Deuteronomy 4:32-40
Psalm 33:4-22
Romans 8:14-17
Matthew 28:16-20

Gazing into the Fire

Each year on the Sunday following Whitsunday (or Pentecost), we approach with reverence and awe the holy privilege of reflecting on God's nature. Does it seem that we reach too high? That we might fall into the error of arrogance? Or, worse, that touching God's holy mountain, that we might perish? For who has seen the face of God and lived (Ex 33:20)? But we are safe, held harmless by Him. For He has invited us, even commanded us, to know Him, to contemplate Him, even to become One with Him. In our reading from Deuteronomy this morning, God Himself asks in exclamation, "Which god has invited humans into a personal encounter with him?!" "Who has ever heard of this?!" Our Judeo-Christian tradition alone among the world religions calls us to a personal encounter, even intimate relationship, with God. Of us humans the Son of God prayed,

My spiritual director, a Friar Minor of the Capuchin order, told me about a parishioner he once had, a famous and well-published pediatrician, whose son asked her to explain the Holy Trinity. She asked him to call to mind his most wonderful moment, wearing his favorite clothes and looking and feeling his very best. He said that it was when he was wearing his best suit on Christmas Eve and the whole family was dressed up going to midnight Mass. He remembered walking past images of himself in windows they passed with the whole family reflected. He had never felt so perfectly himself as at those moments. Somehow it summed up who he was in a perfect image of self and family, whom he loved so deeply and well. His mother told him, "That is exactly the way the Son of God felt when He told the Disciples that He and the Father were One, and that whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father. The Son could apprehend Himself in all the completeness that the Father intended for Him, a flawless image of the Father. In every motion and word He experienced the abundance of the Father in Himself. And the Father is well-pleased with the Son, as we learn in the first chapter of our first Gospel (Mk 1:11). The Father sees Himself in the Son, Who is constantly living out and becoming the Father's highest ideals for Him — a unity in which the ideal and reality align so perfectly that, to borrow a line of the poet Yeats, you cannot tell the dancer from the dance. And in the Son's fullness and experience of the Father's abundance within Him, a love arises that surpasses selfish or controlling love but transcends all earthly things centered, as it is, in Heavenly perfection. But the Son's love for the Father does not surpass the Father's admiration for the Son — in His obedience, in His magnificent self-giving, in this faithful image radiating all that the Father is. And these two loves — the Son's for the Father and the Father's for the Son — interlace and coalesce and give rise to an objective reality, which is the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the Holy Spirit can be said to "proceed from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified."

I learned this as a licensed professor of Roman Catholic theology and one also charged to train the Permanent Deacons of a Roman Catholic diocese, who in turn would be expected to explain the Church's doctrines to the faithful. It is a beautiful depiction of the love shared by the Father and Son, which I continue to hold as being a true and accurate and lively depiction ... such that our human hearts are able grasp divine love.

In good conscience, I must add that this doctrine of the Holy Spirit, "proceeding from the Father and the Son," was not accepted by any pope during the first thousand-year history of the Church. We must also admit that the Nicene Creed (365), which was agreed to by all bishops (including the Bishop of Rome), does not read this way. That ancient Creed arising from an Ecumenical Council that binds upon us today plainly reads that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified." And this is what the Gospel of St. John plainly says in chapter 15, verse 26, where the Son of God says,

While we humans were not begotten of the Father as the Son was, we were, like the Son, made in the image of God. In fact, St. Irenaeus, born not long after the completion of St. John's Gospel (130), wrote that this family resemblance, this image, was a primary purpose for God's entrance into human history. Irenaeus said that we had become like dull pieces of silver that had once borne the image of an Emperor. (Those of us who remember silver coins can recall that this is exactly what happened to dimes and quarters over time.) Whereas the image stamped upon us at birth reminded us of our divine family, we had slowly dimmed that image, worn it down to the point where we could not decipher anything. We forgot who we were and why we were born on the earth. The Advent of Christ was to re-strike the coin. If we should ask, "What are we supposed to be?" The answer is imprinted upon Him, so clearly defined as a Son of God.

Our family resemblance is from a most royal Emperor. And having this high birth we have been granted great privilege and power, even the gift of absolute freedom. For to be born of low birth equates to be being born into one kind of slavery or another. The very definition of high birth equates to privilege. The higher the station we hold, the greater the freedom. From the beginning we are given to know that in our freedom, we have always had two choices before us: to be faithful to our family resemblance as Jesus chose to do or to choose a life that separates us from our true home and royal lineage. Ironically, this departure from home and breaking from family may appear at first to signify still greater freedom. But it always turns out to be an abject slavery, as St. Paul reminded us this morning in his letter to the Romans. It is always in choosing relationship with God that keeps our identity fresh and our destiny free and clear, and to be free of the many entanglements of the world. In fact, we call this separation from God "the world," or "the seculum." Even today we use the word "secular" to mean "not having to do with God."

