The Tree House in the Moonlight, or: The Wealth Only God C an Give

                 

             Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God…Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know from where it comes or to where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

- John. 3:5,7

            Then turning to His disciples He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

-Luke. 10:23-24

            The tree house is way up on a hill in the woods behind my family’s home. Built high up the trunk of an old and mighty oak over twenty years ago, the tree house though unfinished still stands tall and proud today. Its open view of the fields and meadow beyond the edge of the forest below remains as majestic and magnificent as ever.

            To get to the tree house my sons and I built a switchback trail up the hill. Tim was in the fourth grade at the time. Pat was in 7^th. The tree house is not at all that far into the woods, requiring perhaps a little more than a hundred steps to reach it. It is a climb that even now in my twilight years I can handle, and more than my family knows I will often climb the path to that awesome house in the tree. I do so because the house is holy site to me. It is a place where the Lord taught me ever so clearly and powerfully what a blessed man I am – blessed with the wealth that only God can give.

            I remember so well the night of Grace when I received that teaching. It happened sixteen years ago. Tim was nine by then. Pat was 12. It was July 31^st, the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It was a most beautiful summer night. The moon was full, and there wasn’t a cloud in the starlit sky. There was a soft and cool summer breeze blowing steadily through the trees in the forest. The wind was moist and refreshing, coming from the south and east, therefore blowing inland with ocean air from the Atlantic only an hour away.

            It was later in the evening, around 10:00 PM, when through open windows I could hear the sound of the summer winds blowing through the leaves of the forest trees. The sound was tantalizing, alluring, exciting, even enchanting. I went out to our back deck where I could clearly look up the hill into the forest, directly toward the house in the midst of the trees moving in the winds.

           

            It was then that I first noticed the awesome sight that added to the refreshing breeze rustling through the leaves. As the leaves swayed in the wind they literally sparkled in the moonlight. The forest seemed alive with bright little specks of spraying light – reflected moonlight that shined off the leaves, as with sounds like excited children, they seemed to sway and swing in the summer winds.

            I got a flashlight and headed out into the forest. I had to go up to the house in the trees. As I climbed I turned off the flashlight. The forest was so full of scintillating moonlight filtering down from the leaves that I did not need any light of my own.

            I prayed as I walked. The presence of God was so palpable. His Spirit and Love seemed to permeate the woods and the wind. I felt no fear in the darkness. The Lord was with me.

            I reached the tree house. Climbing the ladder, I lifted myself from the forest floor into the tree above. Soon I was sitting in the unfinished home high up the oak tree; and like that tree and all the trees around I was swaying in the currents of the wind.

            I sat in the solitary chair we had in the house. It was the only one we had taken the time to carry up there from our home below. It was a sturdy chair and comfortable – easy to rock in it too. It was also high enough that I could look out the wide openings in the wall frames, openings for spacious windows that would give awesome views toward scenery on every side.

            As the tree house was unfinished, with only the side frames up and no completed walls or roof sections, so the breezes blowing through the trees also moved easily through the house. Their speed as they brushed by me was unimpeded, and their refreshing coolness unabated in any way.

            I sat there and prayed in what seemed to be a mystical setting. I prayed my own original version of the Jesus prayer: “Jesus and Mary, I love you…” Over and over one says those words with deep and calming breathes – the names of “Jesus and Mary” invoked while in haling; “I love you…” on the exhale. Even as the Bible tells us, to invoke the Divine Name of Jesus is to summon His Presence. And already on this night I could say with the Apostle John, that I was experiencing His Risen Life present in power to my own life – “the Word of Life…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, was made manifest” to me. His Love was so alive in the winds, in the scintillating moonlight radiating off leaves swaying in the summer breeze, His Life so completely permeating His creation with nothing less than Real Presence.

            While I prayed I looked out beyond the forest from high in my perch toward the open meadow behind our home. At times I would gaze at the full moon, and the silver glow moving out from its center and filling the night sky. And with every breeze I gazed at the leaves moving in the wind, sparkling with reflected moonlight. At all times I felt God’s Presence, as if all creation this night was breathing with the Spirit of His Love.

