Living the Trinitarian Life in the Right Order to the Father
COMMENT: In the Scriptures last night we read that the Virgin Mary is called the daughter of Zion. Why does the Church call her the "new Jerusalem"?
Because Jerusalem is a city and so the physical Jerusalem is a figure of the place where the elect live: and since we live in Mary, God's Mother and ours, she is the heavenly city, because we have our being in her. In ordinary generation, a child is generated by the father and comes out of the mother. But the Church says of the Mother of God, "We shall rejoice in thee, because thy breasts are better than wine." (Cant 1 3 ) Unlike natural generation, we're never separated from her, because our whole being is to be united spiritually to Jesus in her. We say the bread is "in" the bread box, because there is no part of the bread outside of the bread box; it is circumscribed by it. So in the Mother of God there is a spiritual circumscription, became when you are in her you have no desires outside of her; in her you are united with her Son. The "breasts" signify nourishment. Ordinary wine takes you out of yourself and makes an animal out of you, but when you take nourishment from the "wine" of her breasts, you are drawn out of yourself and become God. The simple truth of the fact is that there is no union with Jesus outside of His Mother any more than you can be generated by your father outside of your mother’s womb. Our spiritual life is a life of union with Jesus in His Mother. So it is in her that you have her purity; you see all your inclination to evil as something which is just part of the process of becoming perfectly assimilated to Jesus and to His Mother who is also our Mother, instead of thinking that every time you have a nasty thought, there is a miscarriage!
Another thing that always strikes me is that. Christ came to glorify His Father. That was His whole purpose in coming, because it is His whole being, to be in relation to the Father. But it is as if in our society we took Christ, Who is truly God, and made Him an end, then made ourselves equal to Him, so that the whole sense of the relation to God the Father has been lost. Even in the natural order, there is no sense of the child's relation to a father, so our whole society is disordered, because we're denying the manifestation of the Trinity even in our natural relationships. There is a very deep and subtle connection between the society we have and the loss of the experience of paternity, both human and divine.
COMMENT: You can't have a relation with God unless you have it with your own father.
The very personality of Jesus is that He is the Son of the Father. Well, in my experience, you hardly ever meet a Christian who even thinks of the Father. So if you don't think of the Father in relation to God, why should you think of your relation to a human father?
COMMENT: The reason why we can be friends with each other is because we each have the relationship to you as our spiritual father.
Just as in the Trinity, the Son's whole personality is in relation to the Father, so your real personality comes out in your relation to me. The whole realization of your personality is in relation to your father, and that is the foundation of your relation to God. Jesus didn't come to glorify Himself. In fact, the only reason He came was because the Father sent Him. He didn't even want to come in His own right: "Let this chalice pass ..." (Mt 26:39)
COMMENT: Is that what it means when it says that the Son is generated by the Father?
In the human order you have your personality and I have mine. But in God, what is the personality of the Word? The only thing that makes Him distinct is that He is the Son of the Father. His personality is in and through that relationship. So if you cut off the Father and Son in the Trinity, the Son has no personality. In the same way, in the human order, if you cut off the son from the father, he is deformed, because that is the way things are; God made us to His own image. Also, He made a woman subject to her husband. The right order is that the wife should be subject to her husband, and that the child who proceeds from their union should be subject to both. That is how they realize their equality: in and through that relationship. And that is why Jesus stayed with His Mother and St. Joseph for thirty years. Otherwise, why would we read that He was "subject to them," even though He was God? (Cf Lk 2:51)
COMMENT: There seems to be a connection between what you're saying and charity, because without that relationship to the father, you would substitute your own paternity and act out of that.
You become a father to yourself, and all false charity comes from that relationship to yourself. It is never real, whereas real charity is the overflow of the conviction that you're loved by the father. And if you don't receive that kind of love, you can't give it.
I think if you look at the situation concretely, this whole matter of filiality, what you're seeing is that you're worse off than a child, because you have spent your whole life trying to be your own father, and unless that is corrected, you’ll go on doing it. And if it isn't corrected, your relationship to God will just be by way of implementing your relationship to yourself. So the most practical conclusion is to realize that dependence, because in the natural relationship, there is dependence and abandonment to your father. Also, it is imperative to recognize that personal relationship to yourself, where you have been your own father all these years, and to hate that. And the more you realize you're loved and protected by God in me, your spiritual father, the more you’ll hate yourself in the right way, because you won't be justifying yourself. Whereas if you think of yourself as your own father, you're always justifying yourself. So the practical conclusion is abandonment to a spiritual father, because in that abandonment, God gives you the light to know His will and to be abandoned to Him. Jesus said, "Wherever two or more are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." (Mt 18:20) The first two who are gathered together are the father and the child. Otherwise, you’ll always be gathered together in your own name. And inevitably you’ll try to use people to implement your relationship to yourself. You can't hate your own soul unless you're abandoned to your spiritual father. The very meaning of Jesus is His abandonment to His Father!
