Today’s post from Fr. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations spoke to me at a very deep level — quite possibly because I have so much pain in my life just now (I’m still having a really tough time with my health at the moment). I’m hopeful for some improvement over the next few weeks though — another change in medication is going on, and some other stuff which is going to mean a hospital stay in early May.
What pain in my life needs God’s love and transformation today?
St. Paul is the great evangelizer because he seldom leaves the message at the level of “believe this fact about Jesus.” He always moves it to “this is what it says about you!” or “this is what it says about history!” Until we are somehow pulled into the equation, we find it hard to invest ourselves in a mere religious belief. Paul teaches “Christ,” which includes us and all of creation, for he never knew Jesus “in the flesh.”
Christ Crucified is all of the hidden, private, tragic pain of history made public and given over to God. Christ Resurrected is all of that private, ungrieved, unnoted suffering received, loved, and transformed by an All-Caring God. How else could we believe in God at all? How else could we have any kind of cosmic hope? How else would we not die of sadness for what humanity has done to itself and to one another?
Jesus is the blueprint, the plan, the pattern revealed in one body and moment of history to reveal the meaning of all of history and each of our lives. The cross is the banner of what we do to one another and to God. The resurrection is the banner of what God does to us in return.
Easter is the announcement of God’s perfect and final victory.
The email was one of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations. If you would like to subscribe too, and I can recommend them, the website is here: The Center for Action and Contemplation. It won’t cost you anything.
About Paul Sibley
Andrew Gosden (now 18) has been missing from his Doncaster home since 14 September 2007. The search continues.
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The idea, the insight, the epiphany, that Jesus is the “pattern revealed” is mind boggling. It is something that I often forget. When I remember, however, it is what causes me to come running back to Christ.
I see that pattern everywhere – in nature, in humanity, in many religions. It is that truth that I encounter when I wander away from Christ, only to fall again into his arms.
It is an amazing thought! And it doesn’t matter how far away we wander, how deliberately we do so, or what we’ve done, those arms are always there, ready and waiting to wrap around us and say, welcome home, I love you.