            Now there was a rustling heard down below, a movement through the leaves on the path leading up the hill to the house in the trees. It was Tim, my nine year old fourth grader. Though after 11:00 PM, he was moving up the hill in the dark without a flashlight. Did he know that Dad was in the tree house? I think he did. But still he called up to me, “Dad, you up there?” and I assured him that I was.  

            Tim climbed up the ladder and entered the tree house frame. Then he laid down on the treated deck wood floor right beside me to my left. With arms arched back behind his head, he gazed up at the moon through the trees.

            We didn’t talk much. It was enough for him to be there with his Dad. It was enough for me too just to share the beauty and power of this night with my son – above all though to share the sense of the Spirit of God so alive in the light and wind. In fact, once Tim came I understand that something very important had been missing from the power of this night – the chance to share the Love and Joy which was anointing me. Is it ever enough for us to have Jesus only for ourselves? Or in the encounter of His Love, are we not driven irresistibly to share Him with others? I think of the excitement of the Apostles who upon meeting Jesus, rushed to share Him with friends and family.

            Now there was another sound of rumbling from down below, moving ever closer and closer up the path to the house in the trees. It was Patrick, my twelve year old seventh grader. Without a word he came all the way up the path in the dark, and joined Tim and I in our perch high up in the huge old oak.

            Following Tim’s lead, he also laid down to my right on the floor boards beside me. Then he too focused on the trees branches above, moving in rhythm with the breezes of summer. In silence now all three of us watched with awe as the leaves sparkled with reflected moonlight, as they swayed and vibrated in the currents of the wind.

            So there we were. Now past midnight, then past 1:00 AM… We were drawn into the enchantment of a night forest all aglow with scintillating moonlight, so alive with wind, Spirit, Presence. Hours went by like minutes. Like Peter before the transfigured Christ, we wanted to stay before this feast of Joy, Love, Peace; Spirit, Power, Freedom. Like Peter, we did not want to come down from our little mountain. We did not want this moment in time to end.

            After 2:00 AM my sons and I left the house in the trees and climbed back down the hill to our home below. His Joy was in us and our Joy was full – the Joy and Peace of the Love only God can give. That Love had touched us and filled us in a most extraordinary way this night. Yet for myself, there was more than that. I realized that a blinding Light of illumination had come over me this night, anointed me if you will. I was coming down from my own Mount of the Transfiguration with a new knowledge, a new wisdom. From this night on I knew for certain the Grace, Gift and Blessing which the Lord bestows upon the believer. I now had eyes to see what many prophets and kings wanted to see but could not. Really, I was made to know by the Spirit this night the magnitude of the wealth which filled my life, wealth which money can’t buy and only God can give.

            The wealth only God can give… There on the hill, in the house in the trees I had felt it, and not only in the Glory of His Love which filled the forest and which fills all of creation. I had felt it most of all in the love of my son to my left, in the love of my son to my right. I had felt that wealth at the thought of my wife’s love and the whole of my family’s love, my family safe, secure, asleep in our home below – and all of this love enhanced and energized by His Love Present in power to our love as well. Thus, I had felt the wealth of God most of all in the Church present to me.

            Up there high on the hill, in a house high up the old oak tree, I had felt a true foreshadowing of the communion of Saints sharing in the Triune Life of God. I had seen a glimpse, looked upon and touched something of the breadth, the length, the height and depth of that Love known only to those filled with all the fullness of God - known only to those filled with a Love which reaches out from a Sacred Heart pierced and broken for us, and a Love which then draws us to Himself.         

Easter Joy! "I Am Who Am" Ever Present To You

Easter Joy! “I Am Who Am” Ever Present to You

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

-John 3:16

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

- Philippians 2:5-8

            The Joy of the Easter Season continues; so also the Easter meditation on the Divine Love revealed to us in Jesus – a Love made visible with fullness and power on the Cross, a Love still with us in the Spirit of the Risen Christ, and a Love that awaits us in the Heaven to come where with ecstatic Joy we will experience that Love completely in God’s presence, unveiled in all its Glory.

