"THE GAP"
(adapted from the lead post for the Catechism of the Catholic Church Internet Study Group, 2/10/03.)
I want to talk about “the gap.”
In case I haven’t mentioned it here before, I was a practicing Zen Buddhist for about ten years. In Zen, and in Buddhism in general, there is no difference, none whatsoever, between what we are, and the ultimate reality of the universe. All is oneness, buddha-nature. The fact that we don’t live this experience of oneness, but are confronted with conflict, evil, and weakness, both within and without, is attributed to delusion, pure and simple. Remove the delusion, through meditation, and we see the truth and are one with the truth. Another way to put this is that we are whole and perfect in ourselves, and are merely under the delusion that we are imperfect creatures.
In the pervasive brew of new-age spirituality and self-help psychology which has inundated our society and culture, this idea, or some form of it, often lies at the center. I’m OK and you’re OK. Everything is great when we just “let go” and stop making ourselves miserable. Nirvana is right around the corner – just a few more months, or years, or decades, of counseling and therapy. All real human problems have already been solved on Oprah. With the right sensitivity training, conflicts will just disappear by themselves. Just a few more Dr. Phil books, and…
And what? One can’t help but notice that we’ve been at this, heavily and intensely, since the sixties at least. By all reasonable reckoning, we should have arrived at social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual enlightenment long before this. Since we haven’t, we just keep tweaking away, convinced that the next psychological self-manipulation we apply will finally do the trick.
Yes, I know that as well as distorted and self-aggrandized versions, there are also appropriate uses for psychology and therapy. Most of us do have some hang-ups that we would be better off without, and it’s even possible that we can learn one or two things from Oprah and Dr. Phil (mind you I said one or two…). But it’s the distorted and self-aggrandized versions that have insinuated themselves into our culture, even into our religious culture.
In stark contrast to this cultural happy-face approach to absolute reality, the Catholic Church teaches us that our very human nature is fallen and subject to sin and the inclination toward sin. We are no longer in the Garden, we are not yet in heaven, and we are most certainly not simply identical to God Himself. In other words, there is a “gap.” This gap is the distance between our lives on earth and our destiny of sharing in God’s divine life in heaven. It’s not an impenetrable wall. There’s lots of “communication” that crosses the gap, such as prayer, grace, images of heaven, experiences of God’s presence. But we, ourselves, cannot cross it completely in this life.
We may not like it, but the gap is real, and very serious. The “strange brew” spirituality whispers in our ear to relax, enjoy ourselves, that we’re already home, all we have to do is wake up and realize it. The Gospels tell us straight out that we’re not Home, that we can in fact lose our way and never get Home, and that if we do want to get there, we’ve got some hard work to do. The gap can be closed, but it can also be widened, and the wider the gap, the greater our spiritual risk. The Church exhorts us to pay attention to the gap, to do what we can to close it, to pray for help from the “other side” of the gap, and to receive the sacraments to get that help.
There are many things we can do to lessen the gap. When we grow in holiness, we lessen the gap. When we pray we lessen the gap. When we follow Jesus’ teaching to love others as He loved us, we lessen the gap. When we visit the sick, feed the hungry, or smile kindly at someone who expects us to be indifferent, we lessen the gap. All of these things, of course, require help from “the other side” of the gap, help from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We don’t just push our way through, we have to be pulled. But we cannot simply passively wait to be pulled. We have to dispose ourselves properly to respond to the “pull”. It’s quite clear from numerous Gospel passages that we have to actively believe things, and we have to actively do things. In this sense, even though by itself it can never be enough, we have to “push.”
But by ourselves alone, we can never make it across the gap.
John of the Cross, by all accounts, often experienced profound union with God. It’s said that he used to walk down the halls of a monastery banging his knuckles hard against the wall every so often. When required to explain this behavior, he said it was because he needed the pain to stay focused on what he was doing in the concrete moment, otherwise he felt he would fall so deeply into contemplation and experience of God that he wouldn’t be able to function. Yet he wrote and taught clearly and unequivocally that union with God, no matter how profound, was never complete in this life. In his great poem The Living Flame of Love, he wrote the line, “…if it be your will…tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!” He explained that this meant that while in this life, even in the deepest mystical state, there still at least a thin veil remaining between us and the Beatific Vision. Even for John, however thin, there was still a gap.
In the sacraments, we humbly ask for, and receive, grace from across the gap. It pulls us closer, even when we don’t directly feel that. That’s one reason why it’s so important to embrace the truth of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It’s not just a symbol, designed to make us better people, to put us in fellowship with others, or to make us feel better ourselves. It is a Reality, that acts to “pull” us across the gap. Not all at once in this life, but little by blessed grace-filled little.
It’s the same with the other sacraments. Particularly with those that can be received regularly, e.g. Eucharist and Penance, we have the opportunity to receive that grace which enables us to close the gap. Not to take advantage of this is to literally deprive ourselves of the help we need the most, to tolerate a “gap” that’s larger than it need be, and to increase the risk that the gap will widen, not close.
