Liturgical Reflections 2022
4th week of Lent. My primary Lenten practice, outside of Daily Office, has been reading through various voices of challenge and dissension with my friend Justin. The goal being to destabilize stagnate belief, exploring new territories of understanding and opening to the mystery of God’s death.
The concept of ‘saturated phenomenon,’ the ‘surplus of meaning,’ or ‘divine revelation’ and phenomenological differentiation of ‘icon’ and ‘idol’ have formed a central axis for my Lenten reflections this week.
I am especially thinking of how Marion’s concept informs our thoughts, concepts, and beliefs about the Holy. The conceptual image appears in two ways: ‘idol’ and ‘icon.’ An ‘idol’ is an object that is totally available conceptually, i.e., an idol connotes meaning as an object wholly and clearly.
Whereas an ‘icon’ not only connotes available meaning, but emanates a surplus of meaning, i.e. the icon, although available conceptually, is a saturated phenomenon: the icon, as belief-image, has conceptual validity but also fails to grasp the totality of meaning to which it points (e.g. God as Father, God as Mother, God as Love, etc.)
The surplus disenfranchises, disarms any claim of the conceptually available as grasping the totality of meaning. However, when the conceptually available is elevated to the total sum of the iconic phenomenon we are then left only with an idol: the surplus of meaning (the mystery) vanishes. Let me say this another way, for example, the mystery of God as Father disappears when I conflate ‘Father’ with my conceptual grasp and finite experience of fatherliness, i.e. the ‘fatherhood’ of God as saturated phenomenon (surplus of meaning) vanishes as symbol when conflated with my understanding of fatherhood. The surplus of meaning exceeds truth and transcends rationalism. My understanding of ‘father’ ≠ God as Father. My understanding of ‘mother’ ≠ God as Mother. Etc. Simply put: the Revelation of God exceeds cognitive understanding.
The image, the concept must always giveaway to the overwhelming content of its meaning. Religion as the human attempt to understand God fails as soon as it grasps its object, precisely because it understands God as an object. The moment I claim to have “it all figured out” is the precise moment that religion is lie—that image is idol. Like a burning church, it is razed to make way for something new.
Lent wk 5. Language fails when I attempt to speak of the divine mystery. As it is said, ‘God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.’ I am addressed by a God that is Wholly Other—this is both comfort and trembling. Comfort because I am addressed; trembling because I am confronted as negation.
In many ways, the logic of beauty functions analogously to the confrontation of the God who is Wholly Other. Like the knife that tears open the void, is not beauty always accompanied by a little pain? As that Other-thing confronting oneself as that which one is not? As that which one is lacking?
Being confronted by the power of the beautiful I dissolve into the void—néant. I always feel lack before the beautiful Image of desire. I notice the very substance that I am not and this “not” pains me in all of its sublime power: “not” is the ominous negation—the lack of being, or appearance of being. I am constantly ripped away from that which is not I, separated by the illusion of perception: I realize that it is I who perceives, thus separated from that which is beautiful (left with only image).
This lack is made apparent in the address of the Wholly Other. This is the Unknown God and this God’s difference pains me, because in all of my attempts I cannot grasp this God, I cannot understand this God. I feel fear and trembling because I am confronted by pure difference—‘God is in heaven and thou art on earth.’
Lent wk 6. “One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #175.
From whence do desires arise? Are desires simply instinctual? Or must one be taught how to desire–told what to desire? Perhaps, one, at base, allows that which is outside of oneself to shape one’s desire, in order that one is not required to put forth the effort to actually desire. Let there be no illusions, there is nothing natural or spontaneous concerning desire: we must be told how to desire. Today, we do not desire (nor do we have to believe, for the same holds true), on the contrary, someone else can desire in our stead. Desire is no longer moving from the internal to the external; desire exists externally, so that one is no longer responsible–so that one no longer must waste energy shaping desire. We are told what to desire, therefore we do not have to desire. This avoids the pain of shattered desire (of shattered belief!), of subduing desire.
The church, following the enterprise of culture, perpetuates such a notion, for Christians it has become the place where belief and desire are created so neither must be retrieved, represented and internalized–for what is internalized must be actualized: internalization, by nature, is a transformative event. We merely receive, inherit a paradoxical pseudo-belief: an overcompensated mirrored belief (the weak individual mirrors the “absolute” authorized belief of the church, or the whole), which function as an under-actualization that is marked by despair and a lack of courage to confront such despair. This is the crack-house church. You are not required to feel: something else feels for you; you do not have to believe: something/someone else believes for you. We then move merely from one moment to the next, depending on the feeding tube, the “hit,” which allows for survival as a programmed replication–existing as an extended shadow of false desires and beliefs. Lent gives way to Holy Week—ending with the temptation of meaning.
