 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
THE SHAPE OF LIFE by Bruno Barnhart, OSB Cam In the last section (IV), we have seen the realization of the Christ-mystery within the person who believes and is baptized: the plenary gift of the Holy Spirit and a new life of participation in God through knowledge and communion, through faith, hope and love. The 'other side' of the new life, of course - which the Church has remembered during the long periods when it has nearly forgotten the gift of initiation - is the personal response which is usually the subject of the second part of Paul's letters. When the two sides of the inheritance are divorced, we fall into Gnostic illusion or into a flat and oppressive moralism. When they remain united, as in Paul's writings, there is a perfect and natural continuity between the gift - which becomes a new interior principle of life - and the attitude and behavior which express this gift. 1. Gal 5:16-26 At the end of this passionate outpouring which is Paul's letter to the Galatians, he returns to the cross of Christ: this is the pattern of his life and of the life of every follower of Jesus (Gal 5:24). The cross, the Spirit and a new creation in which the human person lives in the truth of faith and love: these are the elements of Paul's theological anthropology. 2. Gal 6:14-16 Paul's account of his 'new creation' in Christ, in the dawning of the divine light within his heart (2 Cor 4, in IV-2 above), continues with the 'other side' of this gift. 3. 2 Cor 4:7-18 Here Paul conveys the image of a continual welling forth of new life within him which is counterbalanced by a continual dying on the outside. This dying itself, in the pattern of the death of Jesus, somehow involves a communication of the new life to others. 'So death is at work in us, but life in you.' (4:12). The new life in Christ is a 'fontal' life; the human person discovers himself or herself as a wellspring of life, flowing from unseen depths into the person and then flowing forth from the person to others in a movement which is incarnation and Eucharist. The God who said, 'let light shine out of darkness' (4:6) has shown in the heart of this person; now this person continues to bring forth light from the interior darkness and becomes light for others in the midst of the world's darkness. This is the paradigm of Christian life. The movement is from the baptismal receiving of self in the Spirit to a eucharistic giving of self to others in the same Spirit. The person becomes wellspring and sun, in this new Incarnational life which moves between the dawn of baptism and the sunset of Eucharist. Now we turn to some gospel texts in which we find Jesus teaching the same way of life that we have found in Paul's autobiographical reflections and in his teaching. The 'way of the cross' which Jesus teaches his disciples in the course of his final journey to Jerusalem cannot be understood until after his resurrection: that is, until both Easter and Pentecost have transpired, and the disciples are filled with the new life. Jesus' instruction is equivalent to an 'owner's manual' for the plenary baptismal gift. 4. Mk 8:27-38 Peter, filled with the joy of this divine illumination, in which he has been given to recognize and confess Jesus as the Anointed One (Messiah) of God, can see nothing but this light; hidden from his eyes is the dark obverse of Jesus’ mission in this world. When Jesus begins to describe this 'other side', the way of the cross, Peter balks and receives a crushing rebuke from his master. The gift is inseparable from the way; the Spirit and the glory are inseparable from the cross. 5. Mk 10:32-45 As the disciples ascend toward Jerusalem with their master, still full of expectations of imminent glory, Jesus' continuing teaching of the way of descent remains unheard. James and John, who together with Peter were Jesus' most intimate disciples, disclose their complete deafness to this teaching of Jesus with a crude ambition in which they surpass Peter's blunder. Jesus is more gentle in his response to these two, however. He replies in sacramental language - cup and baptism - which point toward a participation in Jesus' destiny – and in the birth pangs of a new humanity - which is very different from the seats of honor which they had coveted. It is very significant that Jesus chooses to speak of his death in this language of baptism and Eucharist. The way of Jesus is a way not of ascent but of descent; only in the fullness and power of the Spirit, which the disciples will receive after Jesus has risen and disappeared from among them, will they be able to hear - and to live - this teaching. Then their life is to assume the same shape as his life, for they have received the gift of his life within them. 6. Jn 12:20-26 Jesus is invited to transgress the boundary which has been fixed for him - the boundary between Israel and the Gentiles - and implicitly to anticipate the divine plan by ascending to the position which is to be his after his resurrection. Once again, he turns decisively from this way of ascent to the way of descent, taking up the image of the seed falling into the ground with which he had begun his parables of the Kingdom. This is the movement toward Eucharist which the disciples, too, will be called upon to follow. 7. Jn 6:51-57 As Jesus begins his long discourse centering upon himself as the 'bread of life', in the sixth chapter of John's gospel, we are apparently to understand in the symbol of this bread Jesus himself, partaken of as the divine wisdom, as the light of life. But toward the end of his discourse, Jesus begins to unfold the same metaphor of the bread of life in explicitly eucharistic terms: his flesh will be bread and his blood will be drink. Wisdom becomes Eucharist: this is the movement of incarnation which will also determine the pattern of the disciple's life. 8. Mt 26:26-29 In the synoptic gospels, the brief accounts of Jesus' last supper are centered in the institution of the Eucharist. Here is the sacramental Eucharist which has become, in John's supper account, a sapiential Eucharist: the final banquet of the divine Wisdom become incarnate. The movement of Jesus' life, however, is ultimately the same in all four gospels: from self- revelation to a total, 'incarnational' gift of himself: from teaching to eucharistic death. 9. Jn 13: 1-16 Jesus' teaching on the way of descent appears, in John's gospel, in the implicitly eucharistic context of the last supper. Instead of the eucharistic ritual, John presents us with this ritual of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. Beatrice Bruteau writes of the two phases of Jesus' 'Holy Thursday revolution'. First he symbolically deconstructs the old 'domination paradigm' which has prevailed in human society since the beginning, by this inversion of the master washing his disciples' feet. Then he sacramentally inaugurates his new order of communion in the world by his institution of the Eucharist. 10. Jn 15:1-17 In the middle of the Johannine supper narrative, Jesus develops his eucharistic symbolism further with this image of the vine and the branches. The one principle of life for his disciples will be to 'abide in him' as the branch abides in the vine. This abiding in him is achieved in the keeping of his commandments; his commandments, however, reduce themselves to the single law of love: 'to love one another as I have loved you.' John very simply resumes the twofold principle of Christian life in his first letter, "And this is his (God's) commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us." (1 Jn 3:23) To this faith in Jesus Christ corresponds the 'beginning', the new life of baptism, flowing into the person from the invisible Ground which is the Father. To this love of one another corresponds the 'end', the eucharistic gift of self in which one 'bears much fruit.' * * * Our quest for Christian wisdom in the New Testament has led us first into the wilderness, to the waters of baptismal initiation. The spiritual fullness which is received in this 'beginning' which is initiation contains within it the principle of its progressive incarnation in one's personal life and finally in one's death - which corresponds at once to Jesus' death and to his gift of the Eucharist. The Wisdom which is Christ continually moves in this descending direction of incarnation; the light of life received in faith becomes flesh and blood, given in love.
|
|
|
|
|
||
