Who is Jesus?

Christ asks his disciples in today's Gospel: "Who do you say that I am?" (Lk 9:20). It is a question worth asking ourselves. Who is Christ to me? What is my relationship to Christ? We know the answers of others. He is a great prophet (Lk 9:19). We could translate that this way in the 21st century--he's a good and holy man, a wise teacher...but not God. Sound familiar? It is a scandal to the secularism of our culture that God assumed a human nature, that God became man (cf. Jn 1:14).

When she was in the hospital, Mother Teresa made a meditation on the parallel passage of this Gospel in Matthew (cf. Mt 16:15). I post her meditation below:

"Jesus is the leper..." Lepers in Pune, India.

Who do you say I am?

You are God. 
You are God from God. 
You are Begotten, not made. 
You are One in Substance with the Father. 
You are the Son of the Living God. 
You are the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. 
You are One with the Father.
You are in the Father from the beginning: All things were made by You and the Father.
You are the Beloved Son in Whom the Father is well pleased. 
You are the Son of Mary, conceived in the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. 
You were born in Bethlehem.
You were wrapped in swaddling clothes by Mary and put in the manger full of straw. 
You were kept warm by the breath of the donkey who carried your mother with you in her womb. 
You are the Son of Joseph, the carpenter who is known by the people of Nazareth. 
You are an ordinary man without much learning as judged by the learned people of Israel. 

Who is Jesus to me? 

Jesus is the Word Made Flesh. 
Jesus is the Bread of Life. 
Jesus is the Victim offered for our sins on the Cross. 
Jesus is the Sacrifice offered at the Holy Mass for the sins of the world and mine. 
Jesus is the Word--to be spoken. 
Jesus is the Truth--to be told. 
Jesus is the Way--to be walked. 
Jesus is the Light--to be lit. 
Jesus is the Love--to be loved. 
Jesus is the Joy--to be shared. 
Jesus is the Sacrifice--to be offered. 
Jesus is the Peace--to be given. 
Jesus is the Bread of Life--to be eaten. 
Jesus is the hungry--to be fed. 
Jesus is the Thirsty--to be satiated. 
Jesus is the Naked--to be clothed. 
Jesus is the Homeless--to be taken in. 
Jesus is the sick--to be healed. 
Jesus is the Lonely--to be loved. 
Jesus is the Unwanted--to be wanted. 
Jesus is the Leper--to wash his wounds. 
Jesus is the Beggar--to give a smile. 
Jesus is the Drunkard--to listen to him. 
Jesus is the Mental--to protect him. 
Jesus is the Little One--to embrace him.
Jesus is the Blind--to lead him. 
Jesus is the Dumb--to speak for him. 
Jesus is the crippled--to walk with him. 
Jesus is the Drug Addict--to befriend him. 
Jesus is the Prostitute--to remove from danger and befriend her. 
Jesus is the Prisoner--to be visited. 
Jesus is the Old--to be served. 

To me--

Jesus is my God.
Jesus is my Spouse.
Jesus is my Life. 
Jesus is my only Love. 
Jesus is my All in All. 
Jesus is my Everything. 

Jesus, I love with my whole heart, with my whole being.
I have given him all, even my sins and He has espoused me to Himself in tenderness and love. 
Now and for life I am the Spouse of my Crucified Spouse. 

Amen. 

God bless you,
Mother Teresa, MC

Types of poverty

Here is a matrix I put together on the relationship between different types of poverty (if you're reading this on a computer, you can click the image to enlarge it):

A note on terms. I'm presenting wealth and poverty under two aspects, the objective and the subjective. We could say that one's objective poverty/wealth is measured by the size of one's bank account. It refers to a measurable object outside of the subject (viz., material goods). Subjective poverty/wealth is measured by one's relationship with others and with God, who is the ultimate source of our happiness and meaning. It refers to a relationship intrinsic to the subject.

Obviously there's nothing wrong, in itself, with buying purses.
But there is a type of spiritual poverty that seeks to replace God with things.

According to this chart, the poorest of the poor would be those who are spiritually and materially poor. Ranking the other types of poverty is more difficult and depends in part on your hierarchy of values. Is spiritual or material well-being more important to you?

