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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Prayer: Oscar Romero in a 1978 Christmas Eve homily

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God - for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

4 comments:

  1. May all people recognize their poverty of spirit so that they will be able to experience the abundance of God. I am so grateful for God's abundant love and mercy. Oscar Romero's words are very powerful. Thank you.

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    1. It is odd that so many are attracted to the rich and powerful. I saw the most beautiful sights here in Amman on Christmas when many Indian women came for mass. They don't get out of their employers' homes much, but their happiness in celebrating Christmas was radiant.

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  2. I'm inclined to agree with Bishop Romero---after all, that is what is implied by the Beatitudes, i.e., that the poor and unfortunate are "lucky" because their need makes them able to receive what God wants to give them. But on the other hand, I just had a bit of a debate with our priest because he feels that God doesn't want to be "loved" just for His gifts. He feels (reasonably enough) that a self-seeking love that only is attracted to the Other because the person wants to basically use the Other to get what he wants out of him is hardly a real love. All those old Scholastic distinctions between "love of benevolence" and "need love" come to mind. But of course the Bible is very shameless in making promises and almost encouraging people to see God as a need-meeter. Think of the Psalms. He is always reminding them of all He did for them as if He expected to buy their love or at least their loyalty by bringing them out of Egypt, feeding them in the desert, etc. The whole parent-child analogy almost assumes that kind of unequal love--the parent being unconditionally loving and giving while the child is by nature "needy and greedy" unable to provide anything for itself and "loving" the parent who is the source of food and shelter and life itself, without whom the child would perish. Jesus seemed ambivalent. Sometimes He seemed to go along with that model, seemingly content with people who turned to Him for healing and guidance, yet other times complaining that they only wanted Him because He gave them bread. What does God really want???? And what is realistic for Him to expect? We really do need Him--even the richest and most powerful of us--so is it likely that we will ever be able to love Him completely disinterestedly? And can we love what we cannot know? We only experience God in relation to the world--we have no way of knowing what He is in Himself, that we might be able to love that "ineffabilis Deus" quite apart from His role in creation and salvation. The priest seems to think that God sends us suffering because it is something that we would not choose and do not like, so if we can manage to love Him anyway, even when He is doing painful things to us, we will finally be loving Him for Himself. That sounds a bit kinky to me. I would wonder very much about a human lover or parent who did sadistic things like give me cancer or burn me alive to see whether I'd still love them anyway while I was in pain. Yet the whole "binding of Isaac" story or the Book of Job could come very close to that model. It is all too much for me! I love God but there are definitely times when I'm not sure I like Him. He probably would feel the same way about me, if He could have feelings. Must be nice to be impassible......

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    1. There's a lot here.

      The Psalms were written by a psalmist and attributed to David's reign. These are human words that fall into a replicated pattern that shows our relationship to God. They are meant to be emotional to show our deep feelings towards God.

      We know the relationship is unequal and we can't (and don't want) to do anything about it. Whatever the reason, love of the other perfects the other. That's enough for me. Love brings us into another plane. We all want good things and we desire them. Within that desire is a movement towards God. I'm not stuck on the needy aspect of it. The God I know wants to always give us something, even if it is God's very self. I have to offer myself back to us.

      I can't grasp in its entirety your priest friends' view on God giving us suffering. Suffering happens. Maybe sometimes it is given to us, but suffering happens. I don't think God is masochistic at all. The binding of Isaac is a mystery to us. Did his father discern correctly and God intervened? That's not at all the story, but it is a hard story to swallow. Job's purpose is to narratively describe why bad things happen to God-loving people. It reveals to us the character of God in the face of suffering.

      Good distinction as loving and liking are two different verbs. We want God to like us. It shows that God loves us.

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