father that is revealed through Christ. Though incomprehensible to human intellect, the heart is able to bridge the gap which the mind cannot. The heart is able to unite us to Christ, the Son, who reveals the Father to us and leads us to Him. And the Spirit, the Advocate whom the Son sends, stirs within us that capacity to love more fully, constantly working within our hearts and minds to help us to know and love the Father from which He proceeds more perfectly.
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What do we make of the Resurrection? We find it in every Gospel (though Mark’s Gospel seems to have originally ended at the empty tomb, according to some of the oldest manuscripts we have). And St. Paul calls it the fundamental core of the Christian religion. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. Everything in our faith hinges on this historical event, for without it there is no salvation and Jesus is not who he claimed to be. There of course have been many attempts over the past two millennia to try to strip away the supernatural character of the Resurrection. We could psychologize it at an individual level and say that the early Christians were so distraught, so overcome with grief and loss and depression, that their minds began producing visions of Christ walking among them again, performing miracles. In other words, subconsciously their brains created visions of something that wasn’t really there as a coping mechanism for their intense grief. As a result, they really and truly believed Jesus had risen, and reported as such. We could also say that the early Christians as a collective were so lost and saddened by the execution of their leader, so desperate for something to keep this community united when its uniting head has just been removed, that they fabricated the affair. Perhaps intentionally, as in an ancient argument which says the disciples stole the body of Jesus from the tomb, and created stories about the Resurrected Jesus in order to justify the continued existence of this “Christian” community—in order to give the early Christians a “win,” so to speak. Or perhaps unintentionally, as the community began mythologizing Jesus in liturgy and ceremony and over many years that myth grew and evolved into the supernatural “risen” Jesus who bears no resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth. But neither of these options is truly tenable. The first is false on its face, as it would make little to no sense for an ancient Jewish mind to have created delusions of a resurrection. That is something we may expect from a modern Christian mind, whose whole life has been filled with talk of resurrection. But resurrection was a largely foreign concept to Judaism at the time, and their hesitation and skepticism of the event (especially Thomas) bears that out. There’s also the massive problem of St. Paul here, who had never met Jesus in life and spent a good deal of time persecuting his followers. He would not have been distraught in the slightest at the death of Jesus, let alone distraught to the point of delusions. The second proposition is a bit more difficult to contend with, at least as it pertains to the “growing myth” possibility. The idea that the disciples stole the body and fabricated the whole story is dismissed as easily as the psychologizing of the first proposition. These are not people who would have expected a resurrection in the first place, and indeed would have probably been opposed to the idea, especially to the extreme that the Resurrection story goes where we see the actual corporal earthly body of Christ being glorified. As regards the myth proposal, specifically, the words of St. Paul stand out the most. The Resurrection is not an added-benefit to the Christian religion, it is not just another story in the wide array of Biblical tales. It is the hinge point, the foundation stone upon which our entire faith rests. Without it, nothing about Jesus makes sense. If you strip away the divine character of Jesus, you’re left with a few vague statements on ethics, which is hardly worth your faith. He’s just a moral preacher, and barely even that. Neither the followers he gathered, and their intense loyalty to him even unto their own deaths, nor the ire he garnered from the world make any sense with this Jesus. “If we take ourselves as measuring-rod, our human lives, the world as it appears to us, our thoughts and reactions and attempt to judge Christ by them, can only conclude that the Resurrection was either the psychological result of a religious shock, or the product of a primitive community’s desire for a cult. In other words, individual or mass self-deception . . . The alternative is to realize in our own lives what Christ’s whole existence demands: faith. Then we understand that he did not come to bring us new but world-born truths and experiences, but to free us from the spell which the world has cast over us . . . that we know, once and forever, that he was not born to further this existence, but that a new existence was born in him.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord)" In other words, all these attempts to remove the Resurrection from Jesus, to strip away the divine character of the man, are attempts to judge Jesus with the eyes of the world. “It is not possible to rise from the dead, therefore the Resurrection is a myth (or a lie).” Instead, through the lens of faith, we are able to say “Christ rose again; therefore resurrection is possible, and his Resurrection is the foundation of the true world.”
