Clearly you are a letter of Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. - 2 Corinthians 3:3 -
My summer reading this year was, at first glance, an odd pairing of Minions, The Junior Novel book and Romano Guardini’s The Lord. I had already been slowly progressing through Guardini’s book of 600+ densely packed pages since Easter break. Determined to finish it the Minion book was quickly added as a welcome counter balance after one of our 4th grade parents donated it towards the end of the year for our in class library. Minions are to fun and amusing what Guardini is to intense and foundational, but it was just what I needed to not drown in the first book. It was a short, but helpful, diversion to keep me on track—by comparison, I read the Minion book in one sitting, roughly equivalent to the time it took to watch the movie version, while The Lord, ultimately, took me a little over 4 months to complete. What was interesting though, when it was all read and done, is that both books, in their own way, provided lessons in the ways of our Lord.
With the fast pace of children’s movies, coupled with the distraction of how cute (at least in my opinion) yellow, coverall-wearing Minions are, I had failed to note an important observation on how we need to admit our weakness and seek someone greater than ourselves otherwise we can become “aimless and depressed” as the Minions had become, falling into a “bottomless sadness.” In the book this stood out to me clearly. Guardini, in a more profound way, will state this as having two kinds of freedom. The primary freedom, he says, consists in our ability to accept or reject God—the One greater than us. The second “consists in being free to act in truth and goodness: I recognize so clearly, so overwhelmingly who God is, that I have no choice but to accept him.” However silly or profoundly it was put, all this eventually led me to a deeper realization of the beautiful scandal of our Lord—Jesus’ mercy overpowers everything with an astonishing love. Even more scandalous is that we get to participate in this, in fact, must participate in it so as to not fall into a “bottomless sadness,” but to be fully alive. When we believe and accept the Son of God, we are putting on Christ and are living, even in all our weakness, a life in Christ as Saint Paul says, we are living a life of true freedom, we are entrusting ourselves to a greater good.
God’s mercy and our response to it becomes the bridge that connects God and man, bringing us to the door of the supernatural order. This love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 5:5) allowing us to let God into our whole being. Thus animated by the Spirit we can put love into action, and, as Christians, we put it into action as something more than merely doing good. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, our love goes from being ‘affective” sympathy to “effective” action as Saint Thomas Aquinas terms it.
This is all good to reflect on, but I don’t write all this merely in the abstract. I write as one who participates in this mystical reality of freedom and active love. Works like Guardini’s (even Minion books, in all their silliness, to a much lesser degree, of course) can lay down a solid foundation that helps build up our faith so that grounded in a knowledge of who Jesus is we can respond with love to the needs around us (Kevin, Bob and Stuart did embark on their journey with a mission to help their village). All my reading, including funny kids books, doesn’t amount to much though if it’s never taken beyond the page. It’s here that I stand warmly amazed at being able to see again the abstraction put into concrete reality, when I saw, day after day, so many folks (including myself) from our school community and beyond who came out to help minister to Kim and Rian during their hospital and rehab times. I’m convinced that Guardini was right, that once we meet Jesus in the only way he can be met, in active faith, He “steps out of eternity [and] the unknown, immeasurable Being is revealed to us” and walks with us. Caught up in the need at hand we may not always be acutely conscious of this, but we truly are putting on Christ and slowly being formed into His likeness. Formed into His likeness we now have not only the desire to help those in need, but we have the power to transform the world. When we realize this beautiful scandal in its fullness there will be nothing that can stop us from doing all the good the Lord calls us to do.
The World I Live In: I have refused to live/locked in the orderly house of/reasons and proofs./ The world I live in and believe in/is wider than that. And anyway,/what’s wrong with Maybe?/ You wouldn’t believe what once or/twice I have seen. I’ll just/tell you this:/only if there are angels in your head will you/ever, possibly, see one. - Mary Oliver -
This is a link to a variety of mercy videos from mercyhour.org
http://mercyhour.org/mercy-videos/