Recreation and the Creator

Summer here in the Northern Hemisphere is the season for which I live. More so than the warmth, I love the light. Even more than that, I love that the light gives us a certain length of day, and time to be outside. Parishes tend to slow down, schools are closed, and for the most part, people are more able to relax and enjoy the beauty of nature and time together. The Sundays after Pentecost (Ordinary Time) are preoccupied with the many activities of Our Lord’s earthly ministry. Although Saint John admits that there would not be enough books in all the world to record all that Jesus had done, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) intensely focus on what the Romans would have called the res gestae of Jesus’ life and ministry; that is to say, a narrative of his most notable deeds and achievements, with the goal of sharing the Good News of Salvation.

Saint John’s Gospel, nearly universally believed to be the latest Gospel, perhaps noted that tendency, and if we give credence to the idea of a ‘Johannine Community’ that helped produce that Gospel, perhaps there was an audience of Early Christians eager to hear what the Beloved Disciple had to say about the more private, intimate moments with The Master. The desire for intimacy is natural to man: our social nature is a reflection of our creation by a Trinitarian God, an eternal communion of love. As Cardinal Ratzinger once noted, it is in the Trinity alone that the Aristotelian ‘accident’ of relation is essential. That is to say, unlike with human beings, whose relationships frequently change, God’s relationship with himself is grounded in his essence.

Scholars also for a long time have noted that the Epistles of John appear to be addressing a ‘Proto-Gnosticism’ among Early Christians, especially among those who had the tendency to dismiss the Incarnation of Christ, and the signficance of his bodily birth, death, and resurrection. At the same time, Saint John or the Johannine Community (or both) seem to recognize a real thirst among Early Christians to have the ‘up close and personal’ experience with Jesus. Gnosticism, then as now, seeks gnosis (hidden knowledge) in order to achieve salvation. Salvation, however, for the Gnostic, is often found in the transcendence of the material universe. The physical universe for the Gnostic is not a ladder to Divinity, but a glass ceiling. This is entirely antithetical to the Sacramental mentality, where grace is conveyed by means of material means. Because of this, Saint John called the one who denied a Christ in the flesh “an antichrist” (2 John 1:7). We recall that the prefix ‘anti’ in Greek does not only mean ‘against’, but can also mean ‘in place of.’ For this reason, to deny the materiality of Jesus, his humanity, is to put in his place a counterfeit Christ.

What does all this have to do with summer, and rest? Because in the past few Sundays, and the the ones to come, we usually hear some of Jesus’ most famous miracles, and his most illutrious parables. They speak to us about the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, and they bless us with wisdom. Yet it seems to me only right that there is something that is not dangerous about wanting to ‘go deeper’ with Jesus, after hearing so many of his deeds in the Synoptic Gospels. Saint John records for us not only so many private conversations, but also interprets their hidden meanings. In a sense, Saint John provides for the reader the mystery that the Gnostic instinct longs for, yet avoids the twin pitfalls of ignoring Christ’s humanity, and also segregating the saving mission of Christ from the wider world.

Many scholars have said that Saint John has a late “High Christology”, and although I understand and broadly agree with that assessment, there are crucial ways in which Saint John provides strong ‘tethers’, so to speak, to the earthly, fundamental reality of Christ as an embodied, historical figure. So much of Saint John’s Gospel takes place in the context of prosaic downtime. The Marriage of Cana, the First Miracle, is done while Jesus and Mary are simply in attendance; the very insistence of Mary that Jesus do something about a wine shortage seems importune to him. The same is true of the beloved story of the Samaritan Woman; Jesus is at a well on a hot day around noon, hanging around while his disciples are off on other business. It is there that he encounters that woman, so intrigued by this man who could read her soul.

