“As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother?” Romans 14:1-12
The life story of Jesus the Messiah enfolds the life story of single human being who has ever existed or every will exist and that inclusion in Jesus’ life story bestows ultimate meaning upon each person, as well as bestowing ultimate meaning to whole of humanity. Like it or not it is completely impossible to disentangle one’s life story from the life story of Jesus Christ. It’s a done deal. Each person who has every lived or ever will live plays a part, as in a role or a character, in Jesus’ story and it is a wonder, is it not, that no two characters are ever repeated? I realize that may sound like the weakest kind of Hallmark affirmation, but it is our reality none-the-less. When it comes to the creation of human beings it seems God the Father has imposed no limitations upon his imagination; not only does the total number of human beings compare to the sand of the sea or the stars of the heavens, but unlike anything else in creation, each one of us is an unrepeatable mystery. We spend much of our waking life aware not only of other persons, things, and ideas but we are also aware of the fact that we are aware of other persons, things, and ideas — an activity that no other creature (other than creatures of intelligence like angels) even have the capacity to participate in. And in addition to that we are aware that other persons we are aware of are themselves mysterious centers of consciousness who are aware of us. There will never be another you; nor will there ever be another him, or another her. Furthermore, we persons have some kind of power that enables us, in many cases, to act at least to some degree without the constraint of necessity. In light of that I feel a deep sense of personal responsibility for what I do with my life and I am not the only one who has that feeling. With the exception of someone who has a serious psychiatric disorder, most people universally know this sense of personal responsibility. This is the way we are in the world. This is the way God has made us. And so it is in realizing that one’s life story has a role to play in Jesus’ life story, a role that only you can play, and a role that amounts to one’s participation in ultimate reality – in light of that reality one should realize that one can work against reality or one can work with reality which is another way of saying that we human beings are empowered to transform our life stories, to turn life into art. We are responsible to transform our biographies into autobiographies. This is the way I take responsibility for my life, by turning life into art.
E. M. Forester who wrote Passage to India, A Room with a View, and Howard’s End was also an excellent critic and a first rate theorist who thought a lot about the nature of the narrative. A story is a narrative with a time sequence that makes the reader want to know what happens next, which is a straightforward description of how a story works. But one thing happening after another is not a story, and so the writer has to introduce value to the narrative and he accomplishes that by developing characters. Forester said that characters in a story are not real people, but well drawn characters are like real people. But real people, like us, spend their days in humdrum activities that would destroy a narrative. But a well crafted character in a story seems more real than the real people around us. Why? Because the skilled novelist reveals mystery — the hidden, interior life of the character and that is something we do not experience in real life with the real people around us. We make guesses and draw conclusions based on pieces of observable data, but we have no access to one another’s interior life. Thus in real life we never completely understand one another and the mystery remains veiled unless we are taken into someone confidence, and even that is never complete and our knowledge of the other person’s interiority is not first hand, but based on an authority – the prime authority of the other person’s interior life is the other person and of course God. I have spoken before of the poignant truth that we are as a matter of sacramental fact “every one members one of another” and yet none of us can enter into the other person’s interior life no matter how much we love one another, no matter how much we wish to know one another, no matter how much we wish to be known — it is simply impossible to enter into one another’s interior life. This is how we are created; it is not a matter of the sin or the fall, it is a matter of being human, of being a living soul. But well written characters in novels can be understood completely if the writers choses — their interior life as well as their outward life in the body may be an open book similarly as my life is an open book to God. What is my point?
Our entry into Jesus’ story is a gift from God and my point is that realizing that my life has become part of Jesus’ narrative I come to realize that I can work against reality or I can work with reality which is another way of saying that we human being have been empowered to transform our life stories, to take responsibility for my life by turning my life into art. That very much involves not trespassing against one another and respecting the boundaries that God has put in place for human beings. Respecting boundaries and limitations is equivalent to respecting the other person as belonging to God, as the epistle for this Sunday indicates. That is part of turning my life into art, and yes it involves a growing and maturing grasp of seeing the world of men and things the way Jesus sees the world, of valuing what Jesus values, making his ultimate concern our ultimate concern, which includes behaving the way he wants us to behave. And all of that comes about, as I said last week, through ever deepening conversions, conversions that are made possible through our baptism into Christ and thus our regeneration all of which is pure gift.
This is how we are created, as mysterious, fleshy centers of consciousness; it is not a matter of the sin or the fall, it is a matter of being human, of being a living soul. What is a matter of the sin and sickness is what we have lost: That there was a time when there was no loneliness in the world. Once there was a time when man’s interior life was filled with sweet communion between him and his Creator, because what is impossible for man is possible with God. But now all that remains is God’s omniscient presence, which is the theologian’s way to say that God is everywhere and knows everything. So yes, God is in my soul by definition, albeit the knowledge of God’s presence without Christ is the experience of ultimate judgment not the experience of mercy and peace. But in the beginning there was no loneliness. In the beginning God and man shared a communion of love in which man was known and cherished inside and out by his Creator and man was aware of that. But our communion of love with our Creator was lost in the fall and man now experiences himself as thrown and alone in the world. This loneliness still lingers in us till we come realize to that we are not thrown, but rather we given existence as pure give and furthermore we are participating of God’s autobiography. This is reality, but if we don’t know it is reality or if we are forgetful of reality we can understand then why it seems that some characters in novels and short stories are more real than the real people around us, in our families, in our parish, and our community.
In todays epistle St Paul says this:
“Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.” Romans XV
And the passage from Romans 14 today Paul builds upon the imperative to receive one another:
“None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
What I want to suggest to you is that rather than fleeing this experience of loneliness through distractions or denial or phony intimacy it is better to face reality and that means facing three truths at once: first, we may learn, every one of us, how to receive one another as Christ has received us, and secondly, we may learn how to respect the reality that we are persons with impenetrable interior lives, each person is a mysterious, enfleshed center of consciousness and thirdly, we are also every one of us really and truly members one of another. We will never grow windows so that we can see into one another’s souls, but we can respect the limits that God has created for our life together and live according to those limits. We can cherish the fact that we have an interior life of potential sweet communion that each person may share with God almighty in prayer and the sacrament of the altar. We can learn to truly esteem one another. Furthermore, as I pointed out a few weeks back, we are an outward and visible sign of grace to the whole wide world. In the incarnation God became the image of man and he united our nature to the divine nature so that we are now the visible image of God who is God who has become a man. So now quite literally we are outwardly and inwardly signs signifying God. We are the image of God, inwardly, our interior life of conscious intentionality that enables us to understand and to act responsibly and outwardly, in our bodies, we are the image of God incarnate, the Messiah, the King of Kings. God has equipped us to love and foster his creation, and that includes one another, to its full potential and thus to achieve our full potential as we act on our image. And by understanding what Paul is saying about your soul and God, and about the Church, we can know that by behaving the way Paul says we should behave in the Church, in our families, and in our communities we may distinguish the experience of solitude (which is a faculty of our creation as persons) from the experience of isolation which is a distortion of creation.
“None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”