As I read the lectionary for this week, it was, unusually, for me at least, the Old Testament reading which resonated most. Many people who seriously undertake Christian discipleship have been struck by the same incongruence which troubled David: “Here I am living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God dwells in a tent!”
Those of us who are formed by incarnation, sacramentality, and in particular, Dorothy Day’s radical preference for the poor, will, particularly during Advent, associate the “ark of God” with the poor among us, who are certainly dwelling in tents. Dorothy wrote often about her struggle to reconcile her relative comfort (relative to the destitute, certainly not to the bourgeoisie norm) with the abjection she witnessed daily. I think that is an entirely holy and appropriate response from the Christian to an unjust world. It is that question, which David phrased so succinctly, which makes up the first step of discipleship: “come, follow me”, and “deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow me”.
Yet I recently read a post from an account which often challenges me. The account focuses on “deconstruction”, and is geared towards recovering Catholics. Although as a gay Catholic, I do necessarily engage in my own “creative compliance” with the Church, I am also a convert who does not bear any childhood Catholic trauma. In fact, many of the notions which that particular account deconstructs, are those which are very dear to me, and indeed, motivated my conversion. However, I expose myself to the points of view therein because I hope they might expand my faith, and, as Fiducia Supplicans puts it, “broaden my idea of blessing”. They recently unpacked the Church’s valorization of martyrs, and the way it can be received by the faithful. One slide puts it rather well: God does not hate you because you are trying not to die.
You may already know that I personally am deeply committed to and inspired by the Catholic understanding of redemptive suffering; I named this worker Vulnera Christi precisely because I believe that ultimately it is, as St. Francis prayed, “by dying that we are born into eternal life”. I am sometimes put off by bland assertions that Christianity is the “religion of life”. I would argue that it is the religion of resurrection: life glorified by death in service to love. However, I confess that sometimes that spirituality does lend itself to scrupulosity; to asking yourself “how I can do blank while blank is happening to the ark of God” so often that it becomes difficult to function.
Where is the balance? How do we hold in our sight — simultaneously and perpetually — that God does NOT hate us, AND that discipleship entails radical sacrifice.
I find today’s reading from Samuel helpful. Initially, Nathan tells David to do as he intends — build God a house. But God reveals His will that David not be the one to do so. David accepts this. We must remember that the Lord is with us; in solidarity, love, and unfathomable mercy; and that we should not always do quite what we have in mind, but what God’s movement towards us reveals as our path. We must, as Our Lady did, hold all these things in our hearts and treasure them. When we tremble in fear and loathing, thinking that every sip of coffee or tender moment or all consolation and fulfillment or nourishment is a sin; it is then that we must remember that God only suffers in the first place because He does not want us to suffer.
And so I will share with you a meager formula which brings me peace. This is only the fruit of one mind, do not give it much weight: God does not will suffering, and so He suffers; It is God’s will that we suffer with Him. I must remind myself that Jesus ate enough food, drank enough water, and accepted enough consolation to keep Himself alive for 33 years, until it was time. And even then, in His humanity he asked His father that this cup might pass, and in His perfection, he accepted it with humility, and total generosity; never resisting or resorting to violence, nor accepting the attempts of those who loved Him to protect Him, and finally, with His last breath, recommending His murderers to God’s mercy.
Those themes of obedience are of course echoed in the week’s gospel, the scene of the Annunciation. Like her son later would, Mary expresses some doubt, “how can this be?”, and then finally accepts her fearful destiny: “let it be done to me according to thy will”.
And so it is that we may not ever entirely know the answer to the question, how can I live. It is an answer which will morph, and come only in still, quiet, easily ignored voices; unless we are so fortunate as to receive our own Annunciation. We must pray and pray and pray. And not believe the Devil’s lie that God could not possible love us. He does love us always and forever and everywhere. That is why He groans and bleeds: because so many He loves are willfully abused, deprived, and killed by so many others whom He loves. An awful mystery. A beautiful, and provocative idea. One which we say, with as much sincerity as we can muster, “I believe”.