Good Friday. The symbol of the cross poses the question: What does it mean for God to die? The dark shadow of the cross is the very dissolution of that transcendent God guaranteeing meaning–the God who pulls the strings. Jesus’ cry of dereliction, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ is met with the excruciating weight of suffering: there is no answer.
Jesus’ death coincides with two ‘alienations’: the alienation of God from humankind and the alienation of God from God’s self–theologically, a repetition of kenosis. The symbol of the cross is not only God entering finitude, but entering the situation of godforsakeness (i.e. God as estranged from Godself)–the death of God as Jesus is also the abandonment of God.
Only a suffering God can save us, because only a suffering God dissolves all meaning of human structures–we are confronted by a God whose strength is weakness. The humiliation of God abandons religion and opens to participation: this God embraces our suffering and takes it into Godself.
As Jürgen Moltmann writes, “When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible God,’ the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this.”
Holy Saturday. The Stations of the Cross are utilized contemplatively to journey through Jesus’ last hours before his death. The Stations are also called ‘The Way of Sorrow.’
Collected in this short video are Barnett Newman’s The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sebachtani. Newman’s paintings are striking because they summon an existential reflection–not only are they about the suffering of Jesus, but “each man’s agony: the agony that is single, constant, unrelenting, willed—world without end.”
In his catalog statement, Newman wrote, “Lema Sabachtani—why? Why did you forsake me? Why forsake me? To what purpose? Why? This is the Passion. This outcry of Jesus. Not the terrible walk up the Via Dolorosa, but the question that has no answer.”
The stations are as follows:
1st Station: Jesus is condemned to death.
2nd Station: Jesus carries his cross.
3rd Station: Jesus falls for the first time.
4th Station: Jesus meets his mother.
5th Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross.
6th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
7th Station: Jesus falls for the second time.
8th Station: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.
9th Station: Jesus falls for a third time.
10th Station: Jesus’ clothes are taken away.
11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross.
12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross.
13th Station: The body of Jesus is removed from the cross.
14th Station: The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb.
Easter. The symbol of the empty tomb means new being. Death is the great boundary, which must say ‘No’ to all living things. However, it is the empty tomb of resurrection that shatters the boundary and creates a new way, which announces ‘Yes’ to all living things.
This is made clear in the tearing of the temple veil. In Jesus’ death, the tearing of the veil symbolizes the obliviation of sacred meaning. The temple tore its gown in mourning because the One to who the temple belonged was cast out and torn asunder on the cross of death. However, in Jesus’ resurrection, the symbol of the torn veil is transformed: the sacredness of the inner temple is now the holy ground and meaning of every place. The temple’s tears of mourning are transformed to tears of joy.
Death is the engine of life. Death is the fuel that generates the circle of life’s power. Death is the boundary to every finite thing. The human struggle is both the resistance and embrace of death. Resistance through living, embrace because of inevitability. Death has power over every living thing.
The symbol of the empty tomb says ‘No’ to the dominion of death. But what can survive death? The empty tomb answers: love. Death has no power over love. This love is stronger than death: it is the power to overcome and join that which is separated. This love bears all things. This love creates a new situation—love creates new possibility.
The resurrection doesn’t merely affirm life, but creates the possibility of new life, new being. The symbol of the empty tomb is the power of new being to overcome the gap of death. To say it concretely, we proclaim, ‘Jesus is risen’ and we embrace the other with a love that, not only survives, but overcomes death.
Easter Week 2: What is the hope signified in the resurrection? What is the new situation that emerges?
To the church in Corinth, St. Paul writes, ‘If anyone is in union with Christ he is a New Being; the old state of things has passed away; there is a new state of things.’ The message proclaimed from the symbol of the empty tomb is the ushering in of New Creation–a new reality, a New Being. This new creation is inaugurated by the appearance of Jesus as the risen Christ–symbolized most poignantly by Jesus’ new body.
How is this new situation ‘for me’—how am I caught up in it? Does the resurrection not introduce a new gap of difference: Jesus as the Christ is there-in-new-being and I am here-in-old-being? Answering, St. Paul insists that those ‘in Christ’ also participate in the New Being.