Closing out part five of The Lord, we finally arrive at the trial and death of Jesus. And something about what we read about this in the Gospels ought to make us all horrified. To be sure, the entire affair is horrific for many reasons; we are talking about a kangaroo court and the illegal death of the Son of God here, after all. But the specific way it played out reveals something terrible at the heart of man. It wasn’t merely a mob that condemned Jesus to die, nor was it a specific group of people like the Pharisees or the Sadducees or the Sanhedrin or the Romans. It was everyone together, in unison.
If there’s one thing man is incredibly good at, it’s finding reasons to hate other men. One need only take a cursory glance at a history textbook to realize this fact. Indeed, you see it even more readily by simply logging onto Facebook or Twitter and scrolling for a minute or two. Men are very adept at making enemies of each other. It is perhaps our greatest and most ancient talent (recall that it was in the very first human family that a murder took place, when Cain made an enemy of Abel). We love having enemies. It makes it easier to justify our own wickedness and inadequacies. “It’s not me, it’s their fault!” But in the trial of Jesus, we see an uncharacteristic unity of purpose and will—we see men putting aside their animosity toward one another for the sake of accomplishing their mutual end. And that end? Killing Jesus. Killing God. It’s not something I thought about much before, but in reading these two chapters I can’t stop thinking about it. The Pharisees and the Sadducees hate each other. The Pharisees are keepers of the Law, rigid traditionalists and ritualists. The Sadducees are skeptics and Hellenists, openly embracing Greek culture and utterly unconvinced and apathetic toward the Pharisaic impulse to Holy Law. They each vie for control of the populace, wishing to exert their influence. They are old rivals. This is even more true of the Romans. The Romans are conquerors and occupiers, illegally trespassing on rightfully-Jewish land. They are cruel to the people, and the people hate them for it. If you have never read ancient historians like Josephus or Eusebius, I would highly recommend it, as they (especially Josephus) write a fair amount on this topic. It is not only the people, however. The Pharisees hate them perhaps even more. The people hate them for being cruel, and for imposing unfair taxes. The Pharisees hate them because they spit on the Jewish religion and claim to the Holy Land, by their very presence. The Romans are both a political threat and a religious outrage. To the Romans, the mob are an unruly nuisance to be quelled, and the Pharisees are fuel to the mob’s flame. Even the particular rulers of the day hated each other. Pilate and Herod were no friends of each other. They were rivals, each trying to assert his control and influence above the other. And yet when Pilate so gleefully sends Jesus to Herod, as Pilate sees this as a way to escape having to deal with the “Jesus problem” himself, Herod finds it to be a gesture of good faith and respect. We’re told in the Gospels that Herod and Pilate became good friends from that day forward, all because they found a common enemy to hate more than each other—that is, God. This is a completely ridiculous mass of people. We should never expect them all to be together at once. But in this moment, they stand united in their hatred and sin in order to reject God. To put Christ on the cross, they will put aside all other quarrels and concerns. It’s horrifying to realize that the one thing which seems to bring man together is our rejection of God. In an ultimate sense this is of course not true. The only thing which unites man to anything, including his fellow men, is God alone, the source from which everything comes and the thing that sustains everything in existence at all times. There can be no true unity without first clinging to God. But in the immediate sense, we see the depth of man’s sin is so great, the level to which we have fallen is so far, that everything we fear and hate and care about goes by the wayside for the sake of our united rejection of God. If anyone is to say we are not responsible for Adam’s sin in the Garden, this seems a damning counterpoint. That is the fact of things. Not just Adam, not just the Pharisees, not just the Romans or the mob. We all, with one voice, have rejected Christ. Thus we must earnestly and fervently repent and pray that the Spirit transform our hearts, so that we are not so easily drawn into such evil again. After the Last Supper, Christ and his disciples travel to Gethsemane, where Christ tells his disciples to wait while he goes to pray in solitude, asking only that Peter, James, and John accompany him. We know this moment well. It’s the moment where the whole weight of the world and sin seems to be crushing down on Jesus, where he is so overcome that he begins sweating blood and he asks the Father to take the cup away from him, if it be the Father’s will to do so.