To put it plainly, so many of the recorded miracles and teachings of Jesus take place narratively in medias res, ‘in the middle of things’, when Jesus, it would seem, is not naturally the center of attention. In my opinion, this is true above all in the Resurrection of Lazarus, which Saint John alone records. Jesus purposefully delays his own arrival to see his own dear friends, and does so because he wishes to bring glory to His Father. The purposeful tardiness of Jesus manifests both the mastery of Jesus over life and death, but also is a reminder to each of us of an essential truth: God does not always come when and where we may be looking for him, but when he does, he is always on time. It may seem strange that God, the master of time, should ‘waste’ it with his creatures. How many more people could he have cured? How many more sermons could he have given? Yet he chose three short years in which to accomplish the lion’s share of his work. This, too, ought to be a consolation to those of us who may feel we have not yet hit the apex of our careers or personal life goals. As Lenin once remarked, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Yet it is precisely in the slow times and the off-times that we are shaped for our performance in the spotlight, as our private actions and inactions form our character.

Saint Phillip Neri, the great ‘Apostle of Rome’, once remarked that those who seek recreation without the creator will find neither. His jovial disposition made him apt to play games and to make practical jokes. Yet we know from history that many saints have temperaments bordering on the irascible and humorless. Saints often differ, according to their human temperament, leaning toward indolence or overactivity. Some people can’t seem to sit still. Others seem to be perpetually stuck, motionless, unwilling to move or work. Saint John Vianney, as one great example of the former, spent, according to several biographers, upwards of 18 hours in the confessional a day. We could be tempted to call Saint John Vianney a workaholic, if it were not for the fact that even Pope Saint John XXIII called Saint John Vianney’s labors ones of heroic virtue in Nostri Sacerdotii Primordia. Yet, as many hagiographers and mystical theologians remind us, heroic virtue for third parties ought to inspire our admiration more than our imitation, because heroic virtue is not a grace given to all, and certainly not on a perpetual basis. In contrast, Jesus, the perfect man, posssesses the ideal balance in his human temperament. Therefore, he alone is the template which merits both our imitation and our admiration. All Saints manifest Christ in their personhood, albeit imperfectly. We may admire them, but we can never be them exactly. Yet the duty of the Christian is to become another Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be the uniquely divinized self “through Him, with Him, and in Him.”

What is often not recalled about Saint John Vianney is that he fled Ars at least once, desiring to retire from pastoral duties into religious life. He was prevented from doing so by his parishioners and hordes of pilgrims, eager for his counsel and his prayers. I wonder sometimes whether poor Saint John Vianney really needed a vacation; but I suppose that question is moot now, since he rests in glory. We, on the other hand, do not all possess such defatigable and heroic energy. Nor have we yet arrived at our reward. But we can take some measure of consolation knowing that even for Saint John Vianney, his tolerance for ‘the public’ wavered. Even Jesus at times expressed his frustrations with the people around him. Frustration, being simply a human emotion, is not a sinful one: it is the natural reaction of a human being to an obstacle. What makes it good or bad is what someone is frustrated about, and how one chooses to resolve it. Expressing that it exists is simply a statement of fact.

Recreation and rest is meant not only to restore our energy for productive output, creative or otherwise, but also to give us the opportunity to pursue the four essential relationships: the human person with God, with other humans, with nature, and with our own interior selves. When any of these four relationships do not receive the nourishment of invested time and attention, we devolve into incomplete persons. From God we have a link to transcendence. From others, we have the means to practice empathy and charity, to give and receive love. From nature, we learn stability and harmony with an order that is not of our own making. From relating to ourselves, we come to possess greater depth.

As the summer continues to unfold, and we listen attentively to the words of Jesus on these Sundays in the heat, it may be a good opportunity to be challenged by how we are using, investing and developing our time, our rest, and our relationships. Jesus used his time effectively at all times, and always lovingly. Even Jesus knew that earthly time and mortal energy is finite, because it was for him among us. However, with the assistance of grace, we can truly “redeem the time”, and while we have it, work for, and seek, the good.