Unclarity still persists: what is this New Creation? What is this New Being? Writing to the Galatians, St. Paul answers, ‘For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.’ For St. Paul and those he addresses, the dichotomy of circumcision v. uncircumcision means something very concrete: neither being Jew nor pagan bears ultimate significance–being in the one whom the New Being finds its meaning is what truly counts. To put this another, more concrete way: religion counts for nothing, but New Being counts.
To continue the apophatic line, New Being cannot be conflated to religion–more pointedly: New Being is opposed to religion. To begin answering the question of New Being, we must first say what it isn’t: religion.
In this context, religion is the human’s attempt, from their estranged state, to reach God. We claw through reality constructing any tower, any bridge so that we are no longer face-to-face with that great abyss of estrangement. These constructions are an extension—a projection—of the very nature of humanity; constructions made in the image of humanity. Religion exists as a projection of the estranged human, bound and determined by anxiety, guilt, and finitude. Religion is doomed from the start because its source is itself.
Easter Week no.3. During Easter season I am reflecting on the symbol of the empty tomb as the promise of New Being. Especially how St. Paul places New Being over and against religion (i.e. the human’s attempt, from a finite state, to grasp God).
This New Being appears as judgment against the old state of things—against the ways we categorize the other through the litmus of religion. New Being is less about conversion, than it is about participation. New Being disrupts all patterns of pious striving: religion is of no importance—New Creation, New Being is the question of ultimate concern.
What is New Being?
New Being is the renewal of the old. Although, New Being confronts the ways in which we divide ourselves and exclude the other, more importantly, New Being renews, recreates all that has been estranged and split. In other terms, our hope doesn’t seek to escape the world, but embraces it and transforms it.
Following the concept of renewal, it is made possible by what St. Paul calls ‘reconciliation.’ Writing to Corinth, Paul states, ‘Be reconciled to God,’ because God reconciles the world to Godself through Jesus as the Christ, then entrusting us to enact reconciliation to the other.
From the grounds of religion, actualized reconciliation is an impossibility from the start, namely, because our striving is never enough. In religion, the infinite demand of God cannot be appeased, which only generates hostility. Hostility because rejection breeds hostility. The empty ‘God’ of religion silently proclaims ‘No’ to all our attempts to justify and to sanctify ourselves, which embitters the burden of religious attitude.
Hostility is the internalized posture towards that which rejects us. We can imagine this existential hostility outside the realm of the religious sphere—whether you call it ‘God’ or ‘nature’, the unbearable weight of existence is all-demanding. How can we find meaning when we are at all times tarrying with the negation of our own being? We seek meaning where it is not guaranteed; when finding it, it is never enough.
What then is reconciliation? And how does New Being gather up the hostility of the old in healing transformation?
Easter week no. 5. We wander this world appallingly alone, attempting to make sense of the senseless–we attempt to make sense of ourselves. At strife with meaning: we spin our little nets of truths out from ourselves, which crumble, shatter when cast upon the world. We seek meaning, but meaning is not found because the intricacies of our construction fail time and time again. We seek meaning, only to look dimly at our shattered visage. How could we ever grasp the ground of existence? How could we ever with phantom arms grasp what is real?
The symbol of the empty tomb offers a new way over and against the striving of the old–we are offered New Being, New Creation. We spoke of New Being as renewal–as a healing embrace of our world. New Being embraces the old in transformative love. We ask: how? St. Paul answers: through ‘reconciliation.’ Why reconciliation? Reconciliation because our estrangement with the world, with ourselves, and with the divine are groaning in anticipation to be overcome.
What is this reconciliation? And how does New Being gather up the old way in healing transformation? Reconciliation is the restoration unto union after estrangement. Paul beckons, ‘be reconciled to God.’ How can I be reconciled to God, if I cannot be reconciled to myself? I cannot reconcile myself with the world, if I try, I fail. However, in the New Being the reality of reconciliation has already appeared. What separates the New from the old is that in the New Being we need not strive for anything. We need not strive because in the New Being we are already accepted in-spite-of our inability to overcome our estrangement through our own power. To put another way, in the resurrected Jesus as the Christ we are accepted in-spite-of being that which should not be accepted.
Reconciliation is the reality-already-there in the New Being: you are already accepted as one already embraced in a New Reality. The estranged one is reunited on the basis of the reconciliation being grounded in the New Being. The reunion we experience in the New Being is grounded in the union maintained by Jesus as the Christ: the symbol of the empty tomb is the power of New Being. Jesus as the Christ represents the power of New Being because Jesus mediates a complete union over-and-against the estrangement of the old way.
