Father Tim Lemlin
I visited Jerusalem some years back and one of the most painful and memorable places I entered was Yad Vashem. (Yad Vashem is a memorial of the Jewish holocaust.) Besides the moving sculptures were the thousands of pictures of people in concentration camps. One photograph is of a mother standing in line with her daughter waiting to enter a gas chamber. The child, who is walking in front of her mother, is unaware that she is about to die. Her mother does know. She also knows that she is completely helpless to prevent this act of hatred from happening, so she does what she can. She lovingly places her hands over her daughter's eyes in an effort to keep her from seeing the terror awaiting them.
The scriptures present us a theme that is difficult for us to hear and accept. It is by the least important, most helpless, rejected, despised, and least significant people that the word of God is heard - that love is known. Those who see themselves as important, powerful, prosperous, accepted, and significant can't hear the word of God - or know love. They can only hear the voice of their self-generated image of God and know the impotent love that ingratiates their sense of self.
Until we have been in a situation where we are completely helpless (someone we love is dying or has died, we are betrayed, we lose our source of income) and stay there without trying to run away or blame someone else, we cannot know the power and love of God. It is a power and love that surprises us when we discover that we can love even though love feels absent. It keeps us connected when all connections feel like they have dissolved. It lets us experience God participating with us in our helplessness, placing hands lovingly over our eyes.
Usually, when we seek God's help, it is to intervene to prevent something from happening, or to cure someone from a disease, or to protect someone from harm. Our perspective is such that God is outside of our lives - disconnected. The opposite, however, is true. God is so intimately connected with each of us and with all of creation that God participates in every aspect of our lives and in all of creation. This is the meaning of the incarnation - God becoming flesh. But we don't often live this reality.
The Eucharist is meant to be an opportunity for us to recognize the Presence of God. We use bread and wine and we say that God is Present in them - that the bread is the Body of Christ and the wine the Blood of Christ. This is a belief that I hold to be true. Then we misuse the Eucharist. We localize God's Presence. We say that God is Present only here and God is not Present there. The purpose of the Eucharist is to help us to recognize God's Presence here so that we can recognize God's Presence everywhere - to help us recognize that we also are individually and collectively the Body of Christ.
When we begin to recognize, to know again, that God's Presence is in us, all people and all creation, we begin to participate in the Presence of God and experience God participating in our lives. This is much different than the perspective that we have when we live as though we have to earn God's attention and love. It is much different than the perspective that we have when we live as though Jesus atoned for our sins and made God like us by shedding his blood. Such a perspective says that forgiveness happens only when I can convince God (or have someone else convince God) that I am truly sorry - only then does God love me again. Beginning with the prophet Ezekiel and culminating with Jesus we hear something very different. They say that God loves us in our sinfulness - in our impotency - so that we can repent - so that we can give life. Do you hear the difference?
God participates in our lives so that we can participate in God's life. Only God can recognize God. We are incapable of seeing God. God becomes flesh - enters the created world - so that we can participate in the God who is beyond.
Only God can do this. Hence we hear that Elizabeth is barren. It is a theme that carries throughout the scriptures. As human beings we are all barren. We can't love. We can't make God love us. We can't be perfect. We can't get to heaven. We can't even love our spouse or children. We are impotent, helpless and barren. When we arrive at this awareness and realize that there is nothing that we can do about it, God can act - God can transform our lives. God can love in us despite our inability to love.
This also is the meaning of the virginity of Mary. (I am not disputing the virgin birth of Jesus.) She tells the angel that she is incapable of conception - she knows her inability to love. This frees her to participate in the Presence of God, allowing God's Presence to dwell in her flesh - in her womb. Only when Mary accepts her complete helplessness, only when we experience our complete helplessness, can we begin to know the love that leads Elizabeth to proclaim, "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."