            It is, as St. Paul says, a Love beyond all that we can ask or imagine possible, a Love beyond what we dare to dream real. When I read those awesome words from Philippians about Jesus emptying Himself of Divinity, I am truly amazed. In fact Paul tells us of a Love that is unimaginable, unfathomable – of a Love that is Grace and Mercy beyond belief.

            What was it like to surrender all that Heaven is – for Jesus to empty Himself of all that He knew as God in order to become flesh and dwell among us? I think first of the magnificent scene from “Lord of The Rings” when Arwen unveils the magnitude of her love for Aragorn. Under the silver light of a moonlit sky in Rivendell, she surrenders her immortality as an Elf out of love for Aragorn, someone from the world of mortal men. Her words, especially against the backdrop of that beautiful scene, are beyond inspiring. They graphically capture the magnificence of the love expressed in the Browning Poem, “How Do I Love Thee”, “let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and Divine Life.”

            So also is the love radiating from the words of Arwen when she gives up her immortality for Aragorn: “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone. I choose a mortal life. It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.” Amazing! Yet isn’t that what Jesus says to us through His Incarnation? Precisely!

            One might say, “Well, you have to keep in mind that Jesus knew He was God. He knew that He would rise again and return with us to the Father.” However that is true, it is still the case that Jesus as fully man and fully mortal, embraced the Cross and His own death as any and all men must face it – as events that terminate one’s earthly life. Somehow in a way no less than how you or I have to face death, Jesus embraced His Passion and Death as all mortals do. He truly risked having only one lifetime with humanity rather than enduring all of eternity without us. And with His humanity He offered His Life and ended His Life for a Dream: to save us and bring us back home to the Heart of God.

            Like it must be for all Christians, it was for Jesus as well. As He faced suffering and death, He like us had to believe and hope that the Spirit of the Father would raise Him back to Life. He like us had to embrace death believing that by the Power of God with Him and in Him, he would rise again and return to the Father. He had to believe as well that Risen and Glorified he could by the Power of the Spirit draw us also to Himself - bring us also with Him into that world beyond our world, and thus achieve His Dream of having us with Him forever.

            Such was and is the awesome love of Christ for us. And no one should water it down by somehow saying that Jesus was God and thus didn’t really go through His passion and Death as we do. The believer must not say that or believe that! It undermines the magnitude of Jesus incredible Love. It minimizes the  magnificence of the world seeing in the flesh a Love like only God can love.

            Does the “agony in the Garden” of Gethsemane not teach us anything? “And His sweat became as drops of blood falling to the ground…” Jesus, the “Word made flesh”, fully embraced mortality by becoming one of us. He faced the crucifixion and death to come exactly as all mortals do. Credit to Jesus then the same courage of love that we credit to the saints empowered by the Spirit and operating under the impulse of Grace. Jesus in His humanity was strengthened by the Father in the same way as we are strengthened by Him. “As the living Father has sent me, and as I live because of Him, so he who eats me shall live because of me.” (Jn. 6:57)

            Yes, Jesus has the Power to lay down His life, and the Power to take it up again, but this Power He received from His Father. (Jn. 10:17-18) And in a way that is exactly as all mortals must experience, Jesus had to believe that Power at work in Him would raise Him on the third day.

            How if Jesus was fully man could it not be for Him as it needs to be for us? Consider how it is for us and all humanity. In a way that is nothing less than real and transforming that same Spirit and Power is at work in us that was at work in Jesus. Under the impulse of that Spirit, the person of Faith is exalted to the heights of courage for truth, justice, and love. A Spirit and Love like only God can love takes hold of the human heart open to God. And like St. Paul we have to believe that same Spirit of the Father now at work in us can raise us from the dead even as it did Christ. “If the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised Jesus from the dead will give Life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit which dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)  

            Yet is it so difficult to believe that Jesus in His humanity had to undergo the same experience of Faith as Paul, Mary, the saints, and us? Let Jesus be fully human! Jesus in the fullness of His humanity also had to believe! He had to believe that the Life, Spirit and Power that He had drawn forth from the Father would raise Him as well.

