Heaven & Earth

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012, a photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

Sometimes, life on planet earth just seems too hard to take anymore. I usually feel this way when I find that yet-another-bug-in-the-kitchen I have to dispatch, and suddenly I'm struck by what a messy place we live in. If one were a 'nice person', one would think it was possible to get through this life without coming up against the anger, the dissolution, the people who don't like you, and the people you don't understand. But, in fact, I think we could all agree that Jesus was a 'nice person' (in the most authentic sense of the phrase), and there's probably no figure in world history that has been the object of more resentment, hatred, and misunderstandings than Jesus of Nazareth.

This morning I came across this beautiful high-definition picture of the Earth that comes from NASA. From this angle, the earth is a perfect sphere, a beautiful harmony of life and colour. But from our angle, it can also be just a bug-infested mess where we're all progressively tearing each other apart. Why do we do this?

My mother recently passed along this excerpt from St. Paul to me...in fact I received it on the same day we were celebrating the feast of his conversion:

"For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another."

- Galatians 5:13-15

Paul's words here reminded me of somethingI had recently heard from Pauline scholar Fr. Jerome Murphy O'Connor: that for St. Paul, a Eucharist shared between members who did not love or know each other, was not a true, valid Eucharist. For the body of Christ to truly be the body of Christ, our 'Amen' must be twofold: we must believe we are really receiving the true Body of Our Lord, but, as St. Augustine said, we must also believe that we are becoming the true Body of Christ. For St. Paul, there is no other way to do that than by fraternal charity and cohesion.

Perhaps it's just the extreme reaction of a zealou man---filled with all the zeal of a convert---who spent his life battling against the divisions he was surrounded by. What would he think of Christians today?

And what about the world beyond Christianity---the divisions that plague us, amidst our families, communities and nations? Authentic unity doesn't simply arise from a desire for cohesion. In fact, the desire for a quiet life, for the appearance of cohesion, can often lead to the repressed turbulence that will sooner or later break forth in thunder.

We are troubled and afraid that love will make us 'slaves'; but in the same verse as St. Paul instructs us to become 'slaves to one another through love,' he also warns us 'not to be consumed by one another.' The key phrase is through love. We are not being told to be slaves to one another. Love, in Biblical and figurative terms, is often spoken of as 'a divine fire'; a fire that consumes but does not burn. We are not being asked to allow ourselves to be consumed by other people, but by the fire of divine love. This is an instruction towards prayerfulness and authentic holiness in our approach to others. Selflessness here is, perhaps, more a desire for the wellbeing of the other, than an abandonment of the self.

In the Our Father, we pray for God's kingdom to come: that is, for His will be to done, 'on earth as it is in heaven.' Looking again at the picture of the earth above, we might wonder whether that blue and green sphere would look much different from the great distance of space if it was a picture of an earth upon which the Kingdom of God was already fulfilled. It's my opinion that it's not the earth that would look different---but we ourselves.

Yes, we are co-heirs with Christ, we have received a royal appointment in this Kingdom. But the God who hands to us this dignity does not simply want co-heirs, He wants co-workers. The Kingdom of God first arrived in the person of Christ; but it cannot be fulfilled until we all live as a perosnal Christ to one another. That is,until the Eucharist is truly accomplished in each one of us, and we can say, 'it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.'