NB. A 2009 Roman homily preached at the Angelicum's English Mass.
St Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma
Anything that can be put
together can be taken apart. Anything fixable is breakable. If it can
be composed, formed, or united, it can be decomposed, unformed, and
disunited. The material universe rises from the play of order and
chaos, making and unmaking. You do not have to be a mystic to realize
that impermanence is the way of all things. Visit a maternity ward.
And then a graveyard. The two are inevitably bound together by the
passage of time. Some of us find this truth to be a source of anxiety, a
point for jumping off into the abyss of meaninglessness. Some are
indifferent, challenged nonetheless by the competition to survive. And
others are delighted at the prospect of death, rushing headlong to their
end, encouraged by the possibility of immortality. Since humans
started thinking about the purpose of their lives, each of these
responses to impermanence—anxiety, indifference, and delight—each of
these has had its philosophical and theological defenders. The gospel
preached by Christ and his Church offers another alternative, another
way to live the joys and pains of passing through God's creation:
permanent renewal, persistent peace.
Pointing to the temple and its
splendor, Jesus says to the crowd, “All that you see here—the days will
come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will
not be thrown down.” For a people whose lives are centered on the
worship of God, such a prediction must have shocked them. How can
something as monumental, as stable as the temple crumble? How can our
connection to God be thrown down? They want to know when this horror
will occur and how will they know that it is coming? Jesus gives no
date, no day and time. He doesn't even hint at a season. Instead, he
points them to the impermanence of creation, the chaos of human life:
earthquakes, famines, plagues, insurrections, wars, awesome signs from
the sky. Had someone from the crowd yelled out to Jesus, “But these
happen all the time!” Jesus would have answered, “Yes, they do.” Those
with eyes to see and ears to hear would have taken his point. We are
always in the midst of destruction, the failure of creation's fall.
Therefore, put your love, your hope, your faith in the only place left
untouched by the currents of chaos. Store up all you treasure in the
promises of eternal life.
Does this mean then that we must
abandon creation to its fate? Do we run for the hills with our guns
and provisions, waiting for The End? No. Though we may be tempted to
hide from the world while we hold out against the enemy, our charge as
followers of Christ is to save the world not abandon it. Jesus doesn't
predict the destruction of the temple in order to warn the crowd away
from its fall. He warns them of its collapse so that they will know
where they should store their treasured faith. Not in buildings or
votive offerings or adornments. But in their humble and contrite
hearts. What our Father wants from His children is that we should live
as if the temple has already been destroyed, as if we were already in
His presence—face-to-face—daily, even now. Then, like Christ, our trust
in Him is lived in the world as a sign of His love and mercy. We are
His temples; we are His tabernacles. And as such we
are—ultimately—indestructible.
Christians do not have the
luxury of anxiety, indifference, or a heroic delight in death. All of
these abandon us to the currents of The Fall. All of these tell us that
we have no purpose, no goal, that there is nothing more, nothing beyond
the stones and mortar of a universe well-made to fall. Instead, we are
vowed to travel through this world as living, breathing sanctuaries of
His presence. Having placed all we love, all we hope for, all we trust
in in the hands of the One Who brings us peace, we become His peace, the
peace among wars and insurrections, tools for rescue and renewal.
__________________________
Follow HancAquam or Subscribe ----->
No comments:
Post a Comment