But the reason for Christ’s torment in this moment is important. We could say simply that the stress of his life became too much—that the people rejecting his teaching, the Pharisees (and now the Sadducees as well) relentlessly moving against him, even his own disciples not understanding him simply became overwhelming. In that moment of intense stress, he broke down. He collapses, and begins to sweat blood (which we know is a medical condition associated with physical or emotional stress). But to attribute Christ’s pain in this moment as pure psychology is “folly,” as Guardini puts it. It misses the essential reality of who Jesus is—the Son of the living God, become man. It’s not his rejection by others that so affects him in this moment, or even the lack of understanding by his followers. It is sin itself. Christ, perfectly pure without any stain of sin on his soul and at the same time God from all eternity, feels the tremendous emptiness and isolation of sin more acutely than we ever could. In perfect unity with the Father, perfectly holy, nobody but the Light could ever grasp the utter blackness and void of sin more fully. He looks upon the world and sees this darkness everywhere, affecting everything and everyone, consuming the world that retreats from the Light. In his perfect knowledge and love, he is immensely pained by it. Not even his impending death is the cause here, as he accepts it willingly as the Father’s will. No, it’s the weight of sin that is his to bear. This is perhaps best understood when we realize Christ would have felt this even if he had been accepted by the people. Even if the Kingdom of God were to arrive as it ought to, by command and acceptance, Christ still would have felt that isolation. Man’s sin was so great that Christ did die at our hand, but even if he hadn’t that weight would still be felt. It’s a very convicting thing to think about. We are so used to our sin we barely think about it. We sin all the time and just accept it as the way things are. Perhaps we pray or go to confession later, but I would wager for the vast majority of us we do not do so nearly as often as we should. Sin doesn’t seem to bother us. It’s just a fact of life. We live in sin, and yet we don’t have the slightest clue about it, and what it does to us. Yet here is Jesus, collapsed in Gethsemane, so overcome by his love for the world and his simultaneous knowledge of the depths of win within it, our sin, that he begins to sweat blood. If only we had even a tiny taste of the sense of sin that Christ had, we would understand better. Perhaps then we would take sin seriously. It’s not enough to pray only that my sins are forgiven, both those I am aware of and those I am not. We must also pray that our spiritual sensibilities be transformed by God such that we can recognize sin for what it truly is. Perhaps then we would understand. Shortly before he was to die, Jesus sat down with his disciples for the Passover meal, the meal which commemorates the night of the tenth plague of Egypt. A lamb is slain, roasted over a fire, and consumed. On the night of the tenth plague, the blood was smeared on the sides and top of the door frame, so that the angel of the Lord passing through the city would know these were of God’s chosen people, and would move on to the next home. The sacrificial lamb of Passover saved the Hebrews from death. It is a deeply significant meal, steeped in ritual and liturgy. And it’s at this time which Jesus chooses to do something extraordinary. He breaks the bread, blesses it, and gives it to the disciples saying “Take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He then takes the cup of the “fruit of the vine” (that is, wine), and says “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-29 & Luke 22:14-23) Curious that at this feast which is all about the sacrificial lamb which is to be consumed, Jesus does this very pointed and liturgical act, telling his disciples that he is the lamb which is to be slain, and here is his flesh to eat. It’s a new covenant, and just as the Hebrews were to “do this” Passover meal for all time, Jesus tells his disciples to “do this” with this flesh and this cup that is his blood. The exact meaning of what Jesus means here has, of course, been hotly debated for centuries. Some would hold it’s a symbolic act, a commemoration like that of the old Passover meal. Some would say it has a real spiritual aspect to it that brings it to a level beyond mere symbolism, even if the exact nature of it remains incomprehensible (as all divine things are for man). But Guardini has very pointed words to say regarding the words of this new covenant meal: “Hence, when we ask what they mean, let us first be clear as to how they should be taken. There is only one answer: literally. The words mean precisely what they say. Any attempt to understand them ‘spiritually’ is disobedience and leads to disbelief. It is not our task to decide what they should mean in order to express ‘pure Christianity,’ but to accept them reverently as they stand, and to learn from them what Christian purity is.