            Failing to see this we detract so much from the courage of Christ’s Love, from a Love so much more than we can ask or imagine possible, from a Love like only God can love. Let the full stature and measure of His heroic Love touch us and reduce us to tears of Joy even as the heroic love of any man of courage.

            I am reminded of a story of such heroic love that occurred only a few years ago. During the full fury of Hurricane Sandy a policeman rescued a person from the surf on the coast of New Jersey. The person was being carried out to sea by the waves of a rip tide driven to rage by hundred mile an hour winds. The police officer went into the surf to save the person and he did.

            I’ll never forget the film of the news interview with the officer after the rescue. As he spoke he was literally trembling, as if shaken by a fear – an “agony” if you will – that shot right through him. He spoke of how he really thought he was going to die as he went into the raging surf. In fact, he was incredulous that he was still alive. As a Christian the policeman could believe in his resurrection to life upon death, but his only certitude of that reality was the certitude of Faith.

            Yet for Jesus also in the fullness of his humanity there was only the certitude of Faith. On Calvary Jesus went into the raging surf to save us, and in doing so fully embraced the reality of death, the end and termination of his earthly life. He embraced his “choice” at the moment of the Incarnation: “I would rather share one lifetime with my children, than face all the ages of eternity without them.” It was the Power of the Father that gave Jesus the fulfillment of His Dream: to raise Him and us from the dead, and to have us with Him in His Father’s house forever.                    

AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…

That you may know that Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you through His Spirit…

- Thoughts based on St. Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2:

Easter Joy! The Love That Is Still With Us, The Love Which Awaits Us

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

- Jn. 3:16-17

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in His Love; He will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”

- Zeph. 3:17-18

“Because of the death of Jesus on the Cross, all the sins of humanity since the dawn of history have become as a drop of water to be lost in the ocean of God’s mercy.”

- Thought based on the writings of Corrie Ten Boom

“An immortal soul is beyond all price. There is no trouble too great, no humiliation too deep, no suffering too severe, no love too strong, no labor too hard, no expense too large, but that it is worth it, if it is spent in the effort to win a soul for God.”

- Author Unknown

            Do we see the Love which reaches out to us from the Cross of Christ? It is there that Jesus reveals the fullness of the Father’s Love for us, a Love beyond all that we can ask or imagine. It is Divine Love that through Christ’s Spirit is present in power to us even now. It is Divine Love too which awaits us in the world beyond our world, awaits us with a fullness and fire beyond anything we can dare to dream possible. It is a Love for each of us burning in the Sacred Heart of the Father. It is a Divine Love that on our final day will greet us and embrace us when in communion with His Son we rise with Him to Glory. It is the Glory, the Grace, the Heaven of being drawn into the burning Heart of God and being immersed forever in the fire of His Love for us.  

            I watched “The Passion of The Christ” this Good Friday, and no matter how many times I see it, I am unnerved at the extent of the suffering endured by Our Lord.

            Why did He do it? The Satan figure in Mel Gibson’s film tells us that it was all for the price of atoning for humanity’s sins. To give the Devil his due, this is true. But the Evil One is ever about doing what he always does. He leaves us with half the truth or less; he leaves us with an incomplete picture, or better still, he leaves out the most important part of the picture. Yes Jesus on the Cross is atoning for sin, saving humanity, paying the price for our salvation. But what the film doesn’t accent enough is that all of this is for me, for you, for each of us.

            It is for each of us that the Lord does what He does. We are His “happy thought”. We are the Focus that drives Jesus irresistibly forward in His pursuit of the Father’s Dream for us. It is each of us that Jesus is thinking about as He takes each step along the way of the Cross, and as He climbs higher and farther toward the summit of Calvary. It is Divine Love for us, the Father’s Love for His children burning in the Heart of Jesus, which empowers the Lord to bear all things, to suffer all things, to pay any price for the fulfillment of God’s Purpose, the Mission and Dream of having humanity with Him, in His Presence and in His embrace forever.

