“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” I Peter 2:24
“Whereby (God has) given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature…” II Peter 1:4
And from the Collect for Good Shepherd Sunday:
“Almighty God who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensemble of godly life: Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit…”
It is this: “his inestimable benefit” that I want to open up for our consideration today. Next week we shall return to our study of the Gospel of John and Good Shepherd Sunday is a fitting time to remind ourselves of some of the major themes in that Gospel, themes that expand for Church “his inestimable benefits.” Last year on Good Shepherd Sunday I used the image of a winged monarch butterfly emerging from the cocoon to help us understand what it means for us to be the children of God. This is risky since the imagery is trite and sentimental. But Chris James’ Wednesday night classes last year on the mystical theology of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila placed before us deeper insights into that image so that we may not fall prey to its potential superficiality. In particular Teresa’s use the imagery of a cocoon may open to us, by way of analogy, the way in which dying with Christ in baptism is the very God-given condition that establishes and launches our deification. Teresa wrote:
“When the silkworm is full-grown… it begins to spin silk and to build the house wherein it must die.”
It is the destiny of the silkworm to end up a splendid white-winged butterfly that floats free as a cloud. But the way the silkworm is transformed into that free instantiation of God’s grandeur is by building a house of silk in which it will die and yet emerge a new creature — a new creature yes, but not a different creature. Furthermore, and this is important, the death that Teresa wrote of is not death the destroyer, but a death to sin and self-centeredness, an end that completes, that brings to fruition the finality of the silkworm –- body and all. The finality of a thing is the telos, the end, the purpose, its destiny as the will of God.
Analogously, Christians, the children of God, have a destiny that includes our whole selves, material bodies and all, emerging to behold God in his splendid, unchanging beauty, face-to-face — ourselves transformed into creatures of beauty, agility and unimagined powers, and yet recognized by one another for who we have been as well as who we have become in a state of grace. That state of being is one to which the Church Fathers consistently gave the name “deification.” That is both a process and a state of being that already exist which the Collect for Good Shepherd Sunday petitions our Lord to “Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit…” Indeed what is more inestimable than the benefit of God’s paternity? And so Peter lays it out in plain language:
“Whereby (God has) given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature…” II Peter 1:4
Remember the rule: “Grace perfects nature, it does not annihilate nature.” Supernatural grace enables human beings to fulfill their destiny. It is a puzzle that our natural destiny requires a supernatural means. Teresa would say that the emergence of a white butterfly from a silkworm is the destiny of the silkworm. It is not contrary to its nature for the silkworm to become a butterfly, rather it is contrary to silkworm’s nature not to “flame out, like shinning from shook foil,” not to be fathered forth in such beauty, not to become a butterfly. A silkworm that lives its whole life eating, and eating and sluggishly crawling from one leaf to another only to fall to the dark dirt and die — that is contrary to nature. But keep in mind that this is only analogous to our deification. The silkworm’s metamorphosis does not require the supernatural. Silkworms do not have to be baptized in order to become white butterflies and to achieve their destiny. But human beings require a state of supernatural grace to realize our natural destiny. But do not forget that our deification, which is our natural destiny, does not mean we cease to be human beings. Grace perfects our nature, enabling us to realize our destiny as children of God participating in the divine nature of the God who is God. This is our state of being and it is a process that Teresa likens unto the image of the silkworm building its home, the home in which it will, as Peter put it in the Epistle for today, die to sins in order that we “should live unto righteousness.” Teresa explains what she means by the image:
“By this house (the cocoon)… I mean Christ. Our life is hid in Christ… Christ is our life.”
Because we are really and truly in Christ by holy baptism we are really and truly participating in the divine life the Blessed Trinity. This is the really real right now. This means that we already have the promised realities and Teresa identifies them as the means of grace, the instruments of our being “partakers of the divine nature.” The Epistle for this Sunday declares that our sins and disobediences were born by Jesus the Messiah in his human nature, body and all, upon the Cross.
