"How Long?"

He cries out from His prison cell, "How much longer?!" And which prison is this? It is the narrow darkness He has chosen for our sakes: the confines of our human nature. At His Conception, He laid His life down for His friends .... freely, willingly, and in a profound statement love, setting aside the cosmic expansiveness of His unbounded Divinity (Jn 17:5).

Have you visited the Holy Land? Have you been brought to Caiphas' courtyard and lowered down into the deep, unlighted pit (posted with this reflection) where Jesus lay bleeding, exposed, and alone? I have had the privilege of kissing the ground and walls of this stone hole bored deeply into the ground near Caiphas' residence. And while I was on my knees, I understood its revelation: here, at the point of His death, Jesus' state of life is revealed to us as an icon. For the outline of the human person, to the lineaments of God, is a dungeon.

In His human nature He cries out. Have you heard His cries? Have you met the man encased in stone? Many claim they have not seen Him. They have not seen the man of flint Cherishing the meek and mild Jesus, identifying with the Prince of Peace, knowing His unconditional love and mercy, we have filtered out the Jesus of flint. We cannot perceive Him.

Nonetheless, He is there, abundantly attested in the Gospels. Last week, we stood in the midst of a raucous scene at the Temple with an enraged Jesus at the center. St. John slows down the action of his narrative to detail Him making a whip of individual cords and then lashing and beating men who desecrated what should have been sacred space.

Last week we reflected on the greater passion of Jesus. And this week that same Jesus, bearing His inflexible yoke — "My yoke," He calls it (Mt 11:29) — He cries out! Jesus cries out!

Is this an isolated moment? Is this uncharacteristic? No. We have heard Jesus' flinty rebuke many times.

Have you not seen this visage? "Jesus Pantrocrator" is the oldest icon of Jesus (currently preserved at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, in Egypt) and, during the 600s, the most common image. The early Church did not fail to notice the flinty Jesus. It is, therefore, the most faithful depiction of Jesus that we possess. Gaze into this holy image, and see the face of blessing on His right side but the face of flint on the left.

We hear His rebuke many times in the Gospels:

To the Twelve after feeding the 5,000: "Do you still not understand?! After all I have shown you, do you still not get it?!" (Mt 15:16)

To would-be followers who "play church" but have not begun the process of conversion, "Get out of my sight! I tell you I never knew you!" (Mt 7:21-23).

To Peter, after being singled out for his faithfulness — "You are Peter." (Mt 16:16): — "Get behind me, Satan! You are not a steady rock, but a stumbling block!" (Mt 16:23)

To the same Peter who walked on water: "Have you no faith?"

Describing the fate of those who fail to receive the Apostles: "I tell you it will be more tolerable at the judgment for the Sodom and Gomorrah than for that entire city!"

There is much more. But I believe I have made my point. We have established a Gospel principle here. And it is this: yes, Jesus is perfect in His mercy, and He is perfect in His justice.

Who among us does not know parent love, either receiving it or bestowing it? The parent longs to bless at all times but cannot bless everything the child does or says. As with the Prodigal's father waiting at a roadside, blessing sometimes must wait. But rebuke, that more difficult office of love, is also required:

The whip. The cords.

It cannot always be, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Mt 25:21,23).

And perhaps no irony is more terrible than receiving the gift of sovereign freedom and in that freedom rejecting the God Who bestowed it.

Said St. John the Forerunner, of whom no prophet was greater,

The meek and mild Jesus?

There is the other dimension of justice, you see, which is safety for all. One of the Hermitage Sisters was an administrator over an imposing ministry having two large campuses. She would grieve when she had to exercise those offices of judgment. And I told her, "Do you not know how grateful we all are that this is a safe place? My brothers and sisters of the Church, monks, nuns, deacons, priests, bishops, have you worked amongst bad people, amidst corruption, amidst perversion, that is never addressed? Unconsoled victims fan out in every direction! It is a living hell. This is not why I set aside my life in the world to serve the Lord. And, no, my principal vocation as a priest is not to "have the back" of my other brother priests (as I think of my past communions). No, that is not why God called me away from Bell Labs Research and MIT to submit myself to the yoke of the sacred priesthood.

The other dimension of justice: safety and sanctification .... for all people. He is holy. He cannot permit the tares to take over the garden (Mt 13:24-43). He cannot permit the bad fish to take over the sea (Mt 13:47-50). And the chaff cannot imprison the tender wheat forever (Mt 3:12).

We must remember that when the Baptist says, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" he is saying, "See! The Pure One!" And purity, as the man of Eden well knows, cannot abide filth. And which thing is filthier than unfaithfulness? Which suffering is harder to bear than the gift of love betrayed? Nonetheless, we humans betray God and take it all in stride .... because Jesus is merciful.

Fifteen years ago, I stood in an airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti wearing Roman clericals. A man came over to ask certain questions. At one point in the conversation, He told, "Father, I am reassured because Jesus was going to sweep everyone into Heaven as a magnificent display of His mercy."

I paused to take this in, but finally asked, "Then, where are the tough neighborhoods in Heaven?"

He chuckled nervously and said, "Father! There aren't any dangerous neighborhoods in Heaven! Everyone in Heaven is good!"

"But you just told me that Jesus will sweep everyone into Heaven, both the good and the bad. How is it possible that everyone in Heaven is good?"

"But Father!" he said again in disbelief. "Jesus will make everyone good."

"How can this be?" I replied. "If Jesus makes everyone good, then how could this be Heaven? What you are proposing sounds more like a stage filled with puppets .... or a great room with programmed robots. Now that would be tiresome! Or, worse, maybe Heaven is a police state where everyone has to be good, living in constant terror. This does not sound like Heaven. Heaven must include freedom and creativity if it is to reflect God's nature. There is no beauty ultimately in puppets or robots, much less police states."

