Peripheral litrugy

The periphery is the place where the poorest of the poor dwell. The periphery of history is the Cross. If we imagine time as a ray (a line extending in a certain direction), the moment of the Crucifixion is the point on the line tangent to eternity. It is the point at which we become closest to entering into the eternal, into the life of God, for God alone is without beginning or end. For this reason, our liturgies are remembrances of the Paschal mystery. It is in the liturgy that we enter into the Paschal sacrifice and touch eternity, whether we are being baptized or receiving Last Rites. The periphery is our place of departure into the deeper realities of love and sacrifice, the places where time meets eternity.

Let us make our lives peripheral liturgies, sacrifices to God.

The two pillars

A charism (>Gk: charis: favor, gift, grace) is any gift of the Holy Spirit. I am using it in this context to refer to the founding grace of a religious order, from which that order draws its spiritual life. Every charism has two aspects: a spirituality and a mission.

• Spirituality is a particular way of relating to God. It is not a substitute for religion, but a particular lived experience that places a person in relation to Jesus Christ and the Trinity. The spirituality of the Jesuits, for example, has a particular focus on discernment of spirits. The spirituality of the Benedictines focuses on the liturgy, especially on relating to God through communal prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. The spirituality of the Dominicans places emphasis on coming to a deeper knowledge of God through study and contemplation. 

• Mission is a particular apostolic work towards which a charism is oriented. It is important to note that the mission is not necessarily an active apostolate. Monks, perhaps even more than missionaries, go out in search of souls to save them, but they do so through prayer and penance. To give some examples, the particular mission of the Dominicans is preaching; the mission of the Benedictines is prayerful labor; the mission of the Jesuits is...almost anything, it seems! But historically they have been excellent educators and missionaries.   

Of course, I give these examples with the caveat that I am painting in broad strokes. The particular spirituality and mission of any order is far more nuanced than I have presented them.

An illumination from what appears to be Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit is the source of all charisms.

But back to the point: The MC charism has two scriptural foundations for these two pillars of its charism. They are the source of inspiration for the life and prayer of the MC. We could say that they are the two engines that drive the MC's body and soul.

1. Jesus' cry of anguish from the Cross--"I thirst!" (Jn 19:28)--is the basis of the spirituality. Mother Teresa, in a famous letter she wrote to her Congregation from Varanassi, tells us that the thirst of Jesus is something more than love, something deeper than love. This is, of course, difficult to understand outside of a lived experience of Christ's thirst, as Mother had on the train to Darjeeling, when she received her call within a call to found the MCs. The MC takes his identity entirely from his understanding of Jesus's thirst for him. He comes to recognize himself and his vocation only in the light of this thirst. And from this experience of being loved, he desires to go out to the world to satiate Jesus's thirst--to share Christ's love by loving others.



The spirituality: "I thirst".

2. How does one satiate the thirst of Christ? Mother understood that Christ was especially present in the poorest of the poor. She took her inspiration from the 25th chapter of Matthew, when christ gives us his criteria for judgment, when he is separating the sheep from the goats: "whatever you did to the least of these my brethren--you did it to me" (Mt 25:31-46). When we give water to the thirsty, we are giving water to Christ. In the poorest of the poor, Christ thirsts to be given water, but he thirsts even more to be loved.

The mission: "you did it to me".

To summarize: the MC understands the meaning of his existence as this--to quench the thirst of Christ on the cross, by quenching his thirst for water and for love in the poorest of the poor. And I cannot emphasize enough that the poorest of the poor, those who dwell at the peripheries of existence, exist in the wealthy countries of the world perhaps even more than in the poorer countries. There is a great poverty of loneliness in the developed world, a thirst for love and a thirst for God. 

Radical poverty

The Gospel for today, from Luke (9:1-6), contains a fascinating passage in which Jesus instructs his apostles, whom he is sending on mission, to take with them no staff, no money, no wallet, no bread--and no second tunic! I think that would make washing clothes rather tricky.

Why the instruction to radical poverty? It seems exaggerated and unnecessary, perhaps even dangerous by modern standards (and I'm sure it seemed like all of those things to the apostles). So what was the point? I think it has to do with the power that Christ gives them, "over all the devils, and to cure diseases" (Lk 8:1). I think it also has to do with the nature of their mission: "to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick" (Lk 8:2). In order to receive the power of Christ, "who though he was by nature God...emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave" (Phil 2:6-7). To enter into the power of Christ is to become weak, as St. Paul knew: "for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10). Just as Christ's strength depends on his being entirely from the Father, we gain our strength from being entirely from Christ--living entirely in Christ and according to the form of Christ's life.

Christ asks that the apostles empty themselves of their attachments, to adopt a radical poverty, for the same purpose that he came into the world: to love man--"to love one another: that as I have loved you, you also love one another" (Jn 13:34). Radical poverty is for the sake of radical charity, as witnessed to by the purpose of the apostles' mission: to liberate man from material (disease) and spiritual evil (demons). In the MC charism, poverty [perfect emptiness] exists for the sake of our fourth vow, charity [wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor]. We empt ourselves of ourselves to fill ourselves with God's love. In emptying ourselves, we become weak in the eyes of the world, but such emptying gives us a great spiritual strength.

What are we attached to? Just as Jesus asked the apostles to leave behind even their staffs, so, too, he asks us to leave behind our staffs--those things that we lean upon for comfort and security to which we are inordinately attached. Perhaps it is my ego, my sensuality, my love of small comforts. Let's ask our lord for the grace to give these up, for the sake of living a more radical charity. 

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!

An invitation

To evangelize the peripheries, to bring Christ to the dark places of the world and to the dark places of our hearts, we must grow accustomed to visiting the peripheries, even of living at the periphery. A missionary must live where he evangelizes. He must know the land, the people, the culture, and the beliefs of those he encounters, in order to effectively proclaim the great treasure of his heart to those whom God has entrusted to him. We are all missionaries: in the home, in the office, on the playing fields, in the laboratory, at the university, on the streets--everywhere. This blog is an invitation to live on the periphery--to live on the edge of things, to journey to the eschata. To journey into the heart of Christ, who is the Beginning and the End, the outer limit of being. To be an ordinary radical, a contemplative in the midst of the world. This is Catholicism on the edge.