God’s recklessness bears fruit in love
Lent offers opportunity to become attuned to God’s paschal symphony
Ash Wednesday approaches and with it the 40 days of Lent. The season culminates with the celebration of the paschal triduum – Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. In my parish, at least, the congregation is always largest for the Good Friday celebration no matter that the Church esteems the Easter Vigil as the high point of the liturgical year.
We should not fret over which feast is most important. The liturgies for the three days are really one long liturgy separated to denote three aspects of the one mystery. But we can explore why Christ’s death on the cross moves the hearts of parishioners so much and what this means for our Lenten spiritual practices.
For theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar the nuptial relationship between God and human believers reaches its high point in the cross. Nuptial relationship – a spiritual marriage – was a common theme in 20th century theology. The theme soars to its high point in Balthasar’s expansive writings.
For him, through the nuptial relationship God encounters the human believer most fully in Christ’s self-offering on the cross. More concisely, Christ’s perfect self-giving love draws the life of humanity into the love of the Trinity.
Balthasar describes the Father’s self-gift as reckless. While God’s love is perfect, the exercise of human freedom is “a calculating, cautious self-preservation.” The Incarnation leads inexorably to divine suffering. We stand in awe before this mystery, the mystery of love.
But even if God’s sending of his Son displays recklessness, his self-gift bears fruit. Through the cross, God draws believers out of themselves and engages us in our own redemption. “Covenant” is the best word we have to describe the new relationship between God and humanity. The believer receives the daunting mission of turning away from self to surrendering their whole being to Christ.
The cross is not only an example. More powerfully, the nuptial relationship effects what it symbolizes – our being plunged into divine life.
The three persons of the Trinity are quite unlike human persons. Yes, God creates us in his image and likeness, but that likeness is faint. We are substantial entities who possess free will and desire God. Sin and concupiscence taint our personhood. We reel this way and that. Often we align ourselves with God; other times not. We lack singularity of purpose. The divine persons, however, are pure relationality and pure self-surrender. Pure love.
Yet, we live in hope. Automatons cursed to blindly give into our passions, we are not. Nor is it through a rote following of rules sent by a dominating God that we more resemble the divine. We sing, we create, we yearn for holiness. We love as best we can. Freedom is finite. But that freedom grows as we become attuned to the love poured out by the triune God. In such a way does our personhood grow more like God’s.
We retune our spiritual senses through repentance, meditation on Scripture, self-denial and acts of service. But attunement comes from outside the person, from the Holy Spirit impressing himself upon the believer. “He is no longer an autonomous ego since Christ has begun to live in him,” Balthasar wrote of the believer. By living the life of Christ, we cooperate with the Spirit. We grow in unity with the Son who surrendered his life on the cross.
Thus, one becomes attuned, not only to God, but to Christ and his Church. Christ transforms the individual soul into the ecclesial soul.
This is our spiritual practice, our practice of Lent – to strive to do the will of God in all things. To love as God loves. Through such striving, we become like Christ who gave his life in the ultimate act of self-surrender. Our petty clinging to our freedoms so that we can do as we please, not as God wills, is the antithesis of Christian living.
Over the years, my own adherence to Lenten disciplines has dwindled. I exert myself, but my effort is puny.
This Lent I will find and root out my own unique forms of chaos and disorder. It will be difficult. I perceive the faults of others but am blind to my own. Once I discover them, I can become more fully attuned. At least for 40 days, prayer, self-denial and service will be my watchwords. They will prune my self-love and turn my attention to God. I yearn to love more fully.
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