Reconciliation is already there. Nothing is asked of us. Nothing required. No religion. Only an openness to a new reality, which opens up the possibility of a new future as already-there. A new reality has appeared in which we are already accepted.
It is only through the power of the New Being that one is able to accept oneself in-spite-of the negations of life: ‘One accepts oneself as something which is eternally important, eternally loved, and eternally accepted’ (Tillich). The endless strife of uncovering meaning is dissolved, the antinomy against oneself is healed–where New Being appears: meaning appears; healing appears.
Easter week no. 6. The symbol of the empty tomb is New Being. New Being is the announcement of the empty tomb–it is a New Way forward. New Being is the renewal of the old. New Being confronts the ways in which we divide ourselves and exclude the other: New Being renews, it rejoins all that has been estranged and split.
For St. Paul, there is a threefold pattern inherent to the renewal of the New Being: reconciliation, reunion, and resurrection. New Being is the reconciliation of all things. Reconciliation is the reality-already-there in the New Being: you are already accepted as one already embraced in a New Reality. The New Being, as attested by the empty tomb, is renewal of the old, through reconciliation; reconciliation is the rejoining of estrangement by the power of resurrection.
Reconciliation is the very possibility of reunion. Again, as St. Paul plainly states, ‘Be reconciled to God.’ However, if we are to be reconciled to God then we must be reconciled to the Other–or as Jesus called them: the Neighbor. When New Being appears the possibility of healing emerges. The estrangement of oneself is healed–I can accept myself as eternally loved, as already-always accepted in-spite-of. However, this overcoming of estrangement dissolves as soon as I reject the Other as the locus of this acceptance. This New Way of Jesus as Resurrected Christ is always healing because it creates reunion with oneself, but also reunion with the Other. The demand of New Being is found in the human face of the Other. The demand to understand oneself as another is to overcome the strangeness of the other in embrace and acceptance.
These moments of healing appear as incomplete, fractured, and fleeting. They retreat back to division and rejection of the old way as a postured habit in the world creeps in disrupting reunion.
When the old way rears its distorted figure, it seeks to destroy and separate. The power of the old way is not the power to create, but to tear away and negate. In finite ways, flickering moments of rejection seek to separate oneself from another–a kind of death. This is why the final motif of the empty tomb is resurrection.
As we deny the face of the other, the possibility to come alive to the other is always present. We are always invited to resurrect to one another. The New Being, as attested by the empty tomb, is renewal of the old, through reconciliation; reconciliation is the rejoining of estrangement by the power of resurrection. The new way, made possible by Jesus as the Christ, is the openness to embrace the neighbor even when the neighbor appears as unembraceable. The empty tomb means resurrecting again and again in love to those who confront us as Other.
Pentecost. “And in the Holy Spirit,” the final stanza of the Apostle’s Creed begins. Pentecost is the celebration of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life, which creates the community of love (i.e. the church).
Christian speech of the Holy Spirit follows four main premises, 1) trinitarian in its grounding, 2) Christocentric in focus, 3) miraculous in its actuality and 4) communal in its content. In connection to an Augustinian formulation of the Trinity, the Spirit is the personified bond of the eternal act of love within the Trinity or, in more symbolic speech, the very act of communion between the Father and Son. It is the Holy Spirit who exists hypostatically as the full consubstantial fellowship within the community of the Trinity. Simply put, Spirit mediates the communion and at the same time is the mediation of this communion—the Spirit is the koinonia of the immanent Trinity.
The concept of revelation leads to the Christocentric focus in the conception of the Holy Spirit. This conception of revelation is grounded in Colossians 1.19-20, “For in him (Jesus) the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him reconcile to himself all things.” Karl Barth states, “there is no special or second revelation of the Spirit alongside of the Son” (CD I/1 p.475). This plays out in the fact that the Spirit mediates the knowledge and presence of the Son to the believer. The saving power of the Holy Spirit is understood then as Christocentric in focus, it is the Spirit who is the bond of peace between the Father and Son. It is through the revelation of the Risen Christ, that the Holy Spirit brings peace to the community of Christ.
The Holy Spirit also then is the sole agent who effectively creates communion with God, it is only by The Spirit that it becomes possible—it functions as a miracle. This is because of humanity’s estranged nature. The Holy Spirit makes the impossibility a possibility by bringing to man the revelation of Christ. The Spirits drawing of humankind to Christ is the miraculous opening up of a possibility which would not be possible without the revelation of God coming from above and piercing the veil of the blindness of humanity—only in this is human freedom created a posteriori to the event of revelation by the power of the Holy Spirit turned toward the person of Jesus.
