RonRolheiser,OMI

Lighter Thoughts on a Heavy Subject

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Some years ago, a friend was facing the birth of her first child. While happy that she was soon to be a mother, she confessed openly her fears about the actual birth process, the pain, the dangers, the unknown. But she consoled herself with the thought that hundreds of millions of women have experienced giving birth and managed it. Surely, she felt she could manage it too.

I sometimes take those words and apply them to the prospect of dying. Death is the most daunting, unsettling, and heaviest topic there is, our occasional false bravado notwithstanding. When we say that we are not afraid of dying, mostly we’re whistling in the dark and, even there, the tune comes out easier when our own death remains still an abstract idea, something in the indefinite future. Full disclosure, my own thoughts about dying no doubt fit that description, whistling in the dark. But why not? Surely whistling in the dark is better than torturing ourselves with unnecessary fear.

And so, I employ my friend’s methodology for steeling her courage in the face of having to give birth and face that unknown. Simply put, millions and millions of people have managed the process of dying, so I should be able to manage it too! Moreover, unlike giving birth to a child, which affects less than half the human race, in the case of dying, everyone, including myself, is going to have to manage it. A hundred years from now, everyone reading these words will have had to manage his or her death.

So, here’s a way to look at our own death: Billions and billions of people have managed this, men, women, children, even babies. Some were old, some were young; some were prepared, some were not; some welcomed it, some met it with bitter resistance; some died from natural causes, some died through violence; some died surrounded by love, some died alone without any human love surrounding them; some died peacefully, some died crying out in fear; some died at a ripe old age, some died in the prime of their youth; some suffered for years from a seemingly meaningless dementia with those around them wondering why God and nature seemed cruel in keeping them alive; others in robust physical health with seemingly everything to live for, took their own lives; some died full of faith and hope, and some died feeling only darkness and despair; some died breathing out gratitude, and some died breathing out resentment; some died in the embrace of religion and their churches, some died completely outside of that embrace; and some died like Mother Teresa, while others died like Hitler. But every one of them somehow managed it, the great unknown, the greatest of all unknowns. It seems it can be managed.

Moreover, nobody has come back from the other world with horror stories about dying which suggests that all our horror movies about being tormented after death and ghosts and haunted houses are pure fiction, through and through.

Most people, I suspect, have the same experience that I have when I think about the dead, particularly about persons I have known who have died. The initial grief and sadness of their loss eventually wears off and is replaced by an inchoate sense that it’s alright, that they are alright, and that death has in some strange way washed things clean. In the end, we have a pretty good feeling about our dead loved ones and about the dead in general, even if their departure from this earth was far from ideal, as for instance if they died angry, or through immaturity, or because they committed a crime, or by suicide. Somehow it eventually all washes clean and what remains is the inchoate sense, a solid intuition, that wherever they are now, they are in better and safer hands than our own.

When I was a young seminarian we once had to translate Cicero’s treatise on aging and dying from Latin into English. I was nineteen years old at the time, but was very taken by Cicero’s thoughts on why we shouldn’t fear death. He was a renowned stoic; but, in the end, his lack of fear of dying was a little like my friend’s approach to giving birth, that is, given how universal it is, we should be able to manage it!

I’ve long since lost my undergraduate notes on Cicero, so I looked up the treatise on the Internet recently. Here’s a nugget from that treatise: “Death should be held of no account! For clearly the impact of death is negligible if it utterly annihilates the soul, or even desirable, if it conducts the soul to some place where it is to live forever. What, then, shall I fear, if after death I am destined to be either not unhappy or happy?”

Our faith tells us that, given the love and benevolence of the God we believe in, only the second option, happiness, awaits us. And we already intuit that.

Bread and Wine

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At the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the Eucharist he chose to use two elements, bread and wine. The images are now so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that we never stop to ask, why bread and wine? Among all the things Jesus might have chosen, why these two? What do they carry in themselves that make them particularly apt to give expression to the body and blood of Christ? What, more particularly, does each represent?

As they are used in the Eucharist, bread and wine symbolize very different aspects of our lives, of our world, and of Jesus’ life.

Bread. What is bread? What did it represent for Jesus at that first Eucharist? A loaf of bread is made up of many kernels of wheat which when ground up lose their separate identity and become a single loaf. In the Eucharist, the bread represents us, many individuals, now together as one body, the Body of Christ. But it also represents a particular aspect of our lives, namely, our lives insofar as we are joyous, healthy, in community with each other, and thriving as God’s children. The smell of fresh bread speaks of life. So does the bread at the Eucharist. It becomes the bread of the world’s achievements and holds up for God’s blessing all that is young, healthy, creative, and bursting with life.

Metaphorically, the bread celebrates the Galilean period in Jesus’ life and in our own lives – the time of youth, of miracles, of walking on water, of raising people from the dead, of the joyous energy of life, of falling in love, and of the birth of new life.

The wine. What did it represent for Jesus and what does it represent in the Eucharist? Wine is made from crushed grapes and represents blood. And as the blood of Christ, it represents all that is broken, fragile, not whole, sick, suffering, and dying in the world. It is the wine of the world’s mortality and inadequacy, the blood of all is crushed as the world’s achievements take place.

 Metaphorically, the wine commemorates the Jerusalem period of Jesus’ life and that period in our own lives – the time of misunderstanding, of being the victim, of mental anguish, of physical anguish, of being ostracized, of the loneliness of dying when others can’t help us.