COMMENT: When we really become your spiritual child, we're being conformed to Jesus in the heavenly Father.
If you try to do it with your own mind, it is a kind of monstrosity, because you're trying to be gathered with yourself as your own spiritual father. God justifies you not by words, but by moving you to that abandonment, and you know it by the peace. When you're abandoned in the right way, you feel that peace, His peace, and consequently you're more free to trust your own impulse. But if you believe your own impulse stinks, how can you trust it? The only way you can be abandoned to yourself is to be abandoned to your spiritual father. And Jesus gives the modality for this. Even though He was God, He was subject to Joseph and Mary for thirty years.
Why do you think He did it? For the same reason that He said from the Cross, "Behold your mother." (Jn 19:27) Yet our whole society has the ideal of self-sufficiency, as though the realization of self would entail revolution with respect to the father. Whereas the realization of self, as you see in the Trinity, is precisely in the relation to the Father. The Son is the Son of the Father. You can say two is one-half of four, but the essence of two isn't to be the half of four so in the created order a thing can be, and then have a relation. But in the Trinity it is not like that. The very personality of the Son is in and through the relation. It is not something that is added. He has no personality except in the relationship; the relationship is His personality. It is the same with us proportionately - whatever happens in God happens analogously in the creature. I could die and you would still exist. But it is true that the realization of your personality is in and through the relationship with me, even though you have a created personality of your own.
COMMENT: And that kind of relationship goes on.
You come out of your mother's womb and the physical relationship is over, but the spiritual relationship to your father has no end. So that is what you should examine your conscience on: the false idea you have of your autonomy and self-sufficiency. You're really thinking in terms of your goodness instead of that relationship. Not that it takes the place of the other, of the order to holiness, but the more fundamental order is to the relationship. A good life is founded on that.
But another aspect of this is the responsibility of the father, because if the father isn't abandoned to God, he'll make a slave of his child and the child will rebel. So the renewal of the whole Church depends on fathers who live by faith.
Because Jerusalem is a city and so the physical Jerusalem is a figure of the place where the elect live: and since we live in Mary, God's Mother and ours, she is the heavenly city, because we have our being in her. In ordinary generation, a child is generated by the father and comes out of the mother. But the Church says of the Mother of God, "We shall rejoice in thee, because thy breasts are better than wine." (Cant 1 3 ) Unlike natural generation, we're never separated from her, because our whole being is to be united spiritually to Jesus in her. We say the bread is "in" the bread box, because there is no part of the bread outside of the bread box; it is circumscribed by it. So in the Mother of God there is a spiritual circumscription, became when you are in her you have no desires outside of her; in her you are united with her Son. The "breasts" signify nourishment. Ordinary wine takes you out of yourself and makes an animal out of you, but when you take nourishment from the "wine" of her breasts, you are drawn out of yourself and become God. The simple truth of the fact is that there is no union with Jesus outside of His Mother any more than you can be generated by your father outside of your mother’s womb. Our spiritual life is a life of union with Jesus in His Mother. So it is in her that you have her purity; you see all your inclination to evil as something which is just part of the process of becoming perfectly assimilated to Jesus and to His Mother who is also our Mother, instead of thinking that every time you have a nasty thought, there is a miscarriage!
Another thing that always strikes me is that. Christ came to glorify His Father. That was His whole purpose in coming, because it is His whole being, to be in relation to the Father. But it is as if in our society we took Christ, Who is truly God, and made Him an end, then made ourselves equal to Him, so that the whole sense of the relation to God the Father has been lost. Even in the natural order, there is no sense of the child's relation to a father, so our whole society is disordered, because we're denying the manifestation of the Trinity even in our natural relationships. There is a very deep and subtle connection between the society we have and the loss of the experience of paternity, both human and divine.
COMMENT: You can't have a relation with God unless you have it with your own father.
The very personality of Jesus is that He is the Son of the Father. Well, in my experience, you hardly ever meet a Christian who even thinks of the Father. So if you don't think of the Father in relation to God, why should you think of your relation to a human father?
COMMENT: The reason why we can be friends with each other is because we each have the relationship to you as our spiritual father.