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") To be clear here, what Guardini means by “the words mean precisely what they say” is that the bread literally and truly does become the flesh of Jesus Christ, and the wine in the cup literally and truly does become the blood of Jesus Christ. For those who think of the Eucharist as symbol, Guardini’s take on this matter may seem quite harsh, perhaps even offensive. I can imagine it would feel that way. But without going into all the historical theological disputations or Biblical critical analyses or tomes upon tomes which have been written on this topic, perhaps we can just consider the words as they are, the context in which they were said, and by whom they were spoken. I’ve already mentioned some of the context of the words. It is during the Passover meal, this ritual into which Jesus inserts himself, quite loudly proclaiming that the true lamb to be slaughtered is himself and the true food to be eaten is his flesh and the true drink to be drunk is his blood (recall the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, as the disciples certainly would have). The words are steeped in mystery, to be sure, but the disciples would have grasped the reality contained within them—this truly is the body and blood of Jesus. “The disciples were no symbolists, neither were they nineteenth- or twentieth-century conceptualists, but simple fishermen much more inclined to take Jesus’ words literally—if not with crude realism, as they had at Capernaum—than spiritually . . . Aware of all this, the Lord yet spoke and acted as he did.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") This simple fact stands out: Jesus knew his audience, better than anyone. Jesus was not one to issue caveats and nuances and expound on ethical and theological and philosophical implications of his teachings. He says things as they are, spontaneously, as they issue from his inner being outward (as every man ought to be ordered, as we read earlier) and he does so with a mind to the people. Had the disciples stopped him to ask “So we are to pretend this is your flesh, then? It is not truly, surely?” I am certain we would hear a swift “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).
It is a divinely revealed reality, one which we are told by Christ himself to believe and to “do” just as the Hebrews were told to “do” the Passover meal. That ought to be enough for us. The “how” of it matters little. It is divine mystery, the mysterium fidei. It is a sign of the new covenant, and it is also the source of our very life! Unless we eat and drink, we have no life in us! Lumen Gentium calls it the “fount and apex” of the Christian life (Lumen Gentium 11), both the source of our life and the highest expression of it. For it is in the Eucharist that we participate in that sacrificial meal, that eternal sacrifice of the lamb by which we are all saved. Truly this is the source of our lives, and ought to be the summit which we all desire. We all know Judas is the traitor. He solidified his place in history as the ultimate example of betrayal. He stood beside Jesus all that time, walked with him, learned at his feet, even was so trusted as to manage the funds for the whole group of disciples. A trusted friend, he turns and hands Jesus over to the priests and the Pharisees for thirty pieces of silver. He does regret it later, and attempts to give the money back, dramatically throwing the coins on the floor. But it’s too little too late. He is the icon of betrayal, the man who handed God over to be killed. Many attempts have been made to understand the rationalizing that must have been going through his mind. Perhaps no matter how hard he tried he simply could not rid himself of his faults, of his avaricious disposition, and not being able to suppress it any longer it finally overcame him. Or perhaps he believed wholeheartedly in the Messiah, and that Jesus was him. But he was unable to shake the preconception that the Messiah would come in a rousing bang of supernatural glory and power, and so he thought that by handing over Jesus he would force his hand—force Jesus to wield his power and overcome the dark forces of the world. Or even maybe Judas knew that Jesus must die for the sake of the salvation of the world, and so he played the role of traitor as a matter of self-sacrifice, in order to aid in whatever way he could in the plan of