Dear St. Rita Parishioners,
Revealing. A great and multi-faceted word! Along with its other verbal forms, it is used to indicate anything from the sex of a baby still in utero, to the level of covering (or lack thereof) that a dress offers, to the big finale or ending of a book or play, to showcasing a final product, to an interior realization, and of course, to the entrusting of God’s very self to His people.
Every word and action of every person at all times is somehow revealing. Each one points to some inner reality that springs from the heart. For this reason, people are often guarded around others – does the person in front of me merit the revelation of this aspect of my inner life? Part of the drama of life is guided by the boundaries (or again, lack thereof) we place between ourselves and others.
Someone without proper interpersonal boundaries often finds himself a victim of unscrupulous people, and someone who has too many boundaries becomes isolated. Someone with the right boundaries directed towards the wrong people ends up pushing away those who can guide him and help him.
With God, however, the whole subject gets turned on its head. God is the one who lavishly sows His seed, with some falling on the path, on rocky ground, thorny ground, and good soil (Mk 4:1-9). The seed is the Word (Mk 1:14), which is precisely the means by which God reveals Himself, and which is one of the means by which we also reveal ourselves to others. God speaks His Word (which became Flesh!) in order to reveal Himself to us! And He does so in a way that ensures that all will hear.
His method is, it seems, quite imprudent – at least from our human standpoint. None of us would reveal so extravagantly the depths of ourselves to a populace so unable to receive us. “And His own received Him not” (Jn 1:11). And the folly of the Cross – to be so exposed, in all human weakness, and in that exposure to be reviled and ridiculed. No one would ever knowingly put themselves in such a situation.
Unless.
Unless God’s Revelation of Himself isn’t about Himself. Unless God’s outreach to humanity isn’t for self-aggrandizing purposes. Unless God’s Word is spoken precisely for you and for me.
Only then can God allow Himself to be the Victim of us, unscrupulous people. And likewise He can find Himself isolated from us (abandoned by us, really) not because He has too many boundaries, but because we “preferred darkness to light” (Jn 3:19). He even loses some people who were faithful to Him, because growing in intimacy with God requires something of us – there is a boundary there, that must be overcome by our desire for Him above other things (e.g. the rich, young man of Mk 10:17-31).
In reality, then, it is not God who has faulty boundaries with us, but we who can have faulty boundaries with God. To say to Him, “I will give you this much, but no more!”, or to ignore Him when He knocks, is to isolate ourselves from the God who allowed Himself to be killed by us – in order to save us! This God alone will not violate our freedom or cause damage to our interior selves. This God alone seeks to fulfill the deepest longings and desires of our hearts. And this God alone has the ability to do it!
The Revelation of God, then – His Word Made Flesh – knows exactly how and what and when to reveal. He tells us about Himself as a Son in His Mother’s Womb; He reveals the fullness of God’s Love for us as He hung there dying, naked on the Cross; He even tells us the big finale, the ending (‘Apocalypse’ just means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing); He showcases for us the “Big Reveal” – the Resurrection; and when we experience His Love after trusting His words, we begin to realize interiorly what this whole thing (our existence) is all about. He has made us His friends, “because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:15).
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen