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HEART OF CHRIST: SIGN OF CONTRADICTION
by Sr.Joan Bernadette
April 2007
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Dear Friends of the Heart of Christ,
Today we stand at the brink of Holy Week; a most sacred time as we immerse ourselves more deeply in the sufferings and death of Jesus our Redeemer. Liturgically, we are nearing the end of Jesus' earthly life and we vividly realize that it was one, not of outward peace and tranquility, but of violence and conflict. So many different and difficult human perplexities converged to effect the death of an innocent and good person. Yet if we look at the Gospel of Saint Luke, we see that at the earliest stages of Jesus' life there was already a prophetic sense that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction. This awareness clearly emerges in the Lukan narrative of Jesus' presentation in the Temple [Lk 2: 25-35].
Mary and Joseph bring their baby to the Temple shortly after his birth, as prescribed by Jewish law, and encounter the holy man Simeon. Old and prayerful, Simeon, recognizes God's own Anointed One and taking the child in his arms, praises God and says, "Now, O Lord, let your servant depart in peace, because my eyeshave seen your instrument of salvation, which you have prepared before all the people, a Light to bring your revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." Then, turning to Mary, he utters a most startling pronouncement: "This child is appointed to be the cause whereby many in Israel will fall and many rise and for a sign which will meet with much opposition. As for you a sword will pierce your soul and all this will happen that the inner thoughts of many hearts may be revealed"
One may wonder just how awe-struck the young parents of Jesus were at hearing this mysterious message. Their precious child was to be the cause whereby many would fall; he was to be the cause whereby many would rise. His life would meet with much opposition.
There is an insightful refection on this passage from the Protestant scripture scholar William Barclay. He notes: "It is not so much God who judges a person; a person judges himself; and his judgment is his reaction to Jesus Christ. If, when he is confronted with that goodness, his heart runs out in answering love, he is within the Kingdom. If, when so confronted, he remains unmoved or hostile, he is condemned.
There is a great refusal just as there is a great acceptance." So, he concludes, "Towards Jesus there can be no neutrality. We either surrender to him or are at war with him." [from The Gospel of Luke by William Barclay, 1975]
When we glance at the world around us, especially through the daily news, the obvious is before us: the war is raging, perhaps as never before. Jesus still meets a stiff opposition in our own times, he is still mocked, still ridiculed, still crucified. Hostile forces weave their way in and through the magazines we pick up, the movies we watch, perhaps even the people we encounter on our own streets. And what can we say about ourselves? In one of the most cherished books read by our founder, Saint Francis de Sales, called The Spiritual Combat, written in the sixteenth century, we find these words: "This is indeed the hardest of all struggles; for while we strive against self, self is striving against us, and therefore is the victory here most glorious and precious in the sight of God. Matching this thought our holy mother Saint Jane de Chantal equally exhorts: "To enjoy the sweetness of God is not solid love, but to humble oneself, to bear contradiction, to die to oneself, to wish to be known to God alone; this indeed is to love."
The reality of suffering, struggle, sickness, in-completeness, death carry within them the seeds of mystery known only and fully to the mind and heart of God. As humans we may desire to isolate the concrete factors which contribute to our dilemmas, but there remains for the most part an ‘Illusive dimension which goes beyond our best abilities to analyse. We ultimately come to the rockbed of Jesus' own response to suffering and hardship: total trust in God. His words reverberate from the lips of the psalmist: "I trusted, I trusted in the Lord and he stooped down to me; he heard my cry."
Many of you may have already seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ. Recently on a hermit day, I watched it again and came away mesmerized by its intensity and insights. There is a scene in which Jesus, covered with wounds and on his way to crucifixion, embraces his cross with great tenderness and speaks the words, :Father, I am your servant." What an ‘ultra' contradictory statement to the world's perspective. Jesus professes himself as servant in the midst of utter confusion, human chaos, unbelievable turmoil and he does it with a heart full of humility and trust.
Witnessing the actions of Jesus to his articularly cruel set of circumstances helps us in our own personal life responses. Whenever something distasteful happens to us, giving us pain or worry, does it not sustain us to recall what others have suffered and endured? The contradictions of life came full force upon Jesus and those who followed in his footsteps. Yet by the gift of God's grace, the broken and crushed, were raised up.
In a wonderful reflection for the First Sunday of Lent calling to mind Jesus' temptation in the desert, Saint Augustine would have us recall that our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. "No one knows himself except through trial or receives a crown except after victory, or strives against an enemy or temptation." This is not to imply that we mold ourselves into masochists who go about looking for situations of suffering. No, but neither does it negate the impulse many of us have to flee from any hardship that touches us in any way. In the natural living out of our ordinary days, there are endless opportunities to stand below the cross of Christ in faithfulness and love.
I will never forget a little example of this ‘testimony of faith' which was related by a simple story told in a homily. The story took place in a restaurant. A man who was a regular customer would come in and order his food and proceed to enjoy his meal alone. He was a man who had lost his faith and perhaps deep down was looking for something to really fill his spiritual hunger. One day a small family came in and sat at a table close by. When their food arrived they waited until everything was placed on the table, then without saying another word they silently blessed themselves and remained in prayer for a few moments. It was so naturally done, yet this small gesture emitted a power that penetrated the heart of their unknown neighbor and was a channel of grace that eventually effected his return to the faith.