salvation. None of these are, of course, true. They are intriguing, certainly, perhaps even appealing at some level. But they’re merely romanticized pictures of evil, easier for us to swallow than the truth of the matter. One fact about Judas is clear: He was a true believer, at least at one time. Jesus would not have welcomed him into the Twelve had he been otherwise. He must have come to Jesus with genuine faith and a genuine desire to follow. Follow he did. And like all the apostles, Judas brought his weaknesses and his vices with him. We see some of these weaknesses in the other apostles. Peter was impulsive and inconstant. “By nature he was far from rocklike.” That’s clear enough from his failed attempt at walking on water, or his insistence that Jesus not go to Jerusalem, or his cutting off of the servant’s ear when Jesus was taken. We also have Thomas, the skeptic, who just cannot find it in himself to believe without a sign. Even the beloved disciple, John, had his faults. He was a zealot, a fanatic. We get some of this in his occasionally quite harsh words in his writings. And Judas? He loved money. But in Peter was a good heart, and he allows his impulsiveness to be tempered by the grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit. In John we see true surrender to the Holy One, despite his fanaticism. Thomas was skeptical, true, but he was also honest. When the truth became clear, he recognized and accepted it (“My Lord and my God!”). But Judas, at least at some point, ceased trying to change his ways. “His readiness to reform went lame.” Guardini here points to the moment at Capernaum, where so many abandoned Jesus when he taught that they must eat the flesh of the Son of Man. Perhaps it was here that Judas lost his faith, but ultimately we do not know when it happened. Only that it did, and that lack of faith became a terrible thing within him. To lack faith is a terrible enough thing, but to be without faith and also to be constantly confronted with the Son himself! The fire of opposition must have burned within him, as he walked in the presence of pure holiness. “Where there is no pure readiness of faith and love to accept this sacred force as beginning and end, the atmosphere must become poisonous. In such a person, a satanic irritation swells like a malevolent tumor. He revolts against the tremendous power of the pathos unfolding before him and becomes increasingly spiteful and critical of word and deed, until the mere presence of the saint, every gesture, every inflection of his voice, becomes intolerable. Then it happens: Judas finds himself the natural ally of the enemy. All his Pharasaic instincts awaken, and suddenly he sees Jesus as Israel’s greatest danger.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") The story of Judas leading up to the betrayal is difficult enough, and perhaps why we prefer the more romantic versions of the story. In the true story, we can easily see ourselves in Judas. We can easily see ourselves, over time, losing our faith and slowly falling further and further away to the point that we become completely opposed to the Truth, to Christ. Our tendency to sin is powerful within us, and this reality is one we don’t like to face. There is a bit of Judas in us all. Consider the betrayal itself. Was Judas the only one who betrayed Jesus? They all fled! Peter even denies ever knowing him, three times! Even John fled. Despite the fact that he did return and stood at the foot of the cross, that must still stand as a betrayal. The great masses who cheered the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem, the five thousand he fed with loaves and fishes, the sick he healed, all betrayed him. The masses chose a criminal over Jesus! We are no different than these. We choose other things in our lives over Christ all the time. Judas sold Christ for silver. We sell Christ for vanity, profit, security, even vengeance. “Are these more than thirty pieces of silver? We have little cause to speak of “the traitor” with indignation or as someone far away and long ago. Judas himself unmasks us. We understand his Christian significance in the measure that we understand him from our own negative possibilities, and we should beg God not to let the treachery into which we constantly fall become fixed within us. The name Judas stands for established treason, betrayal that has sealed the heart, preventing it from finding the road back to genuine contrition.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") And so we are to pray. Not that we never be like Judas. We are like him already. But that we do not become fixed in our Judas-like ways as he became—that we might be genuinely open to reform and correction, and never seal our hearts to Christ.
