"I came to bring fire to the earth."
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how
I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and
what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to
bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five
in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they
will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against
daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
[W]hen Jesus says, “Do you think that I
have come to establish your idea of peace in this world?” No. On the contrary, I
have come to shake up your concept of what happiness and peace is. I have come
to shatter the symbols that you think are important to the achievement of your
myths of peace.
What
might [those myths] be? Good reputation, good income, good portfolio, good
entertainment, good acceptance by family and friends, good success in business,
profession, ministry. These are not sources of peace. . .. [W]hile having a
certain value, [these myths] are not the ultimate value by which we can live.
[Jesus]
perceived at the profoundest level, the true value [of life], which is not a
myth, but the love of God trying to free us from the false gods that our myths
have created. What happens when we sit with the pain. . . and face our own
moral failure at times to deal with the circumstances of life with justice and
truth and charity? There comes this unbearable confrontation with the dark side
of ourselves at the deepest level, that side that can rush out and destroy other
people in order to get away from the pain. It’s at that point in which our myths
are frustrated and [we see] darkness that we might do–at that point we
understand who Jesus Christ is and what salvation means. It means that God joins
us at this point of utter powerlessness in the face of our pain, the pain of
loss of all the symbols that we thought would bring us peace. And it’s that gift
of God’s presence in which God takes into Godself, so to speak...that
anguish, alienation, that self-made hell in which, when we cease projecting it
on others, we have to face it in ourselves.
And in
doing so, we find the peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace which
the world cannot give through all its promises of delightful mythology. It’s the
world that is. It’s the world of God's infinite mercy. It’s the world in which
the power of God is totally at the service of infinite mercy in which God takes
upon Godself the anguish, the desolation, the loneliness, the hellishness of
which hell itself is the symbol. And that is the peace that the world cannot
give.
~Thomas Keating, Aug 2001 homily, published in Contemplative Outreach News, Vo. 39, #2, June 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment