The Ardent Love of Jesus in Gethsemane

Today at my Carmelite Seculars meeting, we used the following passage from the Passion narrative as the basis of our Lectio Divina meditation:

Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives,
and the disciples followed him.
When he arrived at the place he said to them,
“Pray that you may not undergo the test.”
After withdrawing about a stone’s throw from them and kneeling,
he prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing,
take this cup away from me;
still, not my will but yours be done.”
And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him.
He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently
that his sweat became like drops of blood
falling on the ground.
When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples,
he found them sleeping from grief.
He said to them, “Why are you sleeping?
Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test.” (Luke 22:39-46)

I was powerfully struck by this as if I hadn't really heard it before, even though I heard it proclaimed twice just this morning. That is the power of Lectio Divina.

Specifically what struck me was the incredible humility of His prayer. He is the Son of God, yet He kneels, and asks His Father about what His will is for this moment. God incarnate is then given strength by His own creature, an angel. His human anguish was so incredibly strong that it maxed out what His body could hold in, and He sweat blood, something the human body is capable of under extremely severe stress.

Yet, it struck me: He received the angel's ministry, but what did He urgently, passionately, dare I say even frantically desire with every drop of Himself? He wanted consolation from his disciples. He asked for it twice. Pray! Pray that you not undergo the test! Because, think: what had Jesus just been praying about? He was praying that He not undergo the test, if possible. He wanted His disciples with Him, doing what He was doing. What was foremost in His heart, He wanted to find foremost in theirs, with the same power with which He felt it.

Were their hearts with His? Nope. What did they do? They fell asleep.

At His most vulnerable human moment, He was left all alone by those in whom He had invested the last three years of His life -- all His public ministry. All the important stuff, they had shared and seen, and when His need was greatest, they were completely incapable of reciprocating, of being with Him. They slept.

Jesus knew the Father's answer: Yes, you want those who followed you to be with you. But they cannot, by any means they have, cross that chasm to be with you, because that chasm is the death-sin they inherited from Adam. The only way they will be able to be with you is if you go forward to and through death, defeat it, cancel out the separation that is theirs because of sin, and reconcile the world to Me by Your death on the cross. You want them so badly to be with you. So you must drink the cup. Then the power will flow, and We will be in them and they in Us.

Jesus was resolute: "Yes, Father. Because my human terror is so real right now, because the love I have for these people You have given me, the love that is exploding my capillaries and causing me to sweat blood, I am feeling with everything in me the mission for which I came. On I go to death. Love compels me. So that they might be one in Us, as I am one with you."

It was almost as if I could see the overwhelming, all-consuming desire in the heart of Jesus at that moment for his disciples to be truly one with Him.

The difference between then and now, in the economy of grace, is that now He already has made it possible for us to be one with Him. He no longer suffers the torment He felt in the Garden; He no longer sweats blood. But His heart still yearns for those who will simply turn to Him and receive the mercy He has already poured out. Redemption has been won. He longs for our openness to ask and receive. There is no need at all to think we have to beg and yell and plead and perform to get God to favor us. No. He favors us. He passionately longs for us. We need to trust that is true, and receive Him.

Lord Jesus, help more people to trust in Your love.

God is the Redeemer, Even of Scary Childhood Art

The Lord has been doing some major excavations in me during Lent. And I realize it has been awhile since I have freely written about this type of thing. I've never regretted being raw before, so why should I stop now.

Today at Mass, I handed over to the Lord for His redemption a piece of artwork I created when I was 6 years old. It feels like lifting up an old concrete slab, complete with the escaping swarm of creepy-crawlies. But life will grow there, now.

I remember this piece of artwork not because I still have it, but because I looked at it regularly into my teenage years. And I suppose because I saw frequently and because of what I will now describe, it burned its way into my memory.

Supposedly, a drawing by a typical 6 year old looks something like this:

It looks a little too neat for me, but then again I have never claimed to have any artistic talent.

The picture I drew, however, was actually frightening. It showed a child holding balloons, a house, a sun, and a grassy lawn. But everything was drawn with jagged edges -- the grass, the body, the feet, the balloons. The colors were dark: black, purple, red, dark green, with splashes of orange and yellow buried underneath. And the most striking thing was that every image -- the child, the house, the balloons -- were all divided down the middle with a jagged, black line. The child looked a lot more like a monster.