We looked a bit at “judgment” yesterday, and how the forthcoming judgment of the entire world ought to be at the center of the Christian consciousness. But knowing the judgment is imminent is not enough to place it as such. We ought to spend some time considering what this judgment is, why it is, and perhaps, in the limited capacity our minds allow, how it might look to us, the judged. Guardini begins this exercise in chapter five of Part 5 of The Lord. The obvious truth is that there seems to be something wrong with the world. Throughout all of human history, it’s the one observation that keeps coming up again and again. There’s something about human existence that seems off to us. Everywhere we turn we see “stupidity, injustice, deception, and violence” between men and their fellow men. In the same way humanity keeps noticing this problem, we also have this nagging expectation that one day all will be as it should—that there will be some kind of course correction or fulfillment in which the wrong will end and everything is set right. But is that all this “judgment” is? A resetting of the proper order of things? Guardini says “No.” “In order that ‘judgments’ such as these take place, things have only to appear before God’s clarity. But what Jesus was referring to in the last days of his earthly existence was something else. The judgment he means will not come through the falling away of time’s constraint and the placing of all things in God’s clarifying light, but through God’s advent. Judgment is not the eternal consequences of divine government, but God’s specific historical act—the last.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") In other words, the fulfillment we seek and the “setting things right” will be present, ultimately, in eternity. But that is not what this judgment is or even entails. Judgment stands between things as they are now and things as they will be in eternity. Judgment stands as a definitive historical moment, the final moment of time itself, when everything enters into the eternal. Judgment is precisely the final arrival of God in the world, His “advent.” We know it perhaps more familiarly as the Second Coming of Christ. It is at this moment of Judgment, this final historical act, that time itself ceases. There is no more room for us to change our ways in preparation. It’s the moment when the whole world, all that is and ever has been, comes face to face with the Son, the Judge, and in that moment the measure of our worth will be weighed, and by that measure we will be sent forth to our eternal destiny. But what is the measure? How are we to be judged? Recall the words of Jesus here, where he warns precisely about the coming judgment: “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’” -Matthew 25:34-39 We might expect our worth to be measured in our deeds. That’s the depiction we see of eternal life and, indeed, even the Judgment itself, in popular media. The more you help people, the more you clothe them and feed them and nurse them, the closer you are to the kingdom. This could be considered true in a sense, but it is not what Jesus is saying here. Those are all important and virtuous things to do, if we are talking about living the Christian life. So please, do them! But it is not just the measure of our love that matters here. It’s specifically our love of Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Behind each person stands Christ, for “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Being good to our neighbors isn’t just a thing we do, and especially not merely a thing we do to merit eternal life. Rather, it is chiefly our love of Christ, which informs and drives our love of neighbor, that will be the measure of our worth. Unlike any other moral or ethical system of the world, which say merely things like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “do good and you will receive good,” Jesus says: Love God, the source of all Good, and because of your love of God also love your neighbor, for your neighbor is made in the image of God just as you are, and thus how you treat him is how you treat God and Good itself. “Everything a man is and has, what he does with it, how he acquits himself of his everyday duties—all this will be presented as his judgment. He will be judged with justice and love; the real measure of that judgment, however, is his love of his fellow men, which is love of Christ. That is why St. Paul says ‘For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Gal. 5:14).”
-Romano Guardini ("The Lord") In the Gospels, we see Jesus foretell the destruction of Jerusalem. But he doesn’t speak of it as a seer or a soothsayer, speaking of merely a future event which is to come. He speaks as one who knows not only that it will occur, but also the reason for it. That reason does not lie in geopolitical or natural causes. Rather, he calls it punishment for an unfaithful nation. “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” -Luke 21:20-24 It seems curious that the fate of all other nations rests on a myriad of factors. Their prosperity or demise depends on their economic and diplomatic statuses, their religious institutions, the strength and stability of their social institutions, and many others. But for Israel, the chosen nation of God, their destiny hinges on one thing alone: faith. If they remain faithful, God will be with them to the end. If they abandon God, His wrath will fall upon them.