“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye healed.” I Peter 2:24
Here is presented to the children of God our first and most intimate connection to the 2nd Person of the Blessed Trinity already achieved by the grace and virtue of his Incarnation and your baptism. As the writer of the Book of Hebrews says:
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same… For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Hebrews 2:16
Our connection to the Son is precious and intimate because he has, in loving solidarity with us, become a partaker of our flesh and blood. And that very thing was accomplished in the Incarnation through the flesh of his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has become flesh of our flesh and thus we have a true connection, a material connection, an intimate connection in our mutual flesh. And realize this most profound truth: God’s very human nature, our very human nature, body and all that once hung upon the Cross, this day participates in the interior life of God the blessed Trinity. Human nature, body and all, has been taken up into the life of the God who is God, without annihilating human nature. It is because human nature, body and all, has been assumed into the life of God without destroying human nature, that we human beings now participate in the life of God. We have to have some way in and his human nature is our way in. Jesus and Paul compare this to grafting — a wild olive branch is grafted into a domesticated olive tree and it lives. It lives because it is like grafted into like. If you tried to graft a fish to an olive tree you know what would happen. We human beings could not be grafted into God’s divine life. But now that the Word has become flesh we can be grafted into the Word of the Father and since Jesus is true God and true man and since Jesus cannot be divided, Peter now declares that we have become partakers of the divine nature itself. His human nature is our bridge. This is salvation. Here is put before us “his inestimable benefits.” Church goers too frequently think of salvation only as salvation from sin. And yes, we are saved from our sins, but that is not the only reason for the Incarnation. Salvation in the most complete sense means to be made whole, to grow into our full potential as human beings, to realize our destiny as deified creatures destined for the beatific vision, meant to behold God face-to-face. That is our true beatitude, our true happiness, our portion as human beings, our salvation, the perfection of our nature by supernatural grace.
How does that happen, how do we actually participate in the divine life of God? As Teresa teaches, it is simply through appropriating the sacraments of the Church. The way we normally begin to participate in the life of God is though our incorporation into the human nature of Jesus Christ through Holy Baptism. Once incorporated we are nurtured in the Church as we appropriate the other sacraments especially the Holy Communion. This appropriation of the sacraments of the Church is what Teresa calls building the silkworm’s house. You are cocooning yourself in Christ. Try holding on to that image — cocooning yourself in Christ by appropriating his sacramental gifts. Here are the “exceeding great and precious promises” by which we become participants in the divine nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to show you how this promise is contained and realized through the liturgy of the Holy Communion. This is when and where it happens.
After the sermon the celebrant goes to the Altar where he begins the offertory with the assistance of an acolyte who first presents the bread box. The celebrant places the hosts he wishes to consecrate upon a white linen cloth called a “corporal.” Then the acolyte brings cruets of water and wine to the Altar. The celebrant first pours wine into the chalice and then the acolyte holds up the cruet of water for a blessing. After the blessing the priest pours a little bit into the chalice of wine. That reminds us of the water and blood that flowed from our Lord’s side at Calvary. From the beginning the Church has taken the mixing of the chalice at the offertory as signifying the human and the divine natures of our Lord Jesus Christ – the wine signifying the divine nature and the water signifying the human nature of our Lord. All Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Anglo Catholic Churches require a mixed chalice of water and wine at the celebration of any eucharist — it is not optional. Everything that matters depends on this: Jesus Christ is God and this God became a real human being. He has always been God and he always will be God but has not always been a human being. He became a human being at a specific time in a specific place just like all of us: he had a Mother. He received his humanity, body and all, from Mary. He is of Mary’s flesh. As sure as you are the flesh of your mother, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became the flesh his Mother, thus the Church’s august title for Mary is Theotokos: “Mother of God.” Furthermore God’s human flesh, his human nature, is now part and parcel of God’s interior life and it always will be. He will never cease to be a human being. In Genesis we have the narrative of man made in the image of God while in life of Jesus Christ we have the narrative of God made in the image of man. In the story of God’s life made flesh we see not only the uncreated glory of the only begotten Son, but we also see the created glory of his creature man uplifted as God had always intended. What we think is a dappled worm meant to slug its life through dirt, God means to be dazzling white butterfly fit to light upon heavenly things. Glory be to God! Praise him who fathers-forth, “praise him “whose beauty is past change.” Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.