He is accessible

Monday, January 30, 2017

I continue to reflect on the beautiful passage I quoted to you last week from the Odes of Solomon.

His love for me brought low his greatness.

He made himself like me so that I might receive him.

He made himself like me so that I might be clothed in him.

I had no fear when I saw him,

for he is mercy to me.

He took my nature so that I might understand him,

my face so that I should not turn away from him.

He made himself like me. This eternal, omnipotent and ineffable God who is greater than anything our minds can conceive or imagine, this magnificent Creator God who fashioned us from the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into us (and we can be reminded of that every time we breathe), this overwhelming source of Love and Compassion was not satisfied with simply creating us. He yearned from all eternity to united us to Himself in a way that we could finally manage to understand.

And we can only understand what we can see, touch, taste, feel and examine. And so, to become understandable to us, He surrendered his greatness for a time and became one of us. This profound act of self-emptying (kenosis) was sung in the earliest Christian communities and it has come down to us in the Letter to the Philippians:

Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of men.

Notice the close relationship between this passage in Philippians 2:5-7 and the passage from the Odes of Solomon.

God made himself like me so that I could receive him.

No one is obligated or required to plumb the depths of theological inquiry or to master any formulas more complex than this simple statement. Like I said above, what we can see and touch, we can understand. And so Jesus is available to you and me; Jesus God is accessible to you and to me. And we are reminded by the sacred authors of the New Testament that during His time on earth He was as accessible as anyone you may know, as the ones you love, and as anyone you might be moved to serve. Consider, if you will, the opening lines of the first letter of John:

That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and touched with our hands,
concerning the word of life--
the life that was made manifest,
and we saw it, and testify to it,
and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father
and was made manifest to us.

Remember that the next time you go to communion. In Eucharistic form you see Him, and you touch Him and you taste Him and you take Him to yourself, because that Eucharist is flesh and blood, and so knowing that He was only to spend a limited amount of linear time on earth, Jesus arranged a way that we could continue to have direct access to him in the most personal and intimate way.

Consider that, especially when you feel like you are far from him.

Blessed day to you!