I've been thinking about what I've been thinking about. Do you think it is because it recalls baptism that things always seem to "click" in the shower? Or is it just a meditative moment where thoughts can line up side by side. For whatever reason, I said to myself this morning, "Of course! Naru hodo!" The reason why I am so overwhelmed with beauty and joy at the reality of the lives of the saints is that it is a truth that Lutheranism says is impossible. Luther's understanding of salvation is of something that covers us. Jesus substitutes His holiness for our sin. His famous illustration is that we are the dung hill covered by snow. This is not the Catholic understanding of grace at all. The Church teaches that grace elevates nature, so that the participation we have with the life of God is real, lived, actual, and not merely positional or legal.
To be unable to be truly freed from sin in this life is to accept a life of misery. It is to accept a life that can merely be endured if one has a sense that the things of this world are fleeting and do not hold ultimate meaning. It is to accept that we are not made for anything great. It is to behold a God who is either impotent or uncaring. It is grossly irrational.
To "meet" a saint who all generations are calling blessed because of what God has done for her or him is to be hold a real, powerful, loving God. He knows me. He made me, He knows me, I have purpose, I have dignity that has been seriously messed with but which He restores. It isn't about brownie points or some silly earth-bound idea like that. God saves us to be His sons, His heirs, to participate in His very life. That is the promise, and that is the reality.
I still have some questions about the journey. The big one I have is about Reconciliation and its relationship to sanctity. If I bring my Lutheran mindset to the confessional, I end up needing to "confess" that I exist, basically, since "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." I have even thought about the advice Luther was said to have received from his confessor: "Martin, don't come here with all these peccadillos. Go out and sin some great sin, and then come back and tell me about it." (And all you cradle Catholics thought you received lousy catechesis!)
As I have the chance, I have a small handful of other nuggets from the retreat I want to cook up and serve here. Good thing my daughter woke me extra early this morning.
2 comments:
I never saw the connection between Buddha and Martin Luther before reading this post, Marie. But both of them think that salvation lies in escaping from the "crap." Jesus says you have to walk right into it -- that it is through the cross that we reach perfection. Did I ever tell you about when a parish let us use the chapel in an empty convent building for atrium? One year they rented the convent rooms to a group of Lutheran students, and the morning after the students moved in, I found all the crucifixes from their rooms piled on the floor of the chapel. They couldn't bear to have them on the wall. Interesting, no?
Some Lutheran scholar might disagree with me, but I think the Lutheran perspective isn't one of consciously escaping the crap. It is almost more like being wedded to it, in a love/hate sort of way, with the ultimate promise of ditching it in heaven. Being a "sinner" becomes sort of a comfortable/familiar identity, like a favorite pair of jeans. I don't know if my former Lutheranism affects my personal views or vice versa. But the sense is that we are loved despite who we really are -- sinners, totally depraved and corrupted. Saved by grace.
Then you get this really weird teaching of the "two kingdoms" where it is kosher to do "worldly" things according to reason, just not things pertaining to salvation.
I've never found a Lutheran to really dialogue with about these things, to really have someone respond to what I see as Luther's errors. I've tried a few times to hunt such a person out. Fortunately most Lutherans I've known personally have been more concerned with Scripture and the desire to evangelize than with what Luther taught (if they've had any spiritual concern at all).
But the crucifixes -- well, Lutherans see this as a denial of the finished work of Christ. Catholics "still have Him on the cross" you know, as if we forgot about the resurrection. That's what the empty cross is supposed to signify: it is finished.
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