homily given at the Open Assembly of the United States Province West Coast Region: Atherton, California , November 6, 2004
Readings: Isaiah 52: 7-10 Colossians 3:12-17 John 15: 1-17
Thanks to Trudy Patch's book club, I came across an image that captures for me the grace of these Scripture readings tonight and the graces of these days. It comes from a novel, at once beautiful and painful: Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, a story that unfolds the life of August Kleinman, a Jewish man who at age 11 escaped Germany with his mother.
As the story develops, we find 22 year old Kleinman in WW II on an island in the Pacific, an island then secured by the Americans but inhabited still by soldiers who from their places of hiding in the network of island caves wait to pounce on the GI's. It was Kleinman's turn one night to scout one of the caves in search of these clandestine soldiers, pulling himself along on his stomach through the narrow, damp passageways, bayonet in hand, tears of fear running down his face. No one would have known had he simply hunkered down inside the entrance to wait out his turn before he crawled out again with nothing to show but himself. But in that cave that night, “some other sense entered into him. Perhaps it was courage,” the author writes, “despite the fear that made him weep again, as quietly as he could, still unable to move his hands to his face. He knew he would continue further.” (65)
It was through that very ACT that his heart was shaped, a heart whose spaciousness he recognized when, on his return to the United States, he was reunited with Ginger, the woman he would marry. Standing there in her living room in New York, he saw her in a pale green camisole, hair pulled up in a bun. The author writes:
“The heat of the ardor he felt at the moment was specifically proportional, he understood, to the terror he had known - to the actual moments of crawling through the lair of the enemy, as though the depth of that horror and hatred now translated into a deeper room inside himself - and into that room, as he watched Ginger push aside the pillows on the settee and arrange herself, entered a profound and unbreakable tenderness.” (73)
It is the very ACTs of our living that shape our hearts, acts of living which, in the words of Blaise Pascal, carve out the “God-shaped hollow of our hearts.” Acts of living where courage, heart strength, is revealed. Acts of living where a spaciousness is born that only God can fill.
And what of our acts of living?
- Sometimes they are the routine, mundane, corn bread and com'n doin' acts of living
- Sometimes they are acts of living that draw us into the life and future of our province, asking us to offer time and energy and trust as we engage in a creative process, the outcome of which is incomplete and even veiled
- Some are acts of living that ask us to face our poverty and diminishment with God-sized faith and trust.
- And sometimes they are acts of living that call us to stand strong and more determined than ever as we press forward to influence the direction of our country and its relationship to our world.
It is through these acts of living - big and small - that the God-shaped hollow of our hearts is carved out and where we ourselves become spaciousness for God alone to fill.
- Ours is the spaciousness where the sap of Christ's vine courses through us as persons, as a body of RSCJ, as a body of humankind
- Ours is a spaciousness that waits so that when we hear Isaiah's footsteps of those bearing the Good News, we can say “yes” with shouts of joy.
- Our is a pregnant spaciousness ready to give birth when life serves up the opportunity to act with kindness, humility, forgiveness and love
- Ours is a spaciousness ready to absorb mercy and patience when they are poured over us, clothing us like a layer of new skin.
These acts of living, our willingness to let our hearts be hollowed out, take courage. Or, as St. Madeleine Sophie Barat would say, “there can be no wet hens among us, quick to run at the first signs of thunder!” There are no wet hens among us! Yet, courage, this strength of heart, we need more than ever.
But there is one more essential thing that needs to be said. We need to en-courage each other in the spirit that so many of us have experienced during these days. We need to give each other heart as we create our future together. We need, perhaps more than ever before, to love one another.
…to let our histories create a spaciousness where new stories can be told
…to let our fears remind us that God is ready and eager to fill us
…to let our fatigue prompt us to lean into God and into each other, grateful that we need not go it alone
In truth, we are called to become spaciousness itself, allowing God to inhabit us, so that our world might hear the one and most important testimony we have to offer: that God alone is our core and our meaning and our horizon such that our acts of living - every one of them - enlarge the God-shaped hollows of our hearts.
For this tonight we pray…
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