Embracing our darkness

Thursday, August 03, 2017

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 13:47-53), Jesus presents us with a horrifying picture:

“Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

This passage made me shudder as I wondered what it would be like to be cast aside away from the Kingdom, away from God, into an excruciating loneliness with no hope of making my way back. And I wonder if any of the great Biblical figures also considered such a moment of despairing loss, particularly at the times when they had committed their greatest sins, or in their folly chose what would alienate them from God. I thought of Moses the murderer, Peter the denier, Paul the zealous persecuter; I thought of those who were lost in sin whose salvation was brought to them by Jesus himself—the tax collector, the adulteress, the Samaritan woman, the prostitutes. And I thought of all those who were cast away from society but who were embraced by God Himself through the ministry of Jesus Christ—the lepers especially, the blind, the demoniacs, even the dead whom He raised to life again.

And I realized that it seems like God’s saving love has consistently been the most powerful for those who were most in need. And then I thought of my own condition, and of the weaknesses and past sins and the sometimes frustrating condition of imperfection that I have to live with day by day as well as what Carl Jung would call “the shadow side,” because there is a cave of darkness within all of us.

And I realized that there was great hope. And I resolved once again to continue my efforts to make my away back to God, or as Saint Benedict put it at the very beginning of his Rule, “The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience.” (Prologue, v. 2)

“Blessed are those who know their need for God.” I don’t remember who said or wrote those words, but they have always been a hope-filled consolation.

Mystics from all religious traditions have always know that it is by embracing our darkness that we move towards the light. Consider these words of the Persian mystic poet Rumi:

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.

Whoever sees clearly what’s diseased in himself begins to gallop on the way.

And I remembered the outcry made by the great Saint Paul:

The desire to do right is there, but not the power. What happens is that I do, not the good I will to do, but the evil I do not intend. . . . What a wretched man I am! Who can save me from this body under the power of death? All praise to God, through Jesus Christ Our Lord! (Romans 7:18-19, 24-25)

And finally, I give thanks for the great gift our tradition has given us to sum all of this up in just a few simple words: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

God bless you!