            I love the awesome scene in “The Passion” film when Jesus truly strengthened by Mary’s presence begins to raise the Cross once more, all the while refocusing on that Mission and Dream. As He lifts the Cross Jesus says to Our Blessed Mother, “Behold, I make all things new!” It is a statement echoing Christ’s words from the Book of Revelations, words that signify the restoration of creation to the state before the Fall – before the Fall from Grace, before the brokenness, before the collapse of that state of “at-one-ment” between God and humanity, that state of Paradise, of Eden, the primordial Garden where God walked with us in friendship, intimacy, and holy communion.

            As awesome as this scene from the film was, imagine if Jesus had turned His gaze from Mary at that moment, and then looked into the camera at each of us. Then what if He had repeated the words from Revelations while adding “for you”? “Behold, I make all things new - for you!” As amazing as this scene already was (And it was!), I think it would have increased exponentially in its power with Jesus saying “for you”, all the while gazing out at us. Why else does He lift the Cross with such power and passion if not for Love of us? “And I when I am lifted up” on the Cross “will draw all humanity to myself” - will draw all humanity into my embrace, into most Holy Communion with the Sacred Heart of God.

            In the “Chicken Soup for The Soul” series there is an incredible story about a father who rescues his son from the rubble of a school building totally destroyed during an 8.1 earthquake in Armenia. Every year without fail I find myself thinking about that father as I watch “The Passion” film and contemplate the Divine Love which drives Jesus on irresistibly to endure and even embrace suffering and death for me, for us. In fact, this is His Mission: to reveal the fullness of the Father’s Love for us. Like the father in the Chicken Soup story, the Divine Love radiating from Jesus wants only to rescue us and have us once more in His embrace. For that reason alone, for this singular “WHY?”, Jesus endures the scourging, the crown of thorns, the mockery, the contempt and scorn of his accusers, the humiliation and disgrace, as well as the horror and torment of the Cross.

            Jesus is exactly like the father in the earthquake story. The father digging through the rubble wants only to have his son once more with him. He had always told his son, “I’ll always be there for you!” Did not God say the same to us on Sinai? I AM Who am ever present with you, with tender, faithful Love. On the cross Jesus pays the price to keep the Father’s promise to us, to be faithful to His covenant vow to us.

            But there is even more to the metaphorical power of the Chicken Soup story. For his son, to be there always for his son, the father begins to dig through the rubble of his son’s collapsed school, hoping against hope that he could save his child. The father thought only of his son as he dug for eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours, thirty-six hours all for the purpose of rescuing his son, all for the dream if you will, of having his son once more with him, once more safe and secure in his home and in the embrace of his father’s love. The father embraces the Cross to save his son. The father endures the Passion to rescue his son.

            During thirty-six hours of digging by himself through huge rocks and boulders, the father never once stops to rest. He does not stop to eat or drink. Then in the thirty-eighth hour the father finds his son alive and rescues him along with over a dozen of his classmates who also survived. Does not Jesus do the same in his own Passion? It is for me, for us, that Jesus pays the price of the Passion. He endures all, suffers all, to rescue us from the ruin and collapse which ensues upon the Fall – from the brokenness of human life and the separation from God and His Love, which ensues upon the trauma of the Fall from Grace.

            Yes, Jesus came into the world to suffer, to die, to save sinners, to atone for sin. But we reduce Christianity to something so much less than it is when we look only at such ideas as a full representation of Christ’s work and mission. Really, when we entertain such ideas as a full understanding and comprehensive vision of Jesus’ Mission and Dream, we reduce Christianity to an incredibly incomplete picture, a warped and twisted picture of all that the Father in His Love had planned for humanity. We become in our teaching and theological courses like “a noisy gong or a clanging symbol”, and the instruction of our Catholic colleges and Christian universities “profits us nothing”. (1 Cor. 13)

            It is because we fail to contemplate with tears of Joy the Divine Love which fuels the “Why” of the Passion. “Why” did Jesus bear all things, suffer all things, endure all things, even the sting and scourge of the Roman flagellum, even the horror and humiliation of Roman crucifixion? Remember the “Why?” Focus always on the “Why?” It is you!

AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…

That you may know that Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you through His Spirit…

- Thoughts based on St. Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2: