Undivided
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June 10, 2018“And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” (Mk 3:25)
Jesus’ opponents blaspheme by accusing him of the most egregious division within himself: that he presents himself as God’s anointed, but is in fact in league with Satan. But it is our houses that are divided, that is, our hearts, our minds, our lives, our selves.
“Every cave in the land is a place where violence makes its home.” (Ps 74:20)
Created simple by the God of simplicity, we have become complicated, divided, at war within ourselves, and so also without. St Paul puts it this way:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rm 7:15, 19)
Simplicity, or wholeness, is that characteristic of our human nature which reflects God’s simplicity. This means that we are made to have one love, one desire, one will and the capacity to act in accord with this will. And since we are made for this, we long for it and groan in the consciousness of its absence:
“I am praying again, Awesome One.
You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.
I've been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.
In alleyway I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.
...
It's here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself gain.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart--
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God -- spend them however you want.”
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, Trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, II, 2)
We will be one, one day. This is the hope extended to us by Jesus in his prayer to the Father: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Jn 17:22)
Image: Rose Window at St Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, reconstructed from fragments after a fire at the former abbey church.
