The locus of every human mystery (Marilynne Robinson)

   The locus of every human mystery is perception of this world.  From it proceeds every thought, every art.  I like Calvin's metaphor  — nature is a shining garment in which God is revealed and concealed.

   In fact there is no moment in which, no perspective from which, science as science can regard human life and say that there is a beautiful, terrible mystery in it all, a great pathos. Art, music, and religion tell us that.  And what they tell us is true, not after the fashion of a magisterium that is legitimate only so long a it does not overlap the autonomous republic of science.  It is true because it takes account of the universal variable, human nature, which shapes everything it touches, science as surely and profoundly as anything else.

-- Marilynne Robinson, 

When I Was a Child I Read Books

Image source:  https://www.reckonings.net/reckonings/2012/04/index.html

Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 8, 2019: Who can conceive what the Lord intends?

Who can conceive what the Lord intends?

How open are we to the wisdom of God?

  It’s so hard to get our heads around God’s ways.  The Book of Wisdom confronts this problem directly:  Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?  Life is a struggle during which humans gain wisdom primarily through trial and error, and we can so easily get bogged down in the limitations of human physicality:  the earthen shelter weighs down the mind.  But God is a source of revelation, sending his spirit from on high so that we might see ever more clearly the more we open to it.  Psalm 90 also struggles to get a sense of God’s vision, of God’s understanding of the cosmos.  Here, we see humankind, which is mortal, reaching out to God, who is immortal; man is time-bound, while God is eternal:  a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday.  We will never understand these mysteries on earth; we must therefore open to gaining God’s wisdom, a wisdom of heart, as best we can:  teach us to number our days aright, the psalmist sings, that we might celebrate the life that you have given to us all with joy and gladness.

  Christ’s love for us is similarly unfathomable, and does not depend on whether we love him back or not.  But if we are to love him, he tells us in Luke’s Gospel, then that love must come first, before any human relationships we might have, whether they be with father, mother, wife, children, brothers or sisters.  In effect, we must allow our relationships with others to be perfected through our relationship with the Lord first of all, and this has a cost:  Jesus calls on us to carry our own cross.  To do this, we should, like the person wishing to construct a tower or lead an army into battle, first calculate the cost.  For Christ asks us to renounce all our possessions; only knowing what his love costs and accepting that cost can we focus on love God reveals to us.  Likewise, Paul asks Philemon to consider his former slave Onesimus as more than a slave, a brother, … beloved to you as a man and in the Lord. Philemon can choose to be one with Onesimus in Christ, as we are one in Christ with God – he has but to open to God’s vision.

  Openness to God’s wisdom requires a radical shift in our vision, in our way of seeing all things, and in all of our relationships with others.    Every relationship we have is redefined and enhanced when we embrace God’s vision – as best we can – and no relationship so much so as our relationship with our Lord, whose gracious care transforms us, and whose wisdom offers us love beyond measure, timeless, eternal.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Assessing your place in the cosmos (David Brooks)

   In the struggle against your own weakness, humility is the greatest virtue.  Humility is having an accurate assessment of your own nature and your own place in the cosmos.  Humility is awareness that you are an underdog in the struggle against your own weakness.  Humility is an awareness that your individual talents alone are inadequate to the tasks that have been assigned to you.  Humility reminds you that you are not the center of the universe, but you serve a larger order.

--David Brooks, The Road to Character

Image source:  The Milky Way as seen from McGregor Bay, Ontario, Canada (https://imgur.com/gallery/2zeViU5)