Can We Be Humble?

 

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you will have no life in you (Jn 6:52)

At this many left, but Jesus said to the twelve: will you also go away? (Jn 6:66)

When the boss does stupid things; when the car in front of us cuts us off; when our spouse says they don’t love us anymore; these are times when it is hard to love them anyway --- as He does us.  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12).

During the consecration at mass this morning, the priest in Persona Christi elevated the large host and said This is my Body (Lk 22:19) --- and at that moment, the woman sitting across the aisle from me stood up, turned her back to Jesus, and walked away.

We want to understand everything, and think we do.  We want to be in control.  Perhaps it was just me wanting to be in control, but after mass I asked a woman who was staying to pray the rosary with a group to please add to their prayer intentions “those who turn their back on Him.”

I’ve written how I was called by God to go to Yugoslavia in 1987, a totally irrational thing, yet I was compelled to do it.  And God rewarded me.  That event opened my heart to what trust means, and gradually then to what love means.  It means letting go of self, my ways, my thoughts, and my control.  The Surrender Novena, The Prayer for Humility, and the words “Jesus, I trust in You” are hard prayers to not just “say”, but really “pray” from our hearts talking to Jesus, the God of all creation, to tell Him sincerely those things, and to mean them commitedly, even when --- and especially when --- it is hard.  When it is hard to accept; when it is hard to believe; when it is hard to love that much, those are the times for faith, trust.  That is when we be, who He died for us to be.

When He said “you must eat my body,” many said this is hard and left him.  The Jewish leaders said if you are the Messiah, work miracles for us, and later “come down from that cross and we will believe.”  Oh, I can imagine how they’d believe.  They’d put him in a cage and take him to the temple to do tricks for them, like an animal.  And they’d be as Gods --- only not humble ones, not at all.

They’re no different from many in our country today.  Nothing matters as much as they control everything and everyone.  We saw previews in Nazism and communism, and now the “self” view has spread here.  A man I greatly admire asked: What is the opposite of love, as Jesus said: Love as I have loved:  He said it is not hate, because Love, as Jesus asked us to do, is a total giving of self.  The opposite of that is a total taking for self, narcissism.  It is total love of others or total love of self.  Things have to go the way we want them, or we walk away.  And as that person at mass today, we turn our backs to God.

But the story doesn’t end there, thankfully.  Like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father waits for us to return.  He waits in Love because He is not a God who works wonders to glorify Himself; He is a God who is totally loving.  And if we could just believe Him, even when things seem hard; if we could just love as He showed us how to love, He is waiting for us at the gates of heaven, the doors He opened for us to enter the heavenly banquet.  We just need to don the wedding garments, which make us look like we belong there, and enter.  We don those garments when we do as He said and “love others as I have loved you. “   

Review: Return of the Prodigal Son

 

The beginning of this book tells how the author, Henri Nouwen, first saw Rembrandt’s painting of the Prodigal Son and his return home.  “It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.”  He bought a copy, and it impacted him for his remaining years.
The book is divided into three sections, The Younger Son, The Elder Son, and The Father.  Nouwen promptly begins relating the painting and Jesus’ parable to his own life, and to God the Father.  And ultimately, to his own earthly father.  His story becomes very personal at times, and he perceives many new insights.to the parable, his own life, and to Rembrandt’s life, who was old when he painted his perception of the parable told by Jesus.  
When Nouwen begins on the elder son’s story, his analysis becomes intense. “Unlike fairy tales, the parable provides no happy ending.  Instead, it leaves us face to face with one of life’s hardest spiritual choices: to trust or not to trust in God’s all-forgiving love.”   Nouwen tells how the painting (and God) inspired him “to claim my own God-given sonship.  For the first time in my life, I told my father explicitly that I loved him and was so grateful for his love for me.  I said many things I had never said before.”  (On a personal note, I could have written those words.)
Over years, Nouwen perceived many insights from Rembrandt’s painting, like how Jesus could be seen as a prodigal son, leaving His Father’s house which contained the utmost love, to come to live with us, in this pigsty.  He then goes back to the Father Who was waiting with open arms, and opening the door for us, prodigal sons as we are, to follow Him.  Nouwen also concludes that Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son and Rembrandt’s painting leave open a “what’s next?” question.  Nouwen gradually perceives that a key point of the parable is the unsaid assumption that now both sons will grow up in the father’s house, to become fathers themselves, just like we are called to come home to the Church and grow to become like the Father in heaven.
This is a magnificent book to slowly read and pray on in the Adoration Chapel, while having a sincere discussion with God about our lives.  Most especially, I believe, this book will impact the hearts of elderly people, like me.
I have many underlines and margin comments I wrote in the second half of the book.  I will treasure it always.