Consider this thought experiment--to be spiritually rich and materially poor or spiritually poor and materially rich--which would you choose? The question quickly reveals our hierarchy of values. To be fair, there are an infinite number of nuances and qualifications that make answering that question difficult, if not impossible. But if we simplify the choice to this--would you rather be rich without God or poor with God?--I think we can agree that the ideal Christian would choose poverty with God over wealth without God. Thus we have Christ on the Cross.

Mother Teresa often spoke about the difference between spiritual and material poverty, and how people in both situations could be called the poorest of the poor. She also observed that spiritual poverty is much deeper and more painful than material poverty (so there's a good case to be made that the person who is spiritually rich and materially poor is better off than the person who is spiritually poor and materially rich, though this requires an eschatological perspective. "Blessed are the poor...").

In her talks, she often associated material poverty with the developing world and spiritual poverty with the developed world. It would, of course, be dangerous to reify this distinction. Mother Teresa knew that the materially poor also exist in the developed world, just as the spiritually poor exist in the developing world. But it is generally true that development and material contentment can threaten us with a spiritual malaise. Development is good (obviously), as is the material world (obviously), but when we inordinately desire our material good over our spiritual good, sin lurks nearby.

What are you doing here?

There is a well-known passage in the First Book of Kings that recounts one of Elijah's encounters with the Lord. Elijah has just called down fire on Mount Carmel and executed the prophets of Baal. He is on the run from King Ahab and his idolatrous wife Jezebel, who are seeking to kill him. Elijah despairs of his life and asks that the Lord end his misery and kill him. He then falls asleep under a broom tree, but is awoken by an angel who provides him two meals of bread and water. Elijah then begins a forty day fast, and sets out on a journey to Mount Horeb (Sinai).


Once Elijah arrives, the Lord instructs him to stand on the mountain, the same mountain on which the Lord descended, accompanied by earthquakes, fire, smoke, and trumpet blasts, to give the law to Moses. But now God acts differently: "A great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper."

The literal Hebrew here is "thin silence."

At this point, Elijah wraps his face in his cloak and stands at the entrance of the cave in which he has been living. God asks, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah complains of his plight, and God responds by providing a sort of rescue plan for Israel. He instructs Elijah to anoint a new king and a new successor to his own prophetic ministry. This will be the prophet Elisha.

And so begins a new chapter in the history of the Kingdom, that will lead to many more prophets, who will guide Israel through its exile and return, preparing it ultimately for the Messiah, and the fulfillment of the promise that God made to Abraham that all nations be blessed through his offspring. It is one small but indispensable episode in the history of salvation.

***

One could easily write a book on the exegesis and interpretation of this story. I want to make one point, about the necessity of silence. Elijah has apparently suffered a major defeat. He is on the run from a bloodthirsty king and queen. In his own eyes he has failed his mission. He has not brought Israel back to covenant faithfulness with God. He has won the battle with the prophets of Baal, but he has lost the war with King Ahab. In the wilderness, Elijah is perfectly alone. He is in the depths of despair. He asks that God end his life. He is disoriented and lost, to say the least.

And what does he do? He travels to the holy mountain, the fount of inspiration, the place where Israel became a nation by receiving the laws from the hand of God. It is the spiritual birthplace of the people of God, the first stop they make after leaving Egypt, the place of death. What does Elijah expect to find there? We are not told. Perhaps Elijah himself does not know. But he makes the arduous journey, more than 250 miles on foot over treacherous terrain as a fugitive, seeking an answer.

He arrives at Sinai and he experiences a magnificent show of power in the wind, earthquake, and fire, all of which hearken back to the first Sinai theophany to Moses. But God is not in them. God reveals himself in the "thin silence." And from this silence he speaks to Elijah: What are you doing here? Presumably God has not instructed Elijah to come to Sinai. He comes of his own accord.

Perhaps we, too, are looking for great prodigies of God's presence, when he wants instead to reveal himself in silence. Perhaps we, too, are lost and yearning for something, searching for purpose and meaning, but we don't know where to look. Perhaps we don't even know what we are looking for. And as with Elijah, perhaps God will answer our questions with a question. "What are you doing here?"

