Author: an absurd monk

I was thinking about how quickly things change in life. Not always in a bad way but for me it appears to always be bad at the moment. When I feel I have reached some form of balance, something happens and I am back at the start. Yes, I am back at the start with new skills and more life experience. But I am back at the start. And it is exhausting!

So the above quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came to mind. Yes just stop! Stop and look around. I feel like everything is rushing past me at the moment, like I am missing life itself.

I try to find Jesus in the darkness – allow Him to carry me. So there is that!

The above is the Icon of Christ and Abbot Mena and is said to date from the 8th century. Jesus is holding the book and Abbot Mena is the one with the grey beard. I like how Jesus has His arm around His friend. There is a sense of intimacy in the icon. A warm welcoming Jesus embracing the Abbot.

I have been thinking about being friends with Jesus – the theme of this week’s gospel (and tonight’s study). What does it mean for me? What does the intimacy that the above icon illustrate mean to my day to day life? Not as a slave but as a friend of Jesus do I love – what does that mean for me now?

I like the image of Jesus as my friend. I like the above icon.

I pray you have a Jesus filled day!

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

John 15:9-17

This week the Bible Study Group will look at John 15:9-17 – a follow on from last week’s reading from John. I have been struck by the idea that I am a friend of Jesus. Most likely because I do not have a lot of friends, real friends, and not the variety that goes by the modern term.

Friendship suggests an intimacy. The readings from the last three Sundays have all spoken of the intimacy between Jesus and the individual. An intimacy beyond ideas – a personal intimacy. The opposite is the servant or slave. The friend is motivated by intimacy while the servant does things out of fear or in a desire for a reward. So the command to love is set within the context of this friendship, this intimacy, between Jesus and the individual. Not because I have to but because I want to, do I love! Just like Jesus who goes willing to the cross for me.

Looking forward to the study!

I wanted to share this quote from Meister Eckhart. It illustrates the paradox and irony of Christian life. In the darkness we find light. For someone who has struggled with “the darkness” for many years, some in silence, it is an insight that is worth considering. When God seems war away, He is so only because He is so close that I cannot see Him.

I think the mystics have a lot to say to us. Modern mystics like Thomas Merton, who is able to share his experience of the Divine, are worth the effort. These mystics sometimes speak in parables and images that are hard for the modern mind to comprehend. And that is the point: it is not for comprehending but for experiencing. These writings do not exist without my response to them: to enter into the experience of Jesus. In that sense they are akin to the Scriptures of the Christian tradition.

So the challenge for me is twofold: to experience Jesus in the darkness, and read more mystics.

I like the version of the Surrender Prayer at the end:

Lord Jesus Christ take all freedom,
my memory, my understanding, and my will.
All that I have and cherish you have given me.
I surrender it all to be guided by your will.
Your Grace and your Love are wealth enough for me.
Give me this Lord Jesus, and I ask for nothing more.

Prayer of Abandonment by St. Ignatius of Loyola

I am not normally a selfie-type of person. But this afternoon I was sitting outside, after saying Evening Prayer, and took one. What ya think?

Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.

Acts 8:35

Today one of the readings was from the Book of Acts, as is traditional after Easter, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40). I was struck by how this particular person was chosen by God to hear the gospel proclaimed to him. I was especially struck by how this person, a eunuch with all that includes (or not!), is everything the modern church tries to avoid at all costs. I often wonder if some within the modern church are so concerned with issues related to sex (and the choice of partners) because they are not having any?! (A rare joke!) But more importantly the eunuch is a sign of how God does not want my perfection but my heart.

There is a difference between what a Christian life looks like (morality and service) and who a Christian is (or is becoming). The eunuch, to me, shows us what it means to “abide in Jesus” (as the gospel for today would put it). And, to put a Kierkegaard spin on it, the eunuch is a “single individual”:

The paradox of faith then is this, that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual, to recall a now rather rare theological distinction, determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal.

Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 61

So my insight for today: proclaim the gospel to all! Do not judge anyone on the choices that they make! It is about Jesus and not my perfection – it is about my heart.