We parted, and I said, "God has given us the inviolable gift of freedom. Our freedom is sovereign. It cannot be abridged, not even by God, Who cannot forswear Himself. No one can rule us, finally apart from ourselves. It is we ourselves who must decide whether or not we are Heavenly and whether or not, therefore, we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the paradox of our faith: everyone is pre-ordained to Kingdom of Heaven, yet there will be few who will enter" (Mt 22:14, Lu 13:24, Mt 7:14).

Or let us recall the words of Jesus as He actually meets with those who expect to be swept into Heaven.

"Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your Name, cast out demons in Your Name, and done many wonders in Your Name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me'" (Mt 7:21-23).

Yes, here is the man of flint. And what has exercised Him to the point of dismissing these men who profess sincere love, banishing them, of course, to Hell?

What stands out in this brief and painful exchange is the phrase, "in Your Name." Or, as we would say today, perhaps trying to enter an exclusive venue, "I'm with Him."

Let us cast this in modern terms and ask, did these men believe? Oh, yes. Manifestly, they believe. Their entire lives are caught up in the "Jesus thing," prophesying, casting out demons, preaching the good news.

We Catholics might ask, did they go to Church on Sundays participating in the Divine Liturgy, receiving the sacraments? I know many people who profess belief in Jesus who receive the sacraments weekly, but they have not begun the long journey of Christian conversion. As today is the Sunday of the Ladder, we might say ask, "Have they set a single foot even on the first rung of the ladder?" They have not followed the Lord and His angels in their ascent to Heaven, modeled for them on the first day the Disciples were called ("You shall see Heaven open!"). And this is our conclusion concerning the ones whom Jesus has dismissed.

In practical terms, they have not begun conversion of life, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. They love preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. They love demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit. But they are not in it. As we have noticed in the past, Dietrich Von Hildebrand's wife Alice said there is all the difference in the world between loving the idea of conversion and being converted. You know the man who has icons all over his house. And he has all the right books. And he loves to quote the Fathers. But he is not in it. How sad!

You see, these man have accepted the short-cut. All they need say is "in Jesus Name." Or as we claim, "He did my work on the Cross!" Or to assign His self-sacrifice as being ours. He "gave at the office. No, I have nothing to give you, therefore."

Now, let us be clear. The Passion and Death of Jesus on the Cross enshrines for all time the essence of His self-sacrifice. It is the icon of His laying down His life for His friends, the climax of His lifelong internment in a prison-house, where He only practice servitude, where He was stifled, nearly suffocated, and bound in irons.

What is this self-sacrifice which defines every aspect of Jesus' life? It is the secret passage out. For we were lost, and He was sent to rescue us and shows the secret passage out, which is self-sacrifice. A lifetime of self-sacrifice is the way out of this tawdry and dark world.

The early Church Fathers wrote that man was lost. In this darkness, he did not even know who he was. He did not know to Whom he belonged. He did not know where he was going, much less the way out. Origen wrote that the Emperor's Image stamped upon the common coin of humanity, once clear and brilliant, had dulled down to a faceless slug. Who could say what the Emperor looked like, much less live into His Image?

Athanasius the Great wrote that the portrait of humanity had become defaced. We no longer knew what the human person was supposed to be. But how could it be restored? Who remains to sit for the portrait? So the Father sent His Son. He would be the model, once and for all. He would sit for the portrait of humankind. The coin would be re-minted. The Emperor's Image would be restored .... and venerated and imitated.

When St. Paul echoes St. John the Forerunner or the Lord Himself is exhorting us to "Be transformed!" .... he is really enjoining us to go back, to be re-formed, to return to our original nature and image, which is God's. This was the vocation of the man of Eden, John the Baptist. St. Paul prefers the verb renew:

We must discard our whole lives. The "old man" must die, St. Paul wrote. And we must be set apart from the world, judging the world and worldliness rightly seeing with new eyes and hearing with new ears:

We cannot accomplish this by ourselves, of course. Yet God cannot accomplish it without us. In one sense, all is done by God, yet we must enter this process of re-formation freely. We must cooperate in the renewal our inner lives. Works of righteousness alone will not avail.

As St. Paul writes to Titus,

Works of righteousness are necessary but not sufficient to achieve the all-important goal. The ladder is there. We must climb it. These are the works of righteousness. The goal is One-ness with God. We use the word atonement or at-one-ment. And what atones in the end? We must become Heavenly. We must become good. We must climb the ladder. For not even Jesus can make us good. Nor can He place us at the top of the ladder.

We live in the grand and open spaces of our splendid freedom. How wonderful! Our freedom is truly the sublime. In this, it bears the marks of God. For God alone is both earthquake and the setting of suns. He alone is the volcano and the stirring of spring in late winter. And our freedom, our almighty freedom, can make a of Hell of Heaven or a Heaven of Hell (as Milton suggested in Paradise Lost).

In God's sublime wisdom, He has placed the Kingdom of Heaven into our hands. And He has hidden its splendid gates deep within our inner lives. He teaches us what we must do. He shows us the way. What more can He do to love us .... and what else can He say at the hands of our betrayal than to cry out,

And to be faithful? How do we begin this journey? On this day, let us meditate on the Ladder of St. John Climacus. For the way to Heaven is not shrouded in mists. It is not hidden from us in a mystery. It is a ladder set down into a deep, stone pit lowered by angels. The only impediment is ourselves. It is we who must set our foot on the first rung .... and then the next, and then the next, leaving the old man behind. It is we who must decide who will go to Heaven, one by one, each of us, by ourselves.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.