Apr 17, 2022

  Living in Unconditional Love (58)

“Love flows from God to humans without effort:

As a bird glides through the air without moving its wings-

Thus, they go wherever they wish united in body and soul,

Yet separate in form.”

–Mechtild of Magdeburg

 

My wife Eileen died from esophageal cancer in February 2020 one year after being diagnosed, 60 years to the day that we met on Long Island. Then my brother Tom became ill, and I spent a total of six weeks being with him in Ohio, but he died in October 2020. My sister-in-law Sue Mahoney died from Covid-19 in January 2021. On top of it all stood the pandemic, locking everyone down almost two years, and even though it is abating, I wear my mask anytime I am out, unlike many.

 

04/17/2022                         Easter. This is one of those rare Easters that match my first date with Eileen, April 16, 1960, Holy Saturday. 62 years ago! I told her that I would like to have our first date where God would bless us if that is what was meant to be, so I asked her to go with me to New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the Easter services, which at that time was at midnight. (That did seem to impress her; and she related that story many times.) We went into the city and ate at a great restaurant (the food was great, but I suspect the restaurant is long gone) around 48^th St., then went to some of jazz places I haunted at that time. We arrived at St Patrick’s early (luckily) and it was dark – they were not having a service! We discovered the only church having a service was down at 32^nd street, but we made it; took the last train back to Port Washington and arrived at 3:00 am. I invited her to my apartment (rooming house that was almost vacant for Easter) for breakfast, then took her home at 4:30 am. The rest is history. That day is part of my memories that blest our marriage a little over a year later.

Memories like this keep life interesting and vibrant. These dates keep appearing, and my love for Eileen is still alive and well and will be for the rest of my life. April 16 has another reason to have joyful memories, as my Grandson Max was born on that day, doubling the reason for joy. Out of that first time together so many joys have come my way.

This Easter time brings up a very difficult time in my life when I rebelled at the thought that God, who is proclaimed to be love, would require the painful death of God’s son to appease the wrongdoing of humanity and permit it to enter heaven, supposedly a place of peace and joy. How can love demand the blood of One’s only son to appease anger? God’s anger? And how does Love and anger co-exist? It did not make any sense, and I finally arrived at the conclusion that the death of Jesus had little to do with our ability to be in heaven. This was especially true as I pondered for years the statement of Jesus that the “Kingdom of God lies within”, that is, we are now living in heaven if we but have eyes to see. No blood sacrifice needed. Love is indeed love, forgiveness being full, and as the psalmist said the wrong is as if it never existed.,

One of my book groups has been studying the book The Universal Christ by the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. By coincidence (or, in truth, synchronicity) we ended the week before at the beginning of chapter 12, Why did Jesus Die?. Truly not planned, just occurred. The most common belief for the crucifixion is that Jesus ransomed humanity by his death, appeasing his Father who was angry at the perfidy of humanity. As I said previously, I had great difficulty with that transactional approach, or “I do this and You do that”, quid pro quo. In my mind that is not love, but business. Certainly, different than the parable called The Prodigal Son” where the father runs as soon as he sees his son and embraces him, requiring nothing in return.

Well, it turns out this theme of a one-time transactional affair is recent in Christian history. Perhaps, just maybe, Jesus meant to establish an ongoing transformational process, not just a one-time transaction. Up until the eleventh century, many reasons had been tossed around, the one being that Jesus was being ransomed for the devil to release its hold on humanity was the most common one. Silly yes, but that was the thinking. Then in the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury wrote a paper “Why did Jesus become human?” which perhaps was the most successful piece of theology ever written (I am paraphrasing Richard Rohr, not making this up). He said in effect “Yes, a price did need to be paid to restore God’s honor, and it needed to be paid to God the Father – by one who was equally divine.”

This is the thinking that almost drove me out of Christianity – how could I trust such a God at all? The cruelty is stunning. But from history, St. Francis of Assisi did not believe that, calling everything good and part of God, knowing from his internal experience that the God he knew was truly loving – but it took complete abandonment to fully realize that, and the Franciscans became that way. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) (P142 of “Universal Christ”) “refused to see the incarnation, final denouement on the cross as a mere reaction of sin. Instead they claimed that the cross was a freely chosen revelation of Total Love on God’s part. In so doing, they reversed the engines of almost all world religions up to that point, which assumed we had to spill blood to get to a distant and demanding God. On the cross, the Franciscan school believed, God was “spilling blood” to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness, the cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back to the creator.

            In the Franciscan school, God did not need to be paid to love and forgive God’s own creation for its failures. Love cannot be bought by some “necessary sacrifice”; if it could, it would not and could not work its transformational effects.” (p142)

This is the teaching of the Franciscan school today and for 800 years. It is accepted by the Catholic Church as an alternative solution to the “crucifixion problem”, but not generally taught outside the Franciscan way (why that is so is another question, but I won’t touch that today). It was finding this explanation that brought to an end my dismay with Christianity and gave me a solid footing again. The cross is truly God’s love, entering into the suffering of humanity. Humanity (and the universe) was already forgiven was and is loved in a truly unconditional manner and has been loved for 13.7 billion years. And I believe that it is in only by truly suffering that we come to understand the depth of God’s love for us allowing us to live in love and accept death in love, and these past three years have taught me much of the extent of God’s love. I have had to learn to surrender myself to over and over, daily and more, to remain and regain my humanity.

You might want to read that a few times if you haven’t heard that before now. The book The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr has an extensive chapter (chapter 12) that delves into this in more depth.

Meditation

Gentle One, You have held me in my pain all my life, and ever more gently the past three years. I haven’t fully realized (and probably still don’t) the extent I have leaned on Your grace to stay sane during this time. I hold all in Your name, Your grace, Your love, as that has sustained me and brought me out of the deep depression that held me so firmly. You have graced me with the unconditional love of Eileen for 60 years, so I could see and taste Your love in living reality. I am grateful at the depth of my being for this grace and am in awe at its power and strength over the years even to today.