One of the recommendations which Saint John the Baptist de la Salle use to give to his penitents was that they should look upon everything with the ‘eyes of faith' A story emerges from the Russian Orthodox tradition to illustrate this clearly. It is a fairly recent recounting, taking place in 1954, between a spiritual director or ‘staretz' called Father Michael and a professional writer, who later recalls... "I wanted to ask him why a tragedy which I experienced in 1951 had happened. When I came to the staretz, before I could ask him anything, he silently gave me another leaflet to read. When I took it I read: "It Came From Me. Happiness and misfortune, rise and fall, health and sickness, glory anddishonor, wealth and poverty, everything, comes from me and must be accepted as such. Those who entrust themselves to me and accept all the trials which I send to them will not be ashamed in the Day of Judgment. They will realize even here in this world why their life took this course and not another. I send to everyone that which is best for him"
[from Russian Mystics by Sergius Bolshakoff; CistercianPublications, 1976; pp. 267-68].
So in our trials we are given the opportunity of embracing some of what the Heart of Jesus experienced and seeing that the pains of life are indeed avenues of access into deeper spiritual realities. Pope John Paul II writes in his book entitled: The Sign of Contradiction : "Man needs this mystery (of purification) for his interior life, for his ascesis, for his steady approach towards the living God in the darkness of faith; although the darkness hides the face of the living God it unveils the infinite majesty of his holiness."
In our Salesian spiritual tradition there is ample evidence in the life of our sister Saint Margaret Mary which shows her unusual approach to suffering. Our Saint claims to have relished the contradictions sent her way, even from those who were good religious. She did more than just put up with these ‘pinpricks', she really embraced them in a mysterious, mystical way to demonstrate her ardent love of God, even in absurdity! Perhaps by doing so there was a taste of that profound peace which is released when the deepest levels of transcendent being are exposed. Yet to those around her she surely appeared an enigma, a contradiction in herself.
In her biography of the Saint, the author Margaret Yeo presents us with this picture... "Saints are always difficult for the ordinary mortal to live with or understand and Margaret must have been extremely irritating to common sense. Her terrible self-inflicted mortifications, her charity to the poor, which meant she was always worrying people for money, giving away good food instead of eating it herself, always wanting to run off for confession or Communion, useless all day before Communion and worse after, lost to the world..."
However we can find the contradictions of life happening not only in the lives of canonized saints, but with everyday people who connect with God. Mary Craig, an English journalist and mother, relates how her own personal trauma was an opening to a deep awareness of God's presence in her life: "On the day that the second of my two mentally handicapped children was born, I experienced a fathomless despair. I felt that I was drowning and didn't even know how to struggle. Yet there was something in me that wanted to grow through this horror, to use it for good in some way. When I reached what seemed to me the darkest depths, I was suddenly aware of being upheld, aware of a promise of strength, if I would only seek it. I can only say that it was my one and only direct experience of God."
Another wonderful example of a different perspective on the contradictions of life comes across in a story told about Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In her book: "Such a Vision of the Street", the author Eileen Egan, a lay person who worked with the Missionaries of Charity for thirty years, remembers: "One day, after my conversation had been filled with a litany of problems, Mother Teresa remarked, ‘Everything is a problem.' Why not use the word gift?"
With that began a shift in vocabulary. Shortly thereafter, we were to fly from Vancouver to New York City. I was dismayed to learn that the trip had to be broken en route, with a long delay, and was about to inform her of the ‘problem.' Then I caught myself and said, ‘Mother, I have to tell you about a gift. We have to wait four hours here, and you won't arrive at the convent until very late." Mother Teresa settled down in the airport to read a book of meditations, a favorite of hers.
From that time on, items that presented disappointments or difficulties would beintroduced with ‘We have a small gift here ‘ or "Today we have an especially big gift." There were smiles, perhaps rueful, at situations that earlier had been described by the dour word problem.
Saint James tells us in his epistle that when we draw close to God, God will draw close to us (4:8). Since God is love, we know that God is constantly longing to share his life with us. But God will not smother us with his love. Instead, God allows contradictions, that is trials, to be part of our existence to remind us that we cannot go it alone, that we need our Creator's loving hand to rescue us. Our difficulties then become guideposts to lead us to God, and the moment we realize this and utilize our deficits to draw close to God, then we open the door to our Savior's heart.
It has been written of Saint Margaret Mary that the 19 years she spent in the Visitation Monastery of Paray-le-Monial were one uninterrupted succession of physical and spiritual trials. In other words, the Sacred Heart was giving her an abundance of opportunities or gifts to turn to him. She recognized this proclaiming, "Life without the cross would be unbearable. All happiness here below consists of being able to suffer for the Heart of Jesus." Obviously, from looking at the lives of God's holy ones we see an intimate connection between God's gifts and human problems. We can almost conclude: no problems, no gifts.
During this sacred week in the Church's calendar, perhaps we need to pause and truly consider what the Heart of the Redeemer is offering to us by way of our daily heartaches and difficulties. Are these "gifts" stimulating us to deepen our relationship with our God, to surrender to his saving presence in our lives?
This presentation was given at the Monastery of the Visitation of Tyringham, MA on Sunday April 1, 2007
God be Praised
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