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Exploring the word

07 Jun 2009 - Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle B

Forever is a long time. Ask the couple who promises fidelity for only one lifetime! Or the celibate who takes vows for the long haul. Or the parents of a child who will occupy their concerns for the next 18 years and counting. Forever, if you can believe it, is even longer than that. Forever is longer than your mortgage; longer than your car and student loan payments laid end on end. Forever is longer than any physical pain you may be suffering and deeper than any misery you have to bear. Think of eternity as a pool of joy that you can never swim the length of. Eternity is well-being and strength, vigor and beauty, love and happiness that cannot die. If you want it to be, that is. If you prepare for everlasting love, you can have it. Even hell may not last as long as eternal joy, if the rabbis are right. In the Targums—interpretive translations of the Hebrew Bible—the sages wrote that the torments of hell would only last until the righteous took pity on the guilty. Catechisms don’t teach that of course. But it’s an intriguing idea: that the punishment of the guilty might be determined by the volume of indignation of those whom they have wronged. Didn’t Jesus say that those whose sins are held will be bound, and those who are loosed will be freed? Scripture also says love is as fierce as death, and passion as mighty as hell. Oh, but that was just an Old Testament love song—but isn’t it also the Paschal Mystery? The story of salvation history is all about forever: about God’s promises which, like everything else about God, have no boundaries or expiration dates. Today, Moses tells the people about a forever lease on the land of promise. Saint Paul writes about an inheritance in Christ that means glory unending. In the gospel Jesus gives his word to his still weak and doubtful followers that, even though he is leaving them, he will be present to them always. Even though seasons end, Moses disappears, Paul is martyred, and Jesus ascends into heaven, the eternal things remain true, and—the best part—nothing is lost. Goodness has no end because God is good and God has no end. We celebrate our annual God-feast of the Trinity because, gosh, God should have one day on the liturgical calendar, don’t you think? Along with all those saints and angels and Mary days and Jesus days one feast cannot begin to honor the God who is time itself, and timeless as well. God is honored through all of these other observances every day of the year. But on this one Sunday we remember that most deliberately. And we are reminded of the sweetness of a love that keeps us in mind, this day and everyday. Related scripture links How good it is for us to be here: Mark 9:5; Matt. 17:4; Luke 9:33 Good measure, crushed down: Mark 4:24; Luke 6:38 My cup is overflowing: Psalm 23:5 Forgiveness is 70-times-seven: Matt. 18:21-22 Hear O Israel, our God is one: Deut: 5:6-7; 6:4 Dimly, as in a mirror: 1 Cor. 13:12 Moses and God’s passage: Exod. 33:21-23 Catechism links Faith: CCC 153-175; 185-202; 1814-1816 Trinity: CCC 232-260; 685; 689; 732; 813

Authors Alice Camille

forever eternity salvation history

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Exploring the word

06 May 2018 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

Back in high school—and who knows, maybe in high schools even today—love was defined by carving two sets of initials into a locker, a tree, or a park bench. I had a friend who preferred the less permanent approach: She wrote them in ink on the rubber part of her sneakers. That way, if the love object changed, she could always rub him out and put the new lucky fellow in his place! Along with the initials, traditionally circumscribed with a heart, there would often be another assortment of letters describing precisely what sort of alliance this was. The most common one was T.L.F.—True Love Forever. Teenagers are often very ambitious and idealistic about romance. “Forever,” while a very long time, did not seem an abnormal period to commit to. I remember a boy who won my heart for some years. I bought him a watch inscribed with our initials and the declaration W.T.L.—With Timeless Love. It seemed the right thing to say on a watch. But I regret to say I don’t know what happened to the timepiece, or its owner No greater love The problem with our “forevers” is not our sincerity so much as our limitations. We are mortal; that is, material with an expiration date that will be sooner than we think, no matter what we think. And everything else about us has its limits, too: patience, talent, endurance, health, compassion, kindness, and love included. When we make our vows and speak our “forevers,” we always do it while holding our breath. We hope to be faithful forever. At least, we’re sure gonna try. Meanwhile, in that same breath, sin is at work in us and in our world, doing its darnedest to make liars of us. Sin lurks at the edges of our goodness and our best intentions. Its victory is in our failure and, ultimately, in the death of our will to so much as try. The ultimate victory for sin used to be in its supreme price: the sting of death, the obliteration of the final chance to try. But something looms larger than death on the horizon of our humanity: God’s love for us. Because God has no problem when it comes to “forever.” God could sell futures in forever—and does. So we believe. No one has a greater love to show us than this. The compassion of Jesus, faithful all the way to the cross, demonstrates that love beyond a shadow of a doubt. If we’re really looking for true love forever, this is it. And if we hold fast to it, we are promised a joy so complete, nothing will be lacking ever again. The Tin Man’s heart One of the lines from the great American myth The Wizard of Oz used to puzzle me even as a kid. When the Wizard finally presents the Tin Man with his honorarium, a ticking heart to fill his sense of emptiness, he advises him with these words, “Remember, my friend: A heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others.” This saying confounded me. It went against everything I had been taught about evaluating myself according to the volume of my efforts. If my “work” in the business of love was not the standard and the message, then what was? The love that came back to me seemed an arbitrary measure indeed. What seems clearer to me in adulthood is that we cannot be at the center of our efforts to love. Of course we must have healthy self-regard and take care of ourselves and all that before we begin. But love, by definition, is a movement toward the other and for the sake of the other. The Beloved is always at the center. We can never be the measure of our own love. If we attempt to evaluate the success of our love by our experience, we have already failed. If the Wizard’s advice to the Tin Man doesn’t win you over, then consider the writer of the First Letter of John: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us and sent the Son as expiation for our sins.” All of salvation is dependent, not on our efforts, but on God’s. God’s love is at the heart of the Christian faith, not ours. Our love may be quite sincere, much of the time, and our works of love may be considerable. But in the end, all the love we finite folk are capable of isn’t enough to save our necks or our souls. Fear not: God’s got an infinite amount of love to give, and it’s being lavished in our direction. Related scripture links God’s love endures forever: Psalm 136 The eternal covenant: Gen. 17:7; 2 Sam. 7:16; Isa. 49:15, 55:3 Lo, I am with you always: Matt. 28:20b Sin vs. eternal life: Rom. 6:23 Love fulfills the law: Rom. 13:8-10 Catechism links Joy: CCC 301; 736, 1723; 1829; 1832 Remaining in love: CCC 459; 609; 614; 1823-1829; 1972; 2074; 2615; 2745

