God Enfleshed!

"Christian revelation is always pointed, concrete, and specific. Our word for that is 'incarnational' or enfleshed.  Walter Brueggemann calls it brilliantly 'the scandal of the particular.'

Christianity is not a Platonic world of ideas and theories about which you can be right or wrong, or observe from a distance. Incarnation is not something you measure or critique or analyze, but Someone you meet!  This pattern reaches its fullness in the enfleshment of the Divine in one ordinary-looking man named Jesus. 

We dare to believe that God materialised in human form, so we could fall in love with a real person, which is the only way we fall in love. It is almost impossible to give your life warmly for an idea, a force, an energy, or a concept.  

We are programmed to give our lives away to other persons."  (Richard Rohr, OFM)

Trust in Suffering

More and more I am seeing in my own life that the troubles I experience can deepen me and draw me closer to the Lord in trust.

The Franciscan Richard Rohr has defined faith as “the security to be insecure”.

Insecure in not knowing how things are going to turn out.
Insecure at times in situations beyond my abilities.
Insecure in my experience of my own sinfulness and weakness.

Yet, in all this,  secure in God’s everlasting faithfulness.
Secure in trust in God’s providence,
God’s provision,
God’s protection for his unique child,
knowing in faith that all that we see is not all that there is!

Surrender to Christ does not weaken me, it strengthens me.

The news of the Gospel is good, wonderfully good, good beyond all our hoping.

This same Gospel encourages me: never give up, never despair of God’s grace, never stop trusting and praying and placing all in his safe hands.

Justice in a Time of Cutbacks.

The Greeks are very angry! As I write there are riots on the streets of Athens, violence and tear gas.  The people protest as the government bringing in even more severe austerity measures.

We Irish are very tame in comparison even if this country is in a similar situation. Many more harsh cut backs are coming down the line.

The heaviest burdens are being imposed on the weakest among us. As always the powerful, the wealthy are able to protect themselves and their interests only too well.

I am not advocating riots on the streets. But I have been disappointed by the silence of our Church leaders in all of this. Surely in this situation there is something to say from the Gospel perspective.  Communion with Christ and his Holy Spirit helps us view the world in the light of the Gospel. That perspective presses us to accomplish God’s will, to work for the truth and justice of his Kingdom.

This was something Archbishop Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, admitted he had to learn. In one of his sermons he said: 'I am a shepherd who, with his people, have begun to learn a beautiful and difficult truth: our Christian faith requires that we submerge ourselves in the world.'

We pray to see the world with God’s eyes, and then in communion with God’s Spirit we are emboldened and motivated to act. There is a need for a clear Christian voice that calls for justice and fairness in a time of cutbacks.

Goodness and Greatness

Continuing my ponderings on the vast mystery of God as Trinity.... This prayer, composed by the American friar, Richard Rohr, speaks to my heart.

God for us, we call You Father

God alongside us, we call You Jesus,

God within us, we call You Holy Spirit.

You are the Eternal Mystery

That enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,

even us,

and even me.

Every name falls short of your

Goodness and Greatness

We can only see who You are in what is.

We ask for such perfect seeing.

As it was in the beginning, is now,

and ever shall be.

Amen