I Cry at Weddings

 It's a beautiful third Sunday of Easter and today's Mass was one of those times when the Truth of what we have been given just comes pouring in.

I had been praying with the Gospel this morning, and the thing that most leapt out to me was what Jesus said about how all the things that were written about Him in Scripture, in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms had been fulfilled, and, starting with the Apostles, we, the Church are witnesses to this.

Then, during Mass I was thinking about how the Mass is always a wedding feast, and we are not just witnesses, we are the Bride! When Fr says, "this is my Body" It is the Bridegroom speaking to the Bride. Heaven is coming to us and we receive Its kiss. The Father says, "you may kiss the Bride"

When we are called to receive Him, to come forward to the altar, it is our Bridegroom is waiting. He comes to us, in the Body, and we are held and loved in a Heavenly embrace. 

So yeah, I frequently cry at Mass, because crying at weddings is what I do. 

Of Big Bangs and Love

 Recently I was listening to an audiobook by Max Tegmark called "Life 3.0".

The book is about life in a world where humans coexist with Artificial Intelligence, but the thing that I was most taken by was his description of the beginning of the universe.

 I'm not sure of the author's actual beliefs around Creation and the Person of the Creator, but his description of the way that the universe began was absolutely poetic. I was captivated by his words as he expressed the moment that it came into being, as he spoke about the energy that must have been present to provide for the birth of the first matter to exist. The power and the intensity of that energy, to me, can only be understood in terms of relationship, of love. There is something about that description of the beginning that points to ecstasy and the love between persons, in this case Divine Persons. The Love that is so powerful and so fruitful that it's expression supernaturally leads to creation. And in the beginning it was the Father loving the Son with the Holy Spirit. 

I don't think there is any point in quibbling about how long all of this took, in our concept of time. God is outside of time and the material is in time, so it can be brought into existence in whatever way God desires. The important thing is, that God desired. 

This is indeed a description of a Big Bang, although I think that there are any number of better terms for it.  It is a Love that gave life to a whole universe so that He could bring me, and you, into relationship with Him. His whole intention was to provide a home for His beloved and to bring them to Himself. God wants us. God thought of me, before time, and made sure that I would come to exist. All that exists is for us, and it is intensely personal. One human person is worth more than all that matter and creation and all that exists. You are worth more than the oceans, the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, or the Himalayas. They are just made of the material, but YOU are made of material and the immaterial. YOU have the gift of a soul. Your ensouled humanity will exist forever, even after all that stuff disappears or is destroyed. 

So, that was the first Big Bang. And we know what happened in the story. Because God created us to be His children and not pets, He gave us the ability to choose His way, or not. And because He also gave that choice to His immaterial creatures, the angels, there were bound to be some who chose not. Bad actors. And not just bad actors but jealous ones, who could not leave humanity well enough alone. So, when clueless and naive humanity met the liar, they fell for the lie and disobeyed God, and things really just kind of fell apart from there. But God isn't a half-hearted lover, and He wouldn't just give up on His beloved. He had a plan. A second Big Bang. An even more incredible expression of His love. 

After millennia and centuries and decades and years. After generation after generation came and went with varying success in following His ways and obeying the Laws that He gave them. After the Covenants between He and His people were made and then broken by those people, it was time. 

Into this world, in the time of the Jews under Roman occupation, and in a simple place in Galilee of Judea, He asked a young woman if she would be willing to bear His Son. And she said "Yes". And this was more momentous than the whole beginning of the Universe and the Creation of the world as we know it. God, Himself, stepped into our time and our world. He became one of us. The magnitude of this fact is incomprehensible. God, Almighty God, came to be with us, to unite our existence with His. Heaven stepped into earth, and everything changed. The moment that happened the whole world was different. It was raised to a new level. A NEW Creation, with a New Eve and a New Adam. An expression of Love that was more powerful than the first. 

But that wasn't all. The Son, who came to live here with us, also came to die for us. The Word came to speak into our world another Truth. A third Big Bang. More powerful than the ones before. God was doing something unthinkable for us, but that's only because we can't think like He does. He took a body, so that He could give us His body, and then He died, he was buried, and HE ROSE from the dead! And He promises that we will also rise, if we believe and live in the New Covenant. The Mystery of His Love just gets deeper and better!! 

The last Big Bang will happen when all that He has intended is finished. When the last person that the Father has thought of is conceived, and can live eternally with Him, then the fulness of time will be complete. It's all about relationship. God has married us. We, the Church, are the Bride, and Christ is the Bridegroom. 

And that's not a theory. That is the Truth.

Love and Responsibility

 Something happened to me in the past couple of weeks. Most of it isn't for public consumption, but some of it is. 

I was very blest to be able to attend my 7th course with the Theology of the Body Institute, although this time it was an online course, which was very different from my previous experiences. The course was "Love and Responsibility" based on the book written by Karol Wojtyla, our now sainted John Paul II. He wrote the book in an earlier stage of the sexual revolution. An attempt to make it clear that the only appropriate response when engaging with a human person is Love and the recognition of their dignity as an eternal soul. The understanding that a person is always someone, and never something. 

That seems to go without saying, but when you drill down into everyday interactions between people it seems that maybe it doesn't.  Putting aside Murder, abuse, and crimes against humanity, there are millions of small, daily infractions that make it clear that we have a problem with the way that we see, or don't see, each other. 

I went into the course knowing that it would stretch me, and that I would come out different than I went in. TOB always provides a deep interior experience. I was prepared to learn and grow. I wanted that. I wasn't really prepared for the parts of me that would be opened up and exposed, or the things that I would see in the light. I wasn't prepared to go so far back into the past, and to see so much of my life and how the people and events that formed me also formed the way that I myself treat people. I can see so many places where I learned to protect myself, and as a result shut people out. The things that formed the way that I saw myself as a child, girl, and young woman, and the way that those things affected the way that I see other people. 

I won't go into those details, but something that hit me toward the end of the course is the way that I go about interacting with the people that I encounter in the course of attending to the daily details. It's one thing to be caring and careful with friends, family or the people that I am responsible to, like my directees, or people at the church, but I think its much more telling the way the I act toward those who are tasked with the "invisible" jobs. Customer service, people who provide services, people who have no choice as to whether they will interact with me. The Lord brought some things into clear focus and I am not at all proud of what I saw. It seems to me a truer test of my respect for the dignity of each person, to look at the people that are most likely to be treated as simply part of the machine of commerce and how I treat them. Yeah, I have been failing that test. 

This was just one small piece of the huge interior renovation that Jesus is inviting me to. If I didn't love and trust Him so much I would be very discouraged, but I know that He only wants this for the sake of my ability to love. And I do want to make Him happy. I want Him to be pleased, and I want to make other people happy, I really do. I can see so many ways that I have been closed to the whole person when I am offered an invitation to intimacy. Thinking that I can't "handle" too much exposure, of my wounds, and of the harder parts of relationships. 

The Lord wants me to look at people and to want to know them. No matter who they are. Within reason of course. He wants me to invite others to know me. I think that is the hardest part. I have often found that when people really know me, they are disappointed. I am found wanting. The truth about my lack of "cool" is exposed. Well, He wants me to see that I am wanted, and I am loved, and that my lack of cool isn't a problem for Him. 

So I guess I'll try to hear Him better in the moment. I'll try to hear His voice when I encounter another person. "This is my beloved child. Listen."