"You are loved."

On Saturday I saw my friend Howie, who is homeless. Howie is forty years old, but already has to walk with a cane. He is a wonderfully gentle man with a big smile. We spoke about various things Saturday, ranging from the new sleeping bag someone gave him, through the radio that he lost and misses, to his mother in Indiana (we have a connection here, since I was born in Indiana and have family there as well). While we were talking, a squirrel tried to steal some doughnuts on a table nearby, and we enjoyed its entire lack of fear of our proximity.

At some point in the conversation, Howie asked me if I knew Christ in the City. I do. Christ in the City is a mission based in Denver which is open to young adults. During their year living in this community, they learn about Catholic social teaching and do daily, persevering outreach to people living on the streets. I became acquainted with Christ in the City a few years ago when they had a team living and working down in Colorado Springs. They were a wonderful group of young men and women, and I became a sort of informal chaplain to them, getting to know them well and to learn about their work, which is above all to “create a culture of encounter, where each person is seen, known, and loved.” In other words, they build friendships, especially with people living on the streets.

I told Howie that I was familiar with this community, and that I wished they were still in Colorado Springs. He told me that he had been up in Denver some time before, and had gone to eat at CIC’s lunch in the park. One of the missionaries had given him the wristband pictured above, reading “Christ in the City” on one side, and “You are loved” on the other. That phrase - you are loved - is central both to the mission of Christ in the City and to the human heart itself.

Being loved is essential to discovering our own identity. We come to know that we are lovable when we have encountered real love for us, in God or in another human being. In another’s eyes we see more clearly than we can on our own that it is good that we exist. Human beings are relational creatures, and we receive ourselves as a gift from those who love us. That is why the great tragedy is not to love - for then, by failing to find the beauty in the other person, we also miss the chance to affirm their being. Christ in the City exists to make sure that Howie and other persons who live on the streets are not forgotten, but loved.

Jesus speaks very clearly about this mission - as in the parables of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Christians do not have the option of being indifferent: we are called to love the persons we encounter. How are you going affirm to someone that “You are loved”?

Fasting and Freedom

I was discussing Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals with some friends the other day, and realized that fasting most intensely marks us as free beings.

MacIntyre in the early part of this book tries to remind us that human beings are also animals. Although our rationality is a distinctive aspect of human existence, even our rationality is bound up with our animality. He is, among other things, recapturing Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ hylomorphic insight into human beings not being ‘souls in a machine,’ but rather essentially both body and soul. Our experience of rationality is not like that of the angels, but rather is connected to our senses and brain, our physical capacities for knowing. Therefore, MacIntyre argues, we can learn a great deal from our continuity with other animals, in particular the more intelligent ones, like dolphins and chimpanzees.

Nevertheless, human beings are distinct among animals (as far as we know) in possessing language in the full sense: we have “the ability to construct sentences that contain as constituents either the sentences used to express the judgment about which the agent is reflecting or references to those sentences” (MacIntyre, 1999, pg. 54). We can use language to decide if we have a better reason for doing one thing rather than another, judging that we can attain a better good by seeking this rather than that (Ibid.).

What struck me as my friends and I considered these things is that the distinction between language-users and non-language-users is clearest when one good considered is a spiritual good, such as that obtained by fasting. It is easy to think of a dolphin choosing to fight off predators rather than continuing to play or search for fish. It is difficult to conceive of a dolphin fasting on Fridays. Fasting makes manifest the extent to which human beings can self-determine: we can resist the drive to enjoy a present, material good for the sake of a spiritual good that cannot be seen or touched, and which surely will feel bad to seek in the moment. Our freedom is expressed most strongly in this ability to compare spiritual goods with material ones. Humble fasting is, paradoxically, a key to seeing the distinctive glory of human nature, the power of deliberation and choice imprinted upon it.

This, then, is another motive for fasting: to situate ourselves where we belong in the order of being, somewhere between the dolphins and the angels. Like the dolphins, we hunger and play and come to know things through the senses; like the angels, we can self-determine even in regard to the highest things, though our specific self-determination is relative to the most humble, bodily things, such as limiting our food.

Mystery

I teach at St. Mary’s Catholic high school in Colorado Springs. Many of my students have gone to Catholic schools for all or most of their school life. I think that, for some of them, the ‘mystery card’ has been played too often: it can be easy for a teacher of religion to avoid hard questions about the Trinity, the Incarnation, or grace by stating that it is a mystery, and then moving on. The word ‘mystery’ becomes a hard stop, a place where intellectual and spiritual inquiry can go no further.

This is the opposite of what mystery is. Mystery is that into which you can always go deeper, like an infinite sea whose bottom cannot be reached and which is unbounded by shores. A mystery is certainly too big for us to get it into our minds. So, the key is to get our minds into it. One cannot swallow the sea, but one can swim in it. And the more time we spend swimming, the stronger and wiser about its ways we become, so that we can go deeper and further on each new approach.

St. Augustine is a prime example of an experienced swimmer of the seas of mystery. He wrote extensively on the Trinity, the Incarnation, grace, and many of the other great mysteries of the Church. And yet, he did not make the mistake of trying to fit God into his mind. In the Office of Readings for today, Thomas Aquinas quotes Augustine, who had commented on Christ’s words from the parable, “Enter into the joy of your Lord.” Augustine’s comment was: “The fullness of joy will not enter into those who rejoice, but those who rejoice will enter into joy.” Here, he speaks of the joy of those who share the life of God eternally. Even in Heaven, they cannot contain the joy of the Lord, for that joy extends to the ‘unlimits’ of God himself. But they are immersed in joy, immersed in the mystery of God, filled with that joy and surrounded by it, as in a sea of glory.

When we swim into the ocean of the mystery of God, we are no longer in control. It is, though, worth the risk, for it is in infinite mystery that our minds and spirits find the joy for which they were made.