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Reflection Corner
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THAT SECRET HOUR
Palm Sunday
Jesus’ state was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God, but he emptied himself.
—Philippians 2:6–7
Father Richard Rohr reflects on Jesus’ surrender to God through a path of descent:
In the overflow of rich themes on Palm Sunday, I am going to direct us toward the great parabolic movement described in Philippians 2. Most New Testament scholars consider that this was originally a hymn sung in the early Christian community. To give us an honest entrance-way, let me offer a life-changing quote from C. G. Jung (1875–1961):In the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life’s fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve. [1]
The hymn from Philippians artistically, honestly, yet boldly describes that “secret hour” Jung refers to, when God in Christ reversed the parabola, when the waxing became waning. It starts with the great self-emptying or kenosis that we call the incarnation and ends with the crucifixion. It brilliantly connects the two mysteries as one movement, down, down, down into the enfleshment of creation, into humanity’s depths and sadness, and into a final identification with those at the very bottom (“took the form of a slave,” Philippians 2:7). Jesus represents God’s total solidarity with, and even love of, the human situation, as if to say, “nothing human is abhorrent to me.”
God, if Jesus is right, has chosen to descend—in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. This hymn says that Jesus leaves the ascent to God, in God’s way, and in God’s time. Most of us understandably start the journey assuming that God is “up there,” and our job is to transcend this world to find God. We spend so much time trying to get “up there,” we miss that God’s big leap in Jesus was to come “down here.” What freedom! And it ends up better than any could have expected. “Because of this, God lifted him up” (Philippians 2:9). We call the “lifting up” resurrection or ascension. Jesus is set as the human blueprint, the oh-so-hopeful pattern of divine transformation.
Trust the down, and God will take care of the up. This leaves humanity in solidarity with the life cycle, and also with one another, with no need to create success stories for ourselves or to create failure stories for others. Humanity in Jesus is free to be human and soulful instead of any false climbing into “Spirit.” This was supposed to change everything, and I trust it still will. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Episcopal priest and CAC faculty emeritus Cynthia Bourgeault describes how we can follow the path of descent Jesus models:
In Jesus everything hangs together around a single center of gravity…. In Greek the verb kenosein means “to let go,” or “to empty oneself,” and this is the word Paul chooses at the key moment in his celebrated teaching in Philippians 2:5–11 in order to describe what “the mind of Christ” is all about….
In this beautiful hymn, Paul recognizes that Jesus had only one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further (“even unto death on the cross”) and fell through the bottom to return to the realms of dominion and glory. In whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way, with the same motion of descent: going lower, taking the lower place, not the higher….
It is a path he himself walked to the very end. In the garden of Gethsemane, with his betrayers and accusers massing at the gates, he struggled and anguished but remained true to his course. Do not hoard, do not cling—not even to life itself. Let it go, let it be—“Not my will but yours be done, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Thus he came and thus he went, giving himself fully into life and death, losing himself, squandering himself, “gambling away every gift God bestows.” It was not love stored up but love utterly poured out that opened the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Over and over, Jesus lays this path before us. There is nothing to be renounced or resisted. Everything can be embraced, but the catch is to cling to nothing. You let it go. You go through life like a knife goes through a done cake, picking up nothing, clinging to nothing, sticking to nothing. And grounded in that fundamental chastity of your being, you can then throw yourself out, pour yourself out, being able to give it all back, even giving back life itself. That’s the kenotic path in a nutshell. Very, very simple. It only costs everything. [1]
Depth psychologist and contemplative author David Benner considers Jesus a model of surrendering to God’s will:
Christ is the epitome of life lived with willingness. “Your will be done,” he prayed in what we call the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10). And more than just in prayer, he lived this posture of preferring God’s will to his own. Christian spirituality is following Christ in this self-abandonment. It is following his example of willing surrender….
The abundant life promised us in Christ comes not from grasping but from releasing. It comes not from striving but from relinquishing. It comes not so much from taking as from giving. Surrender is the foundational dynamic of Christian freedom—surrender of my efforts to live my life outside of the grasp of God’s love and surrender to God’s will and gracious Spirit. [2]
References:
[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind (Shambhala, 2008), 63, 64, 70.
[2] David G. Benner, Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, expanded ed. (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 58, 59–60.**************************************************************************************************
From Anthony De Mello “Awareness” page 114
So why are you anxious? Can you, for all your anxieties, add a single moment to your life? Why bother about tomorrow? Is there a life after death? Will I survive after death? Why bother about tomorrow? Get into today. Someone said, “Life is something that happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.” That’s pathetic. Live in the present moment. This is one of the things you will notice happening to you as you come awake. You find yourself living in the present, tasting every moment as you live it. Another fairly good sign is when you hear the symphony one note after the other without wanting to stop it.