A Thought for the Big Weekend
Blessed Juliana of Norwich lived in difficult days of the fourteenth century. Juliana lived in the world described by Barbara Tuchman, modern historian, as A Distant Mirror of the world in which we live today. 1) Frequent war between England and France (100 Years War) was a reality. 2) Disease was prevalent among the rich and the poor alike with the bubonic plague that killed 25% of the population of Europe. 3) There was civil discord in England with a Peasant’s Revolt” led by Wat Tyler. 4) There were church-state tensions when Catholicism did not always do its best to be a “nice religion”. We were lucky not to be alive back then.
Blessed Juliana had a powerful religious experience in the midst of an illness that all expected would culminate in her death, May 8, 1373. She had asked for an experience of how much God loved her. She saw the crucified Head of Jesus and thought that this was her final request before she died. However, she recovered and the strength of this powerful religious experience led her to become a most remarkable women of her time.
Juliana believed that, as St Paul wrote, that God had already won the victory over evil through the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. She believed that we were living in the clean up days, which we can help or hinder, but not thwart.
She wrote that there were 4 types of fear that humans face. 1) We fear assault; 2) We fear physical pain; 3) We fear mental anguish.
With the Help of God, we can convert these 3 fears into an opportunity of trust and reliance upon God. How so??
However, a fourth fear, obviating the other three fears, is a radical source of blessing in itself. In Confirmation, we called it the principal Gift of the Holy Spirit, viz., Fear of the Lord.
(In the early twentieth century, Rudolf Otto, a German theologian, described God as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the awesome and fascinating mystery.) It is the fear of the Lord, a healthy (not neurotic) recognition that there is something that is different than I, on which I am ultimately dependent. It is respect for the Big Picture. It is not ultimately about me or my group.) It is recognition of God, the Ultimate Reality.
Jesus speaks of it in the Beatitudes which we heard earlier this year. Juliana teaches us that “Fear of the Lord” is another name for “Awe or Reverence for God as God”
What we call poverty in spirit, means that ultimately we acknowledge that everything comes from God. Spiritual poverty, humility, meekness, cleanheartedness, compassionate mercy, doers of shalom (“peace makers” is what the word translates), all are synonyms for Fear of the Lord.
Juliana also taught that believers trust that God, in God’s Power and Wisdom, is capable of doing what God wants. (We try to believe, although, at times, we hedge our bets because we would like surety.) Juliana wrote that we trust that God is all powerful and all wise and therefore, can do all things. But still…. What happens when things are not exactly as we want them to be.
Jesus wants us to heed, with the Integrating Energy of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of His Paschal Paradox, viz., God can turn anything into something good. (The big case of point is the very death of Jesus Himself.)
Sometimes, It ain’t easy. Jesus through His life, death and Resurrection says to us the following: 1) Your God is with you; 2) Your God can be trusted; 3) Your universe is safe and ultimately, benevolent; 4) Trust God, beyond and within you; 5) There is no reason ultimately to fear; 6) Your reality is headed to Something Good.
These days, more and more Catholics speak of the “Christ Quantum”, the vibrational field established in the Universe by the Incarnation of the invisible God’s Image, Who is the archetype of creation. Just as we are effected by every encounter we have had in our lives, just as we effect every person that we have encountered, (viz., we all rub off on each other, so to speak!), Jesus rubs off on us through Community, Word and Sacrament and countless ways known only to Jesus.
He asks us to trust that all of us are subjects who are acted upon by a loving and provident God. Even if for some men, it is getting easier to count the number of all the hairs of our head, there is consolation knowing that the loving God is doing the counting.
These days, we hear a lot of the new civil religion that has morphed in contemporary America, therapeutic moralistic deism. (Therapeutic in that religion exists to make me feel good. Moralistic in that we should all be nice to one another; Deism in that there is a God, but my life goes on.)
Several years ago, when the nation debated whether or not we should go into the Second Gulf War, a poll of Mid-West Catholics indicated that about 60% of those Catholics felt that it was more important to be American than to be Catholic. In effect, they supported the powers that be in Washington rather than those in Rome, viz., Blessed John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). (Preemptive strike trumped just war!) If each of us were polled back in March, 2003 (the same month that the Da Vinci Code was published), how would we have responded?
On this Independence Day Weekend, Jesus offers us a subtle challenge. Does the Paschal Mystery of the death & Resurrection of Jesus Christ really come into my evaluation of the direction and meaning of my life? What is my ultimately security? We, our nation, claim as well on our coinage, “In God we trust.” Do we really? 070311AD jfq
