AS FAR AS I CAN SEE

The human is a little lower than the divine, but already subject to its laws of spiritual nutrition. A loving couple will come naturally, through long dint of loving companionship, to walk, talk and write – even to look – like one another. We feed on what we love, and grow into the likeness of that on which we feed.

Spiritual prophesy, like all other divine responsibilities committed specifically to the Jewish clans – the chosen people – was fulfilled in Jesus; from that point forward, it became, with typically devilish showmanship, a caricature, an adroit comic actor, before whom our essentially vaudevillian human natures hoot and applaud.

I can only think of the prodigal as Life, born of God, and by Him entrusted to matter; inheriting the possibility of His immortality, but under conditions of discontinuity and death; yet still dimly remembering its Father, and disconsolate in its poverty.

I can only think of it as a fledgling spirit of divinity; self-manifest in all living things; active but preconscious in their needs and appetites and struggles, and using these as goads and carrots in service to its great intention; ever and always experimenting, foraying, rejecting, failing, choosing again, if by any mechanism it can create for itself a fleshly temple meet to receive and house Him who would come, as the Way and the Shepherd and the Light.

Why does an oak tree always produce acorns?  Because there is, vital in it, a particular intention, a teleology, requiring its protoplasm to a particular end.  A law of nature, with a purpose and a goal.  Then let us think of all organisms, from the microbe to the mastodon, as ‘cells’ of a Tree, with human being for its fruit – exactly because there is, desperate and adamant in that Tree, the prodigal, seeking his return home.

In common speech, which more often than we realize bears divine wisdom, we talk intuitively of life: “the streets were full of life,” “life on other planets,” and so forth; and we credit it with purpose: Nature intends, Nature punishes. 

But have we the courage of our intuitions?

The acorn is the product of the genius of the oak.  Human being is the product of the prodigal of Life finally returning home.  And the joyous reunion is the historic welcoming embrace of God with weary and hungry and humbled embodied Life, along with its new vestments: the robe of eternity, the ring of responsibility, and the sandals of journeys to come.

A man who could not read died, and discovered that heaven was only a vast library.  Another man, a very clever man, died, and discovered that heaven was a vast, empty theater.  And finally a woman died, a woman of great beauty and grace and taste, and found that heaven was a small house with no dining room, in a noisy neighborhood.

You cannot rationally believe in an infinitely loving God unless you accept Jesus as proof.

You can believe in God without believing in Jesus. You can even believe that God is kindly, caring, and compassionate without believing in Jesus – we experience beauty, after all, and times of joy and wonder.

But you cannot rationally believe God is all-loving without believing in Jesus, because the weight of the evidence is otherwise: war, cruelty, injustice, and the final, impeccable witness, death.

A path in its essence is a promise. Someone from long ago has made a promise to future travelers, a promise to take them to their destination.

Walking on a path is therefore in its essence an act of trust, of faith in someone unseen and unknown. We stay on the path rather than seek our own way through the woods and fields, because we trust in someone now long gone.

Imagine a little girl receiving a present from her father. “Happy birthday, my darling angel!” he cries. The girl opens the carefully wrapped package, and her eyes grow wide. It’s just what she asked for, just what she always wanted. “Is this really for me?” she asks through her sudden tears. “Is this really mine now?” “Yes, my love. It’s really yours.”

How does she know? Because her father says so.

Repentance is not a matter of regretting your sins, or renouncing your sins, or even remembering your sins. Repentance is following Jesus. Jesus did not ask his disciples to renounce their sins: he asked them to follow him.

When the priest offers a sacrifice, he does not examine the penitent: he examines the sacrifice, searching for imperfections. If none are found, the sacrifice is deemed sufficient.

Jesus began speaking in parables after the Jews had rejected him. He did so – exactly as he said – to hide the truth from those who are not willing to seek it, who do not hunger after it. Do not throw your pearls before swine.

This is God’s way: to remain remote, so that you need to strive after Him – not for rescue, but for your own nurture.