Guardini looks at this peculiarity by looking at the nature of this nation’s religion. While all other nations can trace a religious “evolution” of sorts, the development of characteristics and beliefs as influenced by social and cultural characteristics both in that nation and from the nations around it, Israel stands apart. If Israel’s religion had developed in this way, we would expect their religion to look much like the religions of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, even the Greeks. But with Israel, we see instead the religion appearing suddenly, given to Abraham and Moses. God summons these people, and gives them the truth: there is one God, and here is how to be faithful to Him. From that proceeds what Guardini calls an “endless tug-of-war between the religious characteristics of this people (or of those who have influenced it) on the one side, and God and his truth and his law and his guidance on the other.” We see this tug-of-war play out in the Old Testament. They continually fail to remain faithful, and are punished for it. God even sends the prophets to correct them, and the prophets are chastised and rejected. Now we see Jesus speaking of that same battle, this time in Israel’s rejection of the Messiah, and its ultimate outcome: the Holy City will fall for its unfaithfulness. But make no mistake here, Jesus is not merely speaking about the fall of Jerusalem. “Behind the downfall of the Holy City looms a catastrophe of quite different dimensions: the downfall of the world.” Israel will face judgment for its rejection of Jesus, yes, but the entire world will face that same judgment for its unfaithfulness. Guardini compares it to Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the measure of God’s patience with man’s sin will reach its breaking point, and the world will be destroyed, though this time in order to be remade into the New Creation. To some ears, that perhaps sounds preposterous (certainly to the scientific mind). To the non-believing heart, it even sounds offensive. But the Christian recognizes and believes that all that is only is because it was Created and God wills it to be, and only for as long as He wills. To put it in callous terms, the world is His property, and His to do with as He pleases. “[The end of the world] will come; and not of itself, but of God. To accept this and to live accordingly, that is faith.” The thing to be learned from Christ’s warning here is that judgment looms over all of Creation. We are not merely biological or historical entities which are invulnerable to this philosophical mystery we call “God.” Faith matters. Everything has its cause and effect. The effect of unfaithfulness is judgment, and one day the “measure” will be full and judgment will arrive for the whole world. It is accepting this reality that will help us to truly understand what it means to be a believer. Part 5 of the The Lord opens up with the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, on the back of a donkey. The crowds greet him by laying down palm branches, and all around are cheering and proclaiming the arrival of the Messiah. It truly would have been a sight to behold, and we can’t help but wonder what it actually would have been like to have been there. To have witnessed this triumphant arrival would certainly be a tremendous blessing. But was it really that grand of an affair, visually speaking? If we could look at it now as a video recording, would it look like how we would expect the Son of Man to openly reveal himself to the world? I don’t think so. I found myself thinking about this quite a lot lately. The current situation in the world with the COVID-19 pandemic has many of us sitting at home nearly all the time. We don’t go walking about the streets like we normally would, we don’t go about our normal routines of traveling to and from work or popping into the markets for an afternoon. But this situation is what made me think about the people who were there to welcome Jesus. This wasn’t a royal welcome. This wasn’t a parade filled with pomp filled with dignitaries and leaders all recognizing the kingship of the man on a donkey. But nor was it the opposite. It wasn’t just the poor out gathering to welcome the one who will overthrow the powers that have kept them so overburdened. Jesus surrounded himself with the poor and the downtrodden throughout his public ministry, so we might suspect this moment to act a crescendo for all he has done so far. We might expect it to serve as a contrast to the pomp of a worldly royal entrance, where instead of the rich and powerful it is the poor and weak who are there to celebrate their king. But neither of these things is what occurred. Instead, it was average people, going about their daily business. It was blacksmiths and tailors and shopkeepers and people just popping out to get a bite to eat. Not the poor or the rich, not the powerful or the weak, not the Jews or the Gentiles, there is no label or category we can put this crowd into, other than “they were people.” “Crowd in which we all could find our place—human reality, mediocrity bare of the pathos both of splendor and of misery.” But something about the fact of Jesus’s arrival changed everything about that boringly ordinary and mediocre crowd. It’s in his arrival to Jerusalem that Jesus ceases any attempt to conceal who he is. Here he openly proclaims himself the Messiah, the Son of God, and he does not back down from that claim even unto his death. His ride into the city is an act of revelation. That’s clear from the crowd’s response. Instead of going about their day and ignoring this man riding a donkey, surely not even a strange sight in the city, they all stop. The Holy Spirit moves through the crowd, enabling them to see the truth of who this man is and the significance of what is occurring. Suddenly all of these ordinary people are overcome with joy, for they can now truly see the God-man, and they all proclaim “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Jesus acts—the same Spirit that inspires his action moves in those about him, revealing to them its meaning. Simultaneously, their eyes see the Lord as he rides through the street, and their spirit sees what is behind the event. The physical eye and the spiritual are one. And those who so truly ‘saw’ in that hour were not the particularly talented, neither geniuses nor in any way the elite or the mighty, but ‘the common people,’ those who happened to be in the streets at the time. For the power that opened their eyes and hearts was not human power, but the Spirit of God moving among men.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") Perhaps it’s how uninteresting and average this crowd was that finally tipped the scales for the powers of the day. The Pharisees had been opposed to Jesus for some time already, but the Sadducees had remained indifferent and aloof. It’s not until after his arrival that they begin to take him as a threat and begin to move against him. Perhaps it’s because they saw that he wasn’t just a Pharisee problem, nor even just a Roman problem. Something about him stirred the souls of everyone he encountered, regardless of class or race. In that act of revelation, Jesus became a Sadducee problem as well. In that moment, the Holy Spirit revealed to the world who Jesus was.