Again and again, we experience two remarkable things. First, God calls us into relationship with Him. Second, the choice for God always means a turning away from the world. (Moses says, "I will turn aside and see this great sight," the burning bush (Ex 3:3).) We heard in our Mass readings this past week, "Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (Jas 4:4). And we remember that God calls Abram and Sarai away from the city of man to be alone with Him. (Cities, of course, are built by the descendants of Cain.) And if we should miss this point, this all-important detail of Abraham's biography, the narrative is keen to repeat it. For nephew Lot and his family have chosen the wrong place to live: in the "metroplex" cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses, too, encounters God apart from the cities: in the Wilderness of Midian, tending herds of sheep in preparation for his shepherd vocation over the flock of Israel, as David would many generations later. This pattern will be repeated with the people Israel, with St. John the Baptist, and with the Lord Jesus — constantly called to "a desert place," where spiritual life is the only thing and worldly distractions do not tug our attention away from God. God is about intimate relationship, not casual friendship. Indeed, He originally created the world, not as a city, but as a Garden where humans might commune with Him daily. And He always calls us away from great the civilizations of history — Ur of the Chaldees, Bablylon (Abraham's home) or Egypt (Moses was a prince of Egypt) or the Roman Empire of Jesus' time.

Isn't that the universal story of every child? Each of us begins with our godly resemblance intact, seeking good relationship with every other person. The child's world does not need the goo-gaws of civilization, nor really understands them. It is enough to play. The child's natural element is an atmosphere of pure creativity, one spirit rejoicing with another. By tradition, play is the activity of Heaven, and the time of day is an eternal now, a Saturday afternoon that never ends. Did not each of us experience that Heavenly atmosphere every day of our young lives?

But humans, you see, are social animals. In their need for acceptance, they are are quickly formed by whatever surrounds them. Thrust into a school yard, so quickly does goodly playfulness devolve into ugly pecking order: dog-packs of boys or cliques of girls whose element is cruelty.

From the school yard, the child's need for acceptance enters another maze, which is the sexual desire of other, often older, children. Here, again, the young person's need for approval, seeking security and a place of respect in becoming a couple, pushes her or him forward. Yet, all too soon security slips through one's fingers and respect becomes a loss of respect, even of self-respect. In the U.S. today a hallmark of our great civilization is degraded sexuality. Its signature is upon nearly everything in this culture.

Like the sexual maze, the next set of twisting paths and dead-ends will last a lifetime. These are the paths whose desire is power and money, which is power's surest indicator. The degraded heart constantly cries, "If only I could own that car, I would be happy forever!" "If only I could own that house, I would be happy forever!" "If only I could possess that title or belong to that club, I would be happy forever!" But the people who drive these cars back and forth to their sumptuous homes and exclusive clubs are not happy forever. Many of them are not happy now. In fact, our best mental health figures in the United States indicate that the least depressed person in America is an older, unmarried black woman working two jobs and hovering just above the poverty line. That woman is the happiest person in America! And our weary planet strains and unravels attempting to hold all the cast-off junk which the heart once so ardently desired.

These are paths trod by nearly every human. We all begin in pristine Eden, the place of perfect sufficiency where nothing is ever cast off. It is a world of pure creativity and play united to the Creator-God. Then most of us depart from God heading East into the cities of Cain. And what is this East of Eden? It is the world. The choice is always between God or the world. No one can have both. On the point of His Ascension, the Son of God said,

Is it really possible to leave the world? St. Catherine of Siena reminds us, "It is nothing but Heaven all the way to Heaven." So, Heavenly life must be something that happens far in advance of our departure from earth. It is a fellowship among all who are truly alive. Certainly, most are not alive on earth today who belong to this fellowship. Their Heavenly lives here seamlessly entered Heavenly life there. Then, how do we here on earth join this fellowship? We join with hearts that love God completely, hearts that have left the world behind, have discarded worldly entertainments, worldly irony, worldly sophistication, worldliness. And what is the substance of this Heavenly kingdom? What does it look like? How does one breathe this living air and goodness and spiritual aliveness?

It is called the Holy Spirit. The Counselor, the Consoler, the Teacher, the Spirit of all Truth. He will breathe this life-giving atmosphere into your soul. Think of yourself as being in the School of the Holy Spirit as people before you were in the School of Plato or of Aristotle or of other great teachers. It is an atmosphere for one's mind, one's heart, one's soul — a fellowship grounded in and centered on the love of God and interwoven with all those who love God. What exactly does this School teach? It teaches godly relationship, for we were made in the image of God Who is relationship, a Holy Trinity of Persons. It teaches us to reclaim the sensibilities that belong to pure creativity, one spirit rejoicing with another, for play is the essential activity of Heaven. As we read yesterday in the Mass readings,

As Moses gazes into the fire of God's Name and nature, he learns two things: first, "I AM WHO AM" is pure being and pure creativity, and, second, that God loves us. He would not have appeared to Moses in the first place if that were not true. The fire appearing to Moses is the fire of love. For Love is His Name: the One Who seeks relationship among Himself, the Holy Trinity, and Who seeks out each of us. He does not pray for the world. But He calls us in to His marvelous world of love and light. You shall see the face of God and live, for in that image alone do we have life.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.