Stripping away

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Over the Labor Day Weekend I had a chance to listen to an intriguing piece of music. It’s a orchestral symphony by Richard Strauss entitled “Tod und Verklärung” (“Death and enlightenment”). It spoke to me of the spiritual journey.

Now this is my own interpretation, not the one provided by music critics:

I heard a man desperately clinging to life, not wanting to let go. Finally the separation takes place and he is reborn into a new realm of existence and enlightenment and the peace and repose is unlike anything he had ever known.

The music spoke to me of a process which we all have to undergo, sometimes many times, in our lives, especially as we seek to grow spiritually. The process is the process of a potter making and remaking a lump of clay. Christ speaks about it himself when we reminds us, as he did in Sunday’s gospel passage, that we must die for Him in order to save our lives.

This dying constitutes a separation from us. Something that we had thought to be part of our true selves ends up being stripped from us. The stripping is painful, but at the end of it we find a peace we hadn’t known until undergoing the process.

Spiritual writers frequently refer to this as the “paschal mystery,” the passage from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.

Consider, if you will, the suffering people in Houston who have just undergone a catastrophic separation from all they knew and are thrust into a new way of living, as yet to be determined. My prayer for these people is that they are given the strength to bear the suffering that has been thrust upon them, and that they do indeed discover a new life that is waiting for them on the other side of the waters.

Won’t you pray for them with me?

God bless you!