Homily by Sister Rebecca
We just heard the gospel passage: it is mid-way of the Jewish feast of Tabernacles when Jesus goes into the Temple and teaches. The Feast of Tabernacles lasted 8 days. At the close there were some symbolic rites with water: this was to remind the Jews that God is the one who continues to quench his people's thirst, as in former times when the Israelites journeyed through the wilderness. It is in this context that Jesus, on the last day of the feast, cries out: “If anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, ‘Out of their heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
During Vespers we sing: “You went to the temple at mid-point of the feast, O Lord, and you poured forth the waters of your wisdom to satisfy those thirsty for divine grace.” In another hymn we pray: “O source of our life: Let our thirsty souls partake of the waters of true devotion, for you invite everyone to come to you and drink. “This feast’s liturgical texts frequently allude to the experience of thirst. We know how it feels to be thirsty. When really thirsty, like, during a hike, water will be the only thing we think about: slaking our thirst, preferably with cool, running water. To be receptive to the water that Jesus offers, we need to experience a kind of inner thirst that feels like a poignant yearning. This yearning is one of the most valuable attributes of a spiritual seeker; it becomes the motivating force of the whole journey of return to God. When this yearning takes hold of us, nothing in this world can satisfy this longing other than the Source itself, God. Without this yearning, there is no opening in the heart for receiving the outpouring of the waters of life, the Spirit of Wisdom.
All people experience some kind of yearning. It is a common human experience. Many of us, however, mistake the meaning of this yearning and in our ignorance try to fill it, more or less, with abusive substances, or behaviors. The yearning is there. And God most compassionate knows our fragile nature and our ignorance and at some point visits us with a totally free gift of spiritual awakening. For some of us our hearts crack open so wide that we are like inebriated with an influx of an overwhelming sense of God’s presence within ourselves that there is an 180-degree turnabout in our lives. For others of us, this awakening is more subtle, but not less real. It is always about an inner change and often, too, an external one in a new chosen path of life.
Concerning this yearning, let us go to a text from the book of Revelations where the Lord says: “Would that you be hot or cold but because you are lukewarm (read: mediocre, indifferent) I vomit you from my mouth”. This shocking provocation: we don’t like this kind of language today. We would like to strike out these kinds of provocative words from Jesus’ mouth. The current spirit of our times is inclined to scrub clean from our image of Jesus every offensive feature, but it has little to do with the realism of his preaching. But the goal is about repentance: a piercing of the heart to arouse compunction leading to inner awakening. In our text, as in others, Jesus keeps prodding away at the crowd, the Pharisees, and scribes: they are stuck in their linear mind: How can this man teach like he does when he has not been schooled? This linear mind thinks only in ‘a + b = c’. The Lord says through the mouth of Isaiah: “Your thoughts are not God’s thoughts”. This kind of thinking is a major blockage to being permeable to the word of God, to the urgings of our innermost hearts, to living in the sacred now which is awareness of both/and: the tic-tock time of everyday life and the Kairos time of God’s time or eternal time. Jesus points out that not only their thoughts are barriers but their whole attention is centered on ego gratifications, namely, thinking and making decisions according to outer appearances. Without prayer, reflection and meditation we, too, risk losing sight of God’s presence in the NOW and we tend to get entangled in our difficulties and challenges to the point of stifling our zeal for God.
Spiritual teachers note that for some people the awakening to Divine Wisdom changes their lives and they never leave this ‘abiding sense’ of God. They hear the inner whisper “don’t go there”, or this inner urge that they know to respect and heed to: ‘go there’ or ‘do this. They learn from experience that this inner voice can and must be trusted. For most of us: we spiral up and down and at times just stay stagnant. We hear the Word, heed to it and put it into practice; then we get distracted, we waste our precious time in this or that - not useless in itself- but in the long run, we are out of balance. By the grace of God, we wake up again and reset our compass toward listening to God.
I would like to interject here a story: years ago a friend of mine told me about her Jewish friend. He was one of the fortunate ones who escaped the ovens at one of the death camps such as Auschwitz. Like thousands of others, he lived in a barrack with many other inmates. We have all heard of the unimaginable atrocities in these camps. The men were discouraged, beaten down, some life less just waiting to be killed on the job, collapse under the weight of hard labor and then be shot to death…One day this man felt inspired: I will designate one square, a foot in length and width on the floor: it will be the Tabernacle as in the desert: the place of encounter with our God. I will stand there every day for 15 minutes and commune with God. I will ask my companions that when I stand in this square, please leave me in silence during the 15 minutes for I am standing as in God’s Holy Temple. And this he did. It was a leap of faith as he could have been reported to a Kapo and then shot to death. Well, to his amazement, others not only heeded his request, they began little by little to ask to have their turn. In the end whenever there were prisoners in the barrack, there was always someone praying in that square day and night. He said that the men that shared this compound gradually changed…no more depression, swearing, anger, debilitating paralysis of the mind, heart, and spirit; there was no more stealing or ratting on another inmate to one of the kapos to get some miserable perk. Instead, acts of compassion, kindness emerged in and among them. This practice, freely taken on, the intentional ritualizing the very meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles was life giving – life changing. We miss the point if we think that they escaped death in the camp because of the prayer: the point is that by their prayer they allowed God to suffer within them, transforming their lives inside out.
Today as we celebrate in this Temple: would that we in our daily lives have something of the intensity of these men in their seeking God’s Holy Presence. And no matter where we are or what conditions of body, mind and heart come our way – small in comparison or beyond what we think we can endure, may we too listen to our heart’s inspiration and wisdom to likewise seek a small space within to stand firm in the Divine Presence. As Moses before the burning bush in the wilderness of Mt. Sinai, let us hear the Lord say to us: “the place on which you are standing is Holy Ground. (cf. Acts 7: 30-33)
No comments:
Post a Comment