This revelation of Jesus by the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit brings the estranged human into three types of community: with Christ, with the Trinity and with one another. The Spirit creates the bond of love between that which is different. This is why incarnation is the backdrop and the reality for the actuality of the unity of Christ and the Church—the Spirit brings together two contradictions: divinity and humanity. It is because of the reception into the Son that humanity is brought into fellowship with the Trinity. This, of course, is only possible by participating in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.
This all takes form in the community of believers united by the Holy Spirit’s bond of love. In turn, the community of believers becomes upheld by one another precisely because they are already held by the Spirit of life and love.
That is what Pentecost is all about.
Second Sunday after Trinity. After Trinity Sunday, there are 23 weeks of common time leading to the season of Advent. Trinity Sunday is a celebration in the Church’s mysterious (often convoluted) belief in the triune nature of God. Three modes of repetition in the being of God: Father, Son, and Spirit–but one God. Not three different Gods, nor three different appearances of God: but the single being of God who is three.
Our speech flutters around the edge of meaning as repelled by a boundary–no matter how close we get, our speech is always too much and too little. When we attempt to articulate the abyss of God, language immediately fails. How could the finite peer beyond the miasma of paradox?
The history of God is the revelation of God, e.g. the economy of God’s revelation is the appearance of the hidden God. Concretely: God-in-history corresponds to God-in-itself. In other words, the revelation of God is the self-interpretation of God. The God who appears in history is the same God shrouded in an impenetrable abyss. The unknown God has a history. This has two implications: the abysmal nature of God becomes an open secret and the history of God’s dealings with the world is the basis for the church’s self-understanding.
As attested in the concrete salvation-history of the triune God, this Trinity is an ‘open Trinity’… by virtue of its overflowing, gracious love, which draws fractured creation into this unity, as the liberated community of love.
The church confesses this paradox, fully aware of it being such, because in this mystery the church moves and lives and has its being. In order to grasp itself, the church must situate itself within the paradox of the Trinity. Further if the church understands itself within God’s history, then it is specifically in the context of God’s Trinitarian history of dealing with the world. Trinitarian history, not accidentally, but because this is the shape and form of revelation as such.
I will spend the next few weeks parsing out: 1. Revelation as trinitarian, 2. Trinity as the community of love, 3. Trinity as liberating, 4. Trinity and difference, 5. Trinity and unity, and 6. Participation and experience of Trinity.
Third Sunday After Trinity. We speak of a Trinitarian history, not accidentally, but because this is the shape and form of revelation as such: revelation is miracle—a Divine condescension and humility.
Revelation of a God who is Wholly Other, One who gives revelation to the world as a miracle. An estranged humanity has no monopoly on God’s Wholly Otherness and cannot intellectually ascend to a point of theological rationalization; rather it is God who reveals Godself in freedom. The church then becomes an a posteriori response to the Divine revelation and can only occur in the “sphere of faith.”
Revelation should not be understood as a static one-time historical occurrence, but a dynamic event in which God reveals Godself in freedom through God’s Word in our history. For revelation to occur, God as Subject grasps the human being as object, who, apart from such an event, would never be able to have any real epistemological foundation for understanding that which is revealed itself. “It reaches us, namely, as religious people, that is, it reaches us in the midst of that attempt to know God from our own point of view” (Barth).
This same God, who encounters the human being in impossibility, is Trinitarian in nature. Karl Barth notes the trinitarian shape of revelation, “God reveals Himself. He reveals Himself through Himself. He reveals Himself.” This is the shape and function of the statement: God speaks! God identifies Godself with God’s self-giving in revelation, through the Trinitarian economy of revelation: God as revealer is identified with God’s act of revelation. This is why it is crucial to begin revelation with the concept of Trinity.
The question of revelation is answered within the phenomenon of revelation—the God who is revealed, reveals Godself. The unified God makes Godself known in the context and event of revelation. God’s tri-unified nature causes the dance of revelation to become impossible without employing Trinitarian terms. Trinity is the exegesis (interpretation) of revelation.
The Trinitarian God is the means and ends of revelation, inasmuch that God is identified with each process of the event of revelation: God is always the subject of revelation.
This is the ‘Who’, ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of revelation: God the Father is Revealer, God the Son is the Revelation, and God the Holy Spirit is the Revealdness. If there were one biblical statement that sums the concept of revelation it would be: “For in [the Christ] the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him reconcile to himself all things.”
Interminatis Cyclum Devorantis 