And the two together make for one balanced whole, life in all its aspects. In effect, when the presider at a Eucharist holds up the bread and wine, this what is being said: Lord, what I hold up for you today is all that is in this world, both of joy and suffering – the bread of the world’s achievements and the blood of all that’s crushed as those achievements take place. I offer you everything that is healthy and thriving in our world – the joy at our tables, the joy of children, the hopeful dreams of the young, the satisfaction of achievement, and everything that’s creative and bursting with life, even as I offer you all that is weak, feeble, aged, crushed, sick, dying, and victimized. I offer to you all the pagan beauties, pleasures, and joys of this life, even as I stand with you under the cross, affirming that the one who is excluded from earthly pleasure is the cornerstone of the community. I offer you the strong, along with the weak and gentle of heart, asking you to bless both and stretch my heart so that it can, like you, hold and bless everything that is. I offer you both the wonders and the pains of this world, your world.

Spirituality might take some lessons from this. Too often spiritualities are one-sided and need balance.

On the one hand, a spirituality can center itself too one-sidedly on human thriving to the neglect of human inadequacy: suffering, sin, mortality, and of Jesus’ invitation to take up his cross. It celebrates only youth, health, prosperity, and goodness – and presents a Jesus who offers us a Prosperity Gospel rather than a Whole Gospel.

Conversely, a spirituality can center itself too one-sidedly on human inadequacy: sin, mortality, asceticism, and the renunciation of pleasure. It celebrates the old but not the young, the sick but not the healthy, the poor but not the prosperous, the dying but not the living, and the next world but not this one. This strips the Gospel of its wholeness and presents a Jesus who is an unhealthy ascetic and frowns on natural human happiness.

The bread and wine in the Eucharist give voice to all aspects of life. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the words of consecration at a Eucharist in essence read like this: “Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, I say again the words: ‘This is my body’. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, I speak again your words which express the supreme mystery of faith: ‘This is my blood.’”

A Universal Creed

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Creeds ground us. Within a short formula they summarize the main tenets of our faith and keep us mindful of the truths that anchor us.

As a Christian, I pray two creeds, The Apostles’ Creed and The Nicene Creed. But I also pray another creed which grounds me in some deep truths which are not always sufficiently recognized as inherent in our Christian creeds. This creed, given in the Epistle to the Ephesians, is stunningly brief and simply reads: There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all.

That’s a lot in a few words! This creed, while Christian, takes in all denominations, all faiths, and all sincere persons everywhere. Everyone on the planet can pray this creed because ultimately there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who created and loves us all.

This has far-reaching consequences for how we understand God, other Christian denominations, other faiths, sincere non-believers, and ourselves. There is only one God, no matter our denomination, particular faith, or no explicit faith at all. The one same God is the loving creator and parent of everyone. And that one God has no favorites, doesn’t dislike certain persons, denominations, or faiths, and never disdains goodness or sincerity, no matter their particular religious or secular cloak.

And these are some of the consequences: First, Jesus assures us that God is the author of all that is good. In addition, as Christians we believe that God has certain transcendental attributes, namely, God is one, true, good, and beautiful. If that is true (and how could it be otherwise?), then everything we see in our world that is integral, true, good, or beautiful, whatever its outward label (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, New Age, Neo-Pagan, or purely Secular), comes from God and must be honored.

John Muir once challenged Christianity with this question: Why are Christians so reluctant to let animals into their stingy heaven? The creed in the Epistle to the Ephesians asks something similar: Why are Christians so reluctant to let other denominations, other faiths, and good sincere people without explicit faith into our stingy concept of God, Christ, faith, and the church? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with Christians of other denominations? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with sincere Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and New Age religious? Why are we afraid of paganism? Why are we afraid of natural sacraments?

There can be good reasons. First, we do need to safeguard precisely the truths expressed in our creeds and not slide into an amorphous syncretism in which everything is relative, where all truths and all religions are equal, and the only dogmatic requirement is that we be nice to each other. Although there is, in fact, something (religious) to be said about being nice to each other, the more important point is that embracing each other in faith fellowship is not saying that all faiths are equal and that one’s particular denomination or faith tradition is unimportant. Rather it is acknowledging (importantly) that, at the end of the day, we are all one family, under one God, and that we need to embrace each other as brothers and sisters. Despite our differences, we all have the same radical creed.

Then too, as Christians, we believe that Christ is the unique mediator between God and ourselves. As Jesus puts it, no one goes to the Father, except through me. If that is true, and as Christians we hold that as dogma, then where does that leave Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, Neo-Pagans, and sincere non-believers? How do they share the kingdom with us Christians since they do not believe in Christ?

As Christians, we have always had answers to that question. The Catholic catechisms of my youth spoke of a “baptism of desire” as a way of entry into the mystery of Christ. Karl Rahner spoke of sincere persons being “anonymous Christians”. Frank de Graeve spoke of a reality he called “Christ-ianity”, as a mystery wider than historical “Christianity”; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke of Christ as being the final anthropological and cosmological structure within the evolutionary process itself. What all of these are saying is that the mystery of Christ cannot be identified simplistically with the historical Christian churches. The mystery of Christ works through the historical Christian churches but also works, and works widely, outside of our churches and outside the circles of explicit faith.

Christ is God and therefore is found wherever anyone is in the presence of oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty. Kenneth Cragg, after many years as a missionary with the Muslims, suggested that it is going to take all the religions of the world to give full expression to the full Christ.

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all – and so we should not be so reluctant to let others, not of our own kind, into our stingy heaven.