Authors Alice Camille

forever God's unconditional love wizard of oz

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12 Jan 2020 - Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Cycle A

Mortality being what it is, we are limited by definition. Most of the time we forget this as we bluster off into the thick of our lives, managing Herculean feats like raising children, committing our fidelity for life, accepting the suffering and death of those we love, and living with the ongoing surrender of youthful strength and beauty in exchange for the encroaching pain and disability of old age. These are huge undertakings, impossible to reconcile in abstraction but endured on a daily basis without fanfare by the folks sitting around us in the pews. At the same time, all of these undertakings teach us challenging lessons about how truly fragile and ephemeral we are. Flesh is grass, scripture says; it rises up in a season, common and cheap, and then fades and dies without much notice. In another passage, it is noted that a human life is “70 years, or 80 for those who are strong.” That may seem like a lot of time in the beginning, but after three decades or so we start to appreciate how short the normal life span is. Not to mention the fact that our birth comes with no warranty, and we don’t get our money back if our particular life span is considerably shorter. Acceptance of our finite condition allows us at least one precious gift: the absolute significance of the present moment. The power of this hour Those in 12-step recovery programs know well the fatal hubris involved in swearing off liquor, drugs, overeating, compulsive sex, gambling, or any other substance or behavior “forever.” Forever is a long time, and it’s not given to us mortals to dicker over. What we’ve got in our hands is the present hour, and therein lies all the authority over our lives that we will ever need. All we have to do, really, is commit to a certain responsibility or course of action today, right now, in this hour. Let tomorrow take care of itself—if we should have a tomorrow. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. If we try to do otherwise—and we often do—then we find ourselves in the unlikely task of biting off eternity and trying to swallow it. We choke on the attempt. Instances of paralysis and indecision in our lives might be accounted for by the knowledge that we are seeking to do too much: making “forever” choices with finite hearts. If we are overwhelmed by life at times, we might step back from trying to live “our lives” and live only the next hour. Or the next five minutes. Or take the next breath. Those are significantly more manageable tasks, not to mention more sensible ones. John the Baptist betrays that he is caught up in the Big Picture at the expense of the moment when Jesus comes to him for Baptism. John has been proclaiming a mighty, controversial, and dangerous message in a high profile sort of way and gathering gale force for a coming storm. To prepare the way of the Lord, John has also been performing Baptisms all day, all week, perhaps for a season or more. It should be second nature to him to perform one more. It should be his finest hour to receive the Lord for whom he has been preparing the nation. Instead John freezes, objects, finds himself at a loss to do the first thing his Lord asks him to do. Being wrapped up in the Big Picture, John cannot find himself in the simple and singular demand of this hour. John’s problem and ours It’s not that John doesn’t know how to do what Jesus asks. It’s that he’s confounded by the why of the request, not to mention the who and the what of it. John wants to understand it before he does it, and according to every path of reasoning, the thing doesn’t make sense. Baptism is for repentance—does Jesus need to repent? Baptism absolves us of past sin—does Jesus have any? Baptism prepares the way of the Lord—does Jesus mean to prepare the way for himself? John has believed all the while that he is cooperating with the great divine plan, and has styled himself a mere voice in the wilderness who has abandoned ego and will in order to give God room to act. But in this hour, he is forced to recognize that his ego and will are quick to reassert themselves when the logic of the thing confounds him, as it does here. He will submit to God’s plan entirely so long as he gets it. But if God introduces some inexplicable variables, John is fully prepared to balk. I don’t think this reaction is rare—it is among the most common spiritual obstacles we face. Being finite folk, we have a very limited perspective on what’s going on, cosmically speaking. Logic is one of the big guns we pull out to blast away at life’s dilemmas. Who hasn’t drawn columns of pro and con on a piece of paper in an attempt to reason through a discernment? How many would-be saints have abandoned the path of faith altogether because they couldn’t get their minds around some practical, factual concern? It doesn’t take a biggie like “virgin birth” to get our minds spinning in stunning denial. For John, the sinless one shouldn’t be baptized; he should be baptizing! It was as simple as that. Applying the word Then he gave in What it took John to breech the impasse was an act of surrender. He gave in “for now,” or as the advertising wizards might say, he just did it. If John had foreseen where this whole divine pageant was going—Baptism, conflict, rejection, arrest, trial, condemnation, crucifixion—no doubt he would have really balked and been unable to continue in his share of the task. What would finite human reason make of the road Jesus was on? What good was knowing the Big Picture if it took away our ability to function in the present hour? “Give in for now” is a great motto for discipleship. Inch by inch, we make our way toward paradise. Related scripture links Flesh is grass: Isa. 40:6-8 Seventy years or eighty: Ps. 90:10 Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof: Matt. 6:34 (KJV)

