Last week we opened a file, as it were, on Jesus’ teaching about
abiding. We find this teaching in John’s
Gospel. Not surprisingly, when we turn
the pages to what are pretty well the last Christian writings to make it into
the canonical scriptures, the First Letter of John, this is what we find: God is
love. Those who abide in love abide in
God, and God abides in them [I John 4:16].
It does seem that by the end of the first century of the
Christian era, or not long after, at least one group of churches, perhaps
around the Ephesus district in what is now western Turkey, were finding their
life and inspiration in what we now call the Fourth Gospel, John’s Gospel, and
eventually also the Letters of John and the Book of Revelation. Teaching about abiding is reflected in these
writings, and was a key part of their understanding of their life together in
Jesus.
This teaching appeals immensely to me – but the point will
always be, not so much to understand with our brains this matter of abiding – thinking
and puzzling will never end – but to do it, to abide, and to know how
God abides in us. Jesus says he himself abides in
us. In that way faith is a living faith,
inwardly as well as outwardly practised, not something we partly understand and
provisionally accept or admire.
And so the point today is that, each time we elect to come
to a stop in our busy round, just for a little while… and each time we choose
to be still and silent, alone or with others, when we could always make other
choices… each time we consent to set aside our burdens and preoccupations and
turn away for now from the control panel… thus, each time we sit apart from lists
and agendas and goals… each time we retrieve our mantra and begin again gently
and interiorly to recite it, as an alternative to all the distractions… each
time we remember and accept our frailty and mortality, as God has made us… that
is, each time I take the risk of being vulnerable and exposed, being the
person God sees and knows and loves… each
time, this initiates what these Johannine writers mean by abiding – what Jesus
in the synoptic gospels calls going into
your room and shutting the door. What
does resurrection mean except that, really but ineffably, Jesus is present too… I do not understand that, but what St Paul
calls the eye of the heart sees it and knows it. Abide
in me, and I in you. The branch cannot
bear fruit except it abide in the vine…
Now it is important to say…
Abiding is abiding in truth, not fantasies, lies or coverups, or
excuses, or in something currently getting called post-truth. It is abiding in reality and the present
moment, which as we know is often uncomfortable. That is the way he abides in us, at the level
where we are, and are true. Fr John Main
puts it:
The truth is so much more exciting, so much more wonderful… Our way to experience this truth is in the silence of our meditation. The power that silence has is to allow truth to emerge, to rise to the surface, to become visible. We know that it is greater than we are, and we find a perhaps unexpected humility… that leads us to real attentive silence. We let the truth be.
The discipline of silence and stillness, moreover, plants a
seed in us so that we become aware of this abiding, at other times than the
times of meditation. The abiding is
forming us, re-forming, a process Benedictines know by the Latin term conversatio, a daily and continuous
process of grace and love. We become
ever more open to the changes the Spirit is making in us by our quiet consent.
No comments:
Post a Comment