…the act of God and human reality are allowed to belong together without rivalry or fear
Rowan Williams
Transcendence is a hand reached out to those close to us, to the human community, to all living creation, to nature, to the universe. [It] is a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand…. But with what we are nevertheless linked, because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world. Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction.
Vaclav Havel
Image: Joel Sheesley, O Magnum Mysterium
Karl Rahner understands Jesus as the self-communication of God to the universe and the self-transcendence of the universe to God. It is as if God says “YES” to us, and to all that is made, and we, in Jesus, say “YES” to God. Jesus offers us a way of being in the world – a way of self-transcendence – for the sake of the other. This is the paradox of human life. We flourish by giving ourselves away.
Being Christian is more than being kindly. It is following the genuinely authentic human being exemplified in Jesus of Nazareth. This is why we imaginatively engage with the stories of Jesus, for then we can discover that Jesus is the very truth of our existence.
Image: Joel Sheesley, O Magnum Mysterium, detail
Jesus shows us that we are in fact, as human beings, Christologically and Paschally structured. Such an intimate experience and graced knowledge of his truth – which is our truth – enables us to lovingly commit ourselves to his way.
God clears a space for us “where the act of God and human reality are allowed to belong together without rivalry or fear, the place where Jesus is.
Rowan Williams
The images in this post are of paintings by Joel Sheesley, Emeritus Professor of Art at Wheaton College, IL. The image at the top of the post is Holy, Holy, Holy, a painting about which the artist says;
It was the extravagance of the blossoms that overwhelmed me. The tree was determined to show a bounty and I looked for a way to represent its lavish proliferation. The abundant blossoms conjured for me the image of the girl blowing bubbles, another kind of extravaganza, but one in which the effect is disproportionately more grand than the effort required to produce it. What I then would have called excess in both tree and girl, I now might also call grace – an extraordinary, unaccountable benevolence welling up for everyone.
This video is of an interview with the artist as he speaks about his painting O Magnum Mysterium
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
