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Breath Prayer
Breathing in: Your peace
Breathing out: Only Your peace
*Do the Breath Prayer before reading on. Smile on the outbreath, until you cannot help but smile on the full breath.
Wisdom Saying
Like all things temporal, our understanding of God and the church too much constantly die and be raised to new life.
*Ronald Rolheiser. The Holy Longing.
Wisdom Story
A young, university student came to the renowned Jewish rabbi and philosopher Abraham Heschel. He was complaining about religious confusion and doubts about God's existence. He grew up in a family full of faith. He had attended synagogue regularly, read scriptures daily, and had been very pious. Now, the young man's religious life had waned considerably, and much doubt haunted him. He shared with Rabbi Heschel his pain about the doubts and how he could no longer find the God of his youth. The rabbi asked the young man: "And what makes you think that God wanted your former peace but does not want your present pain?"
Comments
Ronald Rolheiser refers to the above advice of Heschel to the young student with these words: "A wise, paschal, counsel." Why paschal? What does paschal have to do with a young student struggling with religious faith?
We begin with that word "paschal." That is not a word passed around in many religious circles, likely mostly in the more liturgical Christian sects. But the word is a beautiful and important one in our Christian story.
"Paschal" derives from the Hebrew (pesach), and via Greek. So, the adjective "paschal," from Greek pascha, refers to Jesus Christ's suffering and death: "Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed" (I Cor 5.7, NAB).
Christ is the "paschal lamb." This lamb was originally eaten at Jewish Passover after being sacrificed at the Temple (Ex 12). The New Testament links the term with Jesus also in St. John 1.29: "The next day he [John the Baptizer] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world'" (Jn 1.29).
Then, we come to the "paschal mystery." This is from the Greek pascha and mysterion. This mystery refers to the events encompassing the following: the passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we have "Paschal Week," or Holy Week, and "paschal season," the season of fifty days following Easter, when the Church celebrates Jesus Christ's victory over sin, death, and evil.
Yes, Rolheiser is right, for Heschel's advice to the young man was good pachal counsel. Why? Religiously, our beliefs and practices, our relationship to our faith, our view of God, has to be immersed in the paschal mystery.
Our relationship with God is a process of entering the Christic Mystery of the Gospel. Thereby, knowing the events as our own in union with Christ, we are to accept the repeated cycles of the paschal mystery as applied to our maturing, changing, and becoming-wiser faith. Then, we can enjoy the ascension, or being blessed by what we had, and accept, next, the spirit of our resurrected faith.
Sometimes I miss the spirit of the faith of my childhood. But by following Christ changes occurred I would never have dreamed: nor would my natural family and church family have wished them or dreamed them. I have endured much loss, indeed many losses, due to those changes. And I have often been opposed, even once had a deliberate, vicious, and politically calculated attack on my character and ordination by some "professing Christians" who cling to the spirit of my earlier faith.
But I cannot go back. I can do what Heschel advised the young man ~ offer the pain of the faith transformations to God. I can celebrate the faith transformations that have led ~ and will ~ to a deeper, richer faith in Christ. I do not have to disdain the former shapes of my faith journey. I can let the past shapes of faith bless me, and I can bless them ~ it took me many years to get to this spirit of blessing.
The offering to Christ of changes in our relationship with God and the Church is a way of entering the paschal mystery. We offer it all to Christ. Remember, Christ grew up a devout Jew: Jesus knew the pain of changes in faith and church ~ synagogue.
Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis, wrote, in Smoke on the Mountain: "Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat." As you undergo the conversions in your faith life, often these will feel like a defeat, a loss, as it did to the young man who spoke to Heschel. Yet, these losses are not really loss of faith, they are rather changes that are blessed and a blessing.
As Christians, we do not become less Christian, we become more Christian, even if in some ways less of the Christians we used to be and some persons from our past would want us to be. And it all comes down to the question: Will I place my total life within the paschal mystery? If you follow Christ, you will, and you never know what the next paschal transformation will be like in your faith
Reflection
How do you see growth and changes in your relationship with God or the Church, or both, as your participating in the paschal mystery?
For Brian's on-line audio sermons, go to www.wherethelightshines.org and select Pastor's Corner; on the following page is his weekly sermons given at Christ United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL.
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For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL, see next page:
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