Just as in the Trinity, the Son's whole personality is in relation to the Father, so your real personality comes out in your relation to me. The whole realization of your personality is in relation to your father, and that is the foundation of your relation to God. Jesus didn't come to glorify Himself. In fact, the only reason He came was because the Father sent Him. He didn't even want to come in His own right: "Let this chalice pass ..." (Mt 26:39)
COMMENT: Is that what it means when it says that the Son is generated by the Father?
In the human order you have your personality and I have mine. But in God, what is the personality of the Word? The only thing that makes Him distinct is that He is the Son of the Father. His personality is in and through that relationship. So if you cut off the Father and Son in the Trinity, the Son has no personality. In the same way, in the human order, if you cut off the son from the father, he is deformed, because that is the way things are; God made us to His own image. Also, He made a woman subject to her husband. The right order is that the wife should be subject to her husband, and that the child who proceeds from their union should be subject to both. That is how they realize their equality: in and through that relationship. And that is why Jesus stayed with His Mother and St. Joseph for thirty years. Otherwise, why would we read that He was "subject to them," even though He was God? (Cf Lk 2:51)
COMMENT: There seems to be a connection between what you're saying and charity, because without that relationship to the father, you would substitute your own paternity and act out of that.
You become a father to yourself, and all false charity comes from that relationship to yourself. It is never real, whereas real charity is the overflow of the conviction that you're loved by the father. And if you don't receive that kind of love, you can't give it.
I think if you look at the situation concretely, this whole matter of filiality, what you're seeing is that you're worse off than a child, because you have spent your whole life trying to be your own father, and unless that is corrected, you’ll go on doing it. And if it isn't corrected, your relationship to God will just be by way of implementing your relationship to yourself. So the most practical conclusion is to realize that dependence, because in the natural relationship, there is dependence and abandonment to your father. Also, it is imperative to recognize that personal relationship to yourself, where you have been your own father all these years, and to hate that. And the more you realize you're loved and protected by God in me, your spiritual father, the more you’ll hate yourself in the right way, because you won't be justifying yourself. Whereas if you think of yourself as your own father, you're always justifying yourself. So the practical conclusion is abandonment to a spiritual father, because in that abandonment, God gives you the light to know His will and to be abandoned to Him. Jesus said, "Wherever two or more are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." (Mt 18:20) The first two who are gathered together are the father and the child. Otherwise, you’ll always be gathered together in your own name. And inevitably you’ll try to use people to implement your relationship to yourself. You can't hate your own soul unless you're abandoned to your spiritual father. The very meaning of Jesus is His abandonment to His Father!
COMMENT: When we really become your spiritual child, we're being conformed to Jesus in the heavenly Father.
If you try to do it with your own mind, it is a kind of monstrosity, because you're trying to be gathered with yourself as your own spiritual father. God justifies you not by words, but by moving you to that abandonment, and you know it by the peace. When you're abandoned in the right way, you feel that peace, His peace, and consequently you're more free to trust your own impulse. But if you believe your own impulse stinks, how can you trust it? The only way you can be abandoned to yourself is to be abandoned to your spiritual father. And Jesus gives the modality for this. Even though He was God, He was subject to Joseph and Mary for thirty years.
Why do you think He did it? For the same reason that He said from the Cross, "Behold your mother." (Jn 19:27) Yet our whole society has the ideal of self-sufficiency, as though the realization of self would entail revolution with respect to the father. Whereas the realization of self, as you see in the Trinity, is precisely in the relation to the Father. The Son is the Son of the Father. You can say two is one-half of four, but the essence of two isn't to be the half of four so in the created order a thing can be, and then have a relation. But in the Trinity it is not like that. The very personality of the Son is in and through the relation. It is not something that is added. He has no personality except in the relationship; the relationship is His personality. It is the same with us proportionately - whatever happens in God happens analogously in the creature. I could die and you would still exist. But it is true that the realization of your personality is in and through the relationship with me, even though you have a created personality of your own.
COMMENT: And that kind of relationship goes on.
You come out of your mother's womb and the physical relationship is over, but the spiritual relationship to your father has no end. So that is what you should examine your conscience on: the false idea you have of your autonomy and self-sufficiency. You're really thinking in terms of your goodness instead of that relationship. Not that it takes the place of the other, of the order to holiness, but the more fundamental order is to the relationship. A good life is founded on that.
But another aspect of this is the responsibility of the father, because if the father isn't abandoned to God, he'll make a slave of his child and the child will rebel. So the renewal of the whole Church depends on fathers who live by faith.