That was my view of myself and my world in the year my parents were divorced. The reason I saw this picture so frequently was that my dad had it hanging on the wall of his house. But how it got there is what I have been thinking about afresh recently.

I remember bringing it home from school and showing it to my mom. "You show that to your father. He should have that. You give that to him," she told me.

It hasn't been until now, when I am older than my mom was then, that I have thought about what was in her statement that resulted in me remembering this picture. Anyone who looked at this picture could realize there was something wrong with the child who drew it. And I can see now that she felt that whatever was wrong with me was to be blamed on my father. And by giving him the picture, she hoped he would wake up and take responsibility for me emotionally, or at least feel the weight of this scary thing coming out of the mind of a little girl.

My father was a man with many issues of his own. Her hopes did not come to fruition. That I have known, and I long ago addressed it.

What I have not fully seen until now was the depth of my emotional need at that age (and beyond), and the simple fact that it was not met by anyone. My mother saw something was wrong, and simply did not address it beyond trying to pass it off onto my father. Later, there wasn't even that attempt. I very quickly learned to stop making my needs known to anyone.

All my life I have struggled with whether it is right to say things that sound accusatory about my own family. But I realize that stating objective facts about what happened is simply facing truth. Facing truth is always a good thing, and I can leave intentions and motives aside, as they are not mine to judge or to fear.

I've also learned that a name has been given to this lack of parental emotional response: Childhood Emotional Neglect. And there are a whole slew of emotional attunement issues related to this missing piece. For years I've worked on addressing many of them, including the difficulty I have getting angry, and taking my own feelings seriously.

A while back, I had a friend in her 80s confide to me that God was healing her of issues with her childhood, so I guess I'll just accept that life is always this way.Whether we seek truth and healing, or we hide in the dark, something won't feel good. I would rather cry over an old pain and receive healing than live adult life numb to others and my surroundings.

It takes courage to seek healing. But God really does heal. Seeking wholeness is worth facing the pain involved.

From The Heart

This morning at Mass I was struck by hearing the gospel highlighted in a markedly different way than past hearings.

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison
until he paid back the debt.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

That's Matthew 18:21-35.

The first thing that stood out was "the servant fell down, did him homage, and said..." And then, the master's response, "moved with compassion, the master of that servant let him go."

Then after the report of this man throttling a peer, he tells him he is wicked and says "I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to." And Jesus summarizes the point of the parable as the need to forgive from the heart.

Now, God is speaking to me the same way He speaks to any of us, and that is in the midst of my own circumstances. And my circumstances, my tutelage from God in this stage of Lent seems to be focused on getting in touch with the well-spring of human feeling that arises from my heart. To really notice what goes on in my emotions. I'm becoming aware of how frequently I am unaware of my emotions, due to long-time habit and conditioning.

So I found myself being able to relate to the experience of this guy who receives mercy and then throttles his peer. He falls down at the master's feet and begs for patience from him. And the master is moved with compassion. As a result, he gives far more than patience; he forgives the whole debt. That shows that the master's heart can experience the servant's vulnerability and respond from his moved heart, from his aroused emotions. And while the servant took the news, he did not receive the compassion. He couldn't, and he proves it by not being moved by hearing the same plea from someone else. His heart could not be moved with compassion, because compassion had never registered with him. When he met vulnerability, even just a little bit, he lacked the heart to respond. He could have cultivated it by meditating on his own pitiful state, or at least at the state of his wife and children who were going to become slaves. He could have faced it, had his emotional center torn by it, and then when he was offered compassion, it would have filled him with mercy. Instead, he went through mechanical motions.

The homily I heard mentioned the rabbinic tradition of offering forgiveness to someone who offended you three times. And Peter thought he was being generous by stretching the rabbinic limit to be more liberal. Jesus was trying to move Peter out of notions of liberal mechanics out into a life lived from a changed heart. To be moved with compassion at the suffering of another and to give mercy is really a fruit of the cross. It is not logical justice. It is not what someone is "entitled to." It is the echo of God's way.

In order to really understand what mercy is, you need a visceral experience of your wretchedness. And you need to not turn away from the sight for any reason, including boredom, indifference, shame, fright, despair. Look at it. Then see Jesus on the cross, sharing it. Then know he shares it because of irrevocable love for you. That's the moment when mercy breaks in.