Authors Alice Camille

the present forever limited perspective

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26 May 2024 - Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle B

Forever is a long time. Ask the couple who promises fidelity for only one lifetime! Or the celibate who takes vows for the long haul. Or the parents of a child who will occupy their concerns for the next 18 years and counting. Forever, if you can believe it, is even longer than that. Forever is longer than your mortgage; longer than your car and student loan payments laid end on end. Forever is longer than any physical pain you may be suffering and deeper than any misery you have to bear. Think of eternity as a pool of joy that you can never swim the length of. Eternity is well-being and strength, vigor and beauty, love and happiness that cannot die. If you want it to be, that is. If you prepare for everlasting love, you can have it. Even hell may not last as long as eternal joy, if the rabbis are right. In the Targums—interpretive translations of the Hebrew Bible—the sages wrote that the torments of hell would only last until the righteous took pity on the guilty. Catechisms don’t teach that of course. But it’s an intriguing idea: that the punishment of the guilty might be determined by the volume of indignation of those whom they have wronged. Didn’t Jesus say that those whose sins are held will be bound, and those who are loosed will be freed? Scripture also says love is as fierce as death, and passion as mighty as hell. Oh, but that was just an Old Testament love song—but isn’t it also the Paschal Mystery? The story of salvation history is all about forever: about God’s promises which, like everything else about God, have no boundaries or expiration dates. Today, Moses tells the people about a forever lease on the land of promise. Saint Paul writes about an inheritance in Christ that means glory unending. In the gospel Jesus gives his word to his still weak and doubtful followers that, even though he is leaving them, he will be present to them always. Even though seasons end, Moses disappears, Paul is martyred, and Jesus ascends into heaven, the eternal things remain true, and—the best part—nothing is lost. Goodness has no end because God is good and God has no end. We celebrate our annual God-feast of the Trinity because, gosh, God should have one day on the liturgical calendar, don’t you think? Along with all those saints and angels and Mary days and Jesus days one feast cannot begin to honor the God who is time itself, and timeless as well. God is honored through all of these other observances every day of the year. But on this one Sunday we remember that most deliberately. And we are reminded of the sweetness of a love that keeps us in mind, this day and every day. Related scripture links How good it is for us to be here: Mark 9:5; Matt. 17:4; Luke 9:33 Good measure, crushed down: Mark 4:24; Luke 6:38 My cup is overflowing: Psalm 23:5 Forgiveness is 70-times-seven: Matt. 18:21-22 Hear O Israel, our God is one: Deut: 5:6-7; 6:4 Dimly, as in a mirror: 1 Cor. 13:12 Moses and God’s passage: Exod. 33:21-23 Catechism links Faith: CCC 153-175; 185-202; 1814-1816 Trinity: CCC 232-260; 685; 689; 732; 813 Adapted from a previously published Exploring the word.

Authors Alice Camille

forever eternity

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