(adapted from the lead post for the Catechism of the Catholic Church Internet Study Group, 2/10/03.)
I want to talk about “the gap.”
In case I haven’t mentioned it here before, I was a practicing Zen Buddhist for about ten years. In Zen, and in Buddhism in general, there is no difference, none whatsoever, between what we are, and the ultimate reality of the universe. All is oneness, buddha-nature. The fact that we don’t live this experience of oneness, but are confronted with conflict, evil, and weakness, both within and without, is attributed to delusion, pure and simple. Remove the delusion, through meditation, and we see the truth and are one with the truth. Another way to put this is that we are whole and perfect in ourselves, and are merely under the delusion that we are imperfect creatures.
In the pervasive brew of new-age spirituality and self-help psychology which has inundated our society and culture, this idea, or some form of it, often lies at the center. I’m OK and you’re OK. Everything is great when we just “let go” and stop making ourselves miserable. Nirvana is right around the corner – just a few more months, or years, or decades, of counseling and therapy. All real human problems have already been solved on Oprah. With the right sensitivity training, conflicts will just disappear by themselves. Just a few more Dr. Phil books, and…
And what? One can’t help but notice that we’ve been at this, heavily and intensely, since the sixties at least. By all reasonable reckoning, we should have arrived at social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual enlightenment long before this. Since we haven’t, we just keep tweaking away, convinced that the next psychological self-manipulation we apply will finally do the trick.
Yes, I know that as well as distorted and self-aggrandized versions, there are also appropriate uses for psychology and therapy. Most of us do have some hang-ups that we would be better off without, and it’s even possible that we can learn one or two things from Oprah and Dr. Phil (mind you I said one or two…). But it’s the distorted and self-aggrandized versions that have insinuated themselves into our culture, even into our religious culture.
In stark contrast to this cultural happy-face approach to absolute reality, the Catholic Church teaches us that our very human nature is fallen and subject to sin and the inclination toward sin. We are no longer in the Garden, we are not yet in heaven, and we are most certainly not simply identical to God Himself. In other words, there is a “gap.” This gap is the distance between our lives on earth and our destiny of sharing in God’s divine life in heaven. It’s not an impenetrable wall. There’s lots of “communication” that crosses the gap, such as prayer, grace, images of heaven, experiences of God’s presence. But we, ourselves, cannot cross it completely in this life.
We may not like it, but the gap is real, and very serious. The “strange brew” spirituality whispers in our ear to relax, enjoy ourselves, that we’re already home, all we have to do is wake up and realize it. The Gospels tell us straight out that we’re not Home, that we can in fact lose our way and never get Home, and that if we do want to get there, we’ve got some hard work to do. The gap can be closed, but it can also be widened, and the wider the gap, the greater our spiritual risk. The Church exhorts us to pay attention to the gap, to do what we can to close it, to pray for help from the “other side” of the gap, and to receive the sacraments to get that help.
There are many things we can do to lessen the gap. When we grow in holiness, we lessen the gap. When we pray we lessen the gap. When we follow Jesus’ teaching to love others as He loved us, we lessen the gap. When we visit the sick, feed the hungry, or smile kindly at someone who expects us to be indifferent, we lessen the gap. All of these things, of course, require help from “the other side” of the gap, help from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We don’t just push our way through, we have to be pulled. But we cannot simply passively wait to be pulled. We have to dispose ourselves properly to respond to the “pull”. It’s quite clear from numerous Gospel passages that we have to actively believe things, and we have to actively do things. In this sense, even though by itself it can never be enough, we have to “push.”
But by ourselves alone, we can never make it across the gap.
John of the Cross, by all accounts, often experienced profound union with God. It’s said that he used to walk down the halls of a monastery banging his knuckles hard against the wall every so often. When required to explain this behavior, he said it was because he needed the pain to stay focused on what he was doing in the concrete moment, otherwise he felt he would fall so deeply into contemplation and experience of God that he wouldn’t be able to function. Yet he wrote and taught clearly and unequivocally that union with God, no matter how profound, was never complete in this life. In his great poem The Living Flame of Love, he wrote the line, “…if it be your will…tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!” He explained that this meant that while in this life, even in the deepest mystical state, there still at least a thin veil remaining between us and the Beatific Vision. Even for John, however thin, there was still a gap.
In the sacraments, we humbly ask for, and receive, grace from across the gap. It pulls us closer, even when we don’t directly feel that. That’s one reason why it’s so important to embrace the truth of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It’s not just a symbol, designed to make us better people, to put us in fellowship with others, or to make us feel better ourselves. It is a Reality, that acts to “pull” us across the gap. Not all at once in this life, but little by blessed grace-filled little.
It’s the same with the other sacraments. Particularly with those that can be received regularly, e.g. Eucharist and Penance, we have the opportunity to receive that grace which enables us to close the gap. Not to take advantage of this is to literally deprive ourselves of the help we need the most, to tolerate a “gap” that’s larger than it need be, and to increase the risk that the gap will widen, not close.
posted by Jerome at
8:50 AM