So would it have been that spectacular an affair to have been there? Absolutely! But only by the grace of the Holy Spirit moving within us. Without that grace, we would have just seen a wayward man on a donkey. But with it, we would have seen the Son. It is the same for us today. The Holy Spirit, the Advocate sent in Christ’s name by the Father (John 14:26) , is the one who teaches us to recognize such divine things, and how to respond to them. Only with the help of the Holy Spirit will we also be able to proclaim, in the here and now, “Hosanna in the highest!” As we close out Part 4, we take a look at forgiveness. It seems a simple enough thing. Christians are called to forgive those who wrong us, no matter the offense. But it’s tremendously difficult, and goes against every instinct we have. We are to “turn the other cheek,” not merely in the sense of avoiding the retaliation we so desire, but to truly wipe away the image of the other as an “offender” at all. Merely ignoring an offense, by comparison, is simple. But that leads to apathy regarding offenses against us. We are not called to apathy. We are called to love, and you cannot love one you do not forgive. The thing is, man is very acutely aware of violations of justice, at least in the sense of losing what we believe to be rightly ours. When someone takes or damages what is ours, whether it be a physical possession, our bodies, our family members, or even our honor (honor perhaps most of all), we recognize the violation immediately. Everything in us boils and screams that the order of justice be restored. That person has, in our minds, become an enemy, and that enemy must be punished for his offense. “The desire for revenge is slightly more ‘human.’ It is not a response to mortal danger, but to the danger of loss of power and honor. The fact that the other was able to damage me proves that he was stronger than I; had I been what I should be, he never would have dared to attempt it. The impulse to retaliate aims primarily at reestablishing my self-respect by humiliating my enemy. I would rise by the other’s fall.” -Romano Guardini ("The Lord") At the heart of it is fear. We fear losing what is ours and we fear being made out to be less than we are. An offender challenges our status and our power. This cannot go unpunished. An eye for an eye! If you take my honor, I will take yours, and the order of the world will be restored! But he will then retaliate against me, and I against him, and he against me. That’s not order at all. That’s pure chaos. The proper order of things set forth from Creation was marred by our lust for power, and now we presume to restore it by reasserting our power? No, only God has claim to power, only God can bring about order to the world.
Instead, our call is to forgiveness, to realizing that our self-respect does not depend on honor or power. My self-respect is grounded on my being a child of God, and everything I do ought to spring from that reality. Then every offender, every enemy, becomes a fellow man, a brother. Forgiveness is not just turning a blind eye to his offense, but turning to him and saying “I love you.” It is not renouncing our instinct to punish, but a “relinquishment of the wish to see punishment meted out at all.” The call to forgiveness is a call to completely reorient ourselves, how we view the world, how we view each other, and how we view justice itself. We’ve talked about justice before as we’ve gone through Guardini’s book, and we’ve realized that justice, true justice, is not something man is capable of absent grace. We can never restore true justice because true justice requires that one see all parties involved as they truly are, into their very hearts and their intents. That takes love, and from love springs mercy and forgiveness. The scope of the knowledge we have, and even the knowledge we are capable of, makes us utterly unable to enforce justice, because our very idea of what is just is skewed by our limited perception. But through love we are able to forgive, and be merciful. That is a higher form of justice, true justice. |
Series Info
Every day of Lent, I am writing a reflection piece on two chapters of "The Lord" by Romano Guardini. If you'd like to read or follow along, you can find the full calendar of where we're at below, or Click Here for the main landing page. Archives
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