In today’s Gospel Story (Matthew 15:21-28) Jesus, using nasty remarks, initially refuses to help a woman whose daughter is possessed by a demon. After she keeps asking, he relents and does what she asks, saying, “”O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” We are surprised to see Jesus treat the woman as he did, and we feel good when he does what she asks. The majority opinion sees this pretty much as a miracle story, while people are surprised at how it played out. As usual, the minority is as personal as I let it.
In 1992 while I was stationed at Fort Knox having been recalled to active duty, an adventure in itself, at the beginning of Holy Week another chaplain gave me a small book about Joseph Campbell, the foremost scholar on myth. Reading it led to the most spiritually intense Holy Week I have ever experienced. Myth does not mean falsehood, fairytales, or anything even close. Myth contains truth. It is the story how things never were but always are, issues that all of us deal with on our journey. All cultures have similar myths of the journey. Each us us, from time to time, leaves where we are safe and comfortable, and goes on a journey where we face hardships, make significant choices, and return changed. CS Lewis: “Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened…”.
This story can be most encouraging to us as we on our journey. It suggests that, like each of us, Jesus, a man like us in all things but sin, was on a journey of finding out who he was and what was his role in life. Also like us, a person entered his life and moved him to take another significant step on his journey. In one of the Sunday liturgies we pray, “God, who powerfully yet gently guides all the moments of our day”. I would say, powerfully yes, but gently, not always. Probably most of us would agree. We believe that Jesus is the image of his Abba, and shows us everything that can be known of Abba from the human perspective. From the beginning of his life among us he was looking to learn more about who he was and what he was called to do. In his youth he left his parents and stayed in the temple. He spent a lot of time and energy in prayer with his Abba. At the end he was crucified and then raised. He shows us how to live our own journey, and invites us to spend time with Abba ourselves.
Our constant questions are along the lines of “who am ?”, ”where did I come from?”, “why am I here?”, “where am I going?”. At different times of our life things happen, not always nice things, that move us to change what we are used to, often significant, even life changing choices. While they are happening we usually do not understand their importance or significance, but later, as we look back at them, we often see their importance to us on our journey. More often than not, they have something to do with the people in our life at the time. As I look back on my life, some the big ones were suddenly and unexpected going into the active duty Army, combat, injuries, medical issues, nasty stuff. Then there was the night Abba sent my dog to stop me from eating my pistol. Looking back, it was clear that there was a pattern of some sort that was coming from Someone else. A very powerful event was my HAC (heart attack in the car) in our parking lot: “so this is how it ends”, and the powerful response, “no, this is how it begins”. My life changed at that moment in ways that I am still coming to recognize. It seems that from time to time we have to experience what is perceived to be failure, a situation we can’t control, and is very dire, even painful and humbling. While it is going on it hurts, but in retrospect we recognize it as grace, Abba urging us to move in a different direction.
On our life journey we are confronted with situations where we are “forced” to make some choices. Each choice confirms the direction we want to go. We come to recognize some things that help; us: what we call actual grace, the sacrament of the present moment, which we come to know is very real. Then we come to the experience of “we got this” as we also come to recognize our relationship with Abba as something very real and often beyond words, a partnership. At times we come to know beyond any doubt that in no way are we ever alone. We also might come to the sense, or experience, of Jesus walking with us, teaching us what he learned on his journey. Many of our dogmas become not just things we have to believe, but descriptions of our own experience which we do not have the words to describe, and the dogmas are the closest we can come.
Jesus came to know who he was through the time he spent alone with his Abba, which suggests our own time in prayer wth Abba is important for us on our journey. With Abba we learn the importance of the other people in our life at any given time, and gradually, humbly, we come to be aware of our importance to them. Each of us as we are is an expression, or word, or Abba. That we are in each others’ life is no accident. I’m writing this on Saturday, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, as she moves to the next step on her journey into the fullness of life. This is the same journey we will make when our time comes. As I experienced in the HAC that morning, our next step is not to a place, but into a oneness, a fulness of being that, while we can experience it, we cannot put into words, so dogmas such as Assumption, Resurrection, connote profound truths that we know but can’t say. Ignatius teaches us to find God in everything. Where I live we seem to be coming aware of all this in a most practical sense as we learn, not without difficulty, to listen to each other, share parts of our own journey, and recognize our similarities. At our happy hour yesterday this is what happened, thanks to our amazing and energetic hostess. We talked, we shared, we listened. As we watch Jesus respond to the “annoying” mother, we might ask who are the “annoying” persons in our life, so we can respond to them as Jesus did. In the most disturbing parts of our life we are continually invited to be aware, and to make a choice. “We got this.” Just sayin . . .