What am I doing here in this job, this career? What am I doing here in these relationships? What am I doing here on this earth? What is the meaning of this seemingly routine and banal life I live? What is the meaning of the sufferings and difficulties I have encountered, for which I am not responsible?

We seek after the Why. Why am I here? And why am I going where I am going?


These are peripheral questions in more than one way. They are peripheral to the world, insofar as the world does not care to ask or answer these questions. The world does not ask Why, it asks How. How can I gain more wealth? How can I obtain power, pleasure, honor, fame? But these questions are peripheral in a positive sense as well. They are questions that go to the edge of existence, to the limits and bounds of knowledge, to the limits of being and into being itself who is God. To ask these questions and to live the answers is to live a peripheral existence, or what I called in an earlier post an asymptotic existence. It is to live the fullness of the Gospel. And it is joyful.

If we have not asked these questions, we won't have answers to them. And if we don't have answers, there's a good chance that we're wasting the precious little time we have to live. Of course, there are answers to these questions. Answers that give meaning and direction to our lives. God has a plan for us, just as he did for Elijah. And just as his plan for Elijah contributed to a larger plan for Israel, which itself existed for the salvation of the world--so, too, does God have a plan for us, which contributes to the completion of his cosmic design. And without our cooperation, he cannot accomplish that plan of divine beauty. But the first step in all this is to hear the question in the silence. To hear God questioning us.

Elijah does not give an answer to the question God asks. His answer amounts to a complaint that he is alone and has failed, when neither is truly the case. We all face this temptation--not to answer the meaning of our existence, but to complain instead about the discomforts we face. But we must keep returning to these ultimate questions, as Elijah did, and live the answers, as Elijah did.

Above all, we must keep returning to the silence in which these questions surface. Is there silence within us? Can we hear God asking those questions? It is only in the silence that we recognize the shape of our lives and its direction.

Let us ask for the grace of a silent heart. Lord, give me ears to hear!

Loneliness

Mother Teresa on loneliness: there is a hunger for love, a hunger for God!  

"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God."

Am I starving for love without even knowing it? If I am not a saint in heaven, the answer must be Yes. The holier we become, the more we realize how destitute, how hungry we are, hungry for the eternal love. 

So let me seek out the Bread of Life, the bread of love. There I can hear Christ say "I Thirst!" For you! He thirsts to give you life, to give you love! 

Sharing our poverty

Why do we hide our poverty? Our loneliness, our weakness, our sadness, our emptiness? Why do we put on a smile for the world if our heart is not truly smiling? Of course, there is a time and a place to reveal our poverty, but in my experience we too often hide it. And we have learned to hide it well.

Revealing our poverty--showing others our incompleteness--makes us vulnerable. But it also opens us to love. And it gives others a chance to love. How many people are dying to love and be loved? Whether or not we realize it, we all yearn to love deeply, to love unto the end. But we distract ourselves with our work and study and entertainment. And then, when we do realize that deep need within ourselves to love, when we realize that ultimate meaning is not found in our work, or our study, or our endless distractions, we feel desolate, because there is no one to love. Everyone else is to busy working at a million trivial things to allow themselves to receive the one thing necessary: to be loved. And each day, a little closer to death, that ultimate mark of our finitude, the ultimate reminder that love alone matters, that only love survives beyond this passing world.

What a world we live in! And yet, are we perhaps to busy to love or be loved? Do we give others a chance to love us? Perhaps we think it selfish to want to be loved. Or perhaps we are afraid to show others our brokenness, our unfulfilled desires, our yearning for belonging. But what a gift it is to show others that we are not complete! It is a gift we give them, the opportunity to love. How many people are yearning to love, but are afraid to reach out in love, because they are afraid of being rejected, ignored, or misunderstood?

And so it is a gift we give others when we show them our need to be loved. It is a gift because it opens to them a pathway which will lead them to their own happiness. This poverty of mine, this loneliness of yours...it is a gift, because when my poverty meets yours--there I can love, there I can empty myself of myself to fill myself with loving you.

Let us be more willing to show our poverty. Think to yourself, What is that poverty for me? Where is there loneliness in me...where is there a deeper desire to be loved and understood? Let us share that need with others, first of all with our Lord, our Lady, and our guardian angel. They will fill us. They will give us the necessary courage to share our poverty with others.