Today we hear the Lord urge us to seek to “strive to enter through the narrow gate.” It’s the little space which is hard to squeeze through…it’s uncomfortable, maybe even painful, but it is the way that leads to him. It is the way of the cross and of the crib. It is the way of vulnerability.
Like the crib which holds the baby in a manger. Is there anything more vulnerable than a baby in a manger? He can’t feed himself, like the little lambs who eat the straw. He can’t run away, like sheep dogs barking in the night. He can’t even make himself heard, like the bellowing calf. He is dumb as an ox and weak as a baby rabbit. He can do nothing but be.
But was there ever a more beautiful being, a more wondrous birth, a more glorious incarnation than Christ, the incarnate, the only-begotten Son of God? For he chose to empty himself, taking the form of a weak, puking babe in a feed box, son of a Virgin, wrapped in baby cloths and reigning from a throne of stinky straw.
Catherine of Siena understood it when she wrote that Christ came:
“…so that I, then, with my littleness, would be able to see your greatness, God, you made yourself a little one, wrapping up the greatness of your Godhead in the littleness of our humanity.”
And that is what God asks us to become in turn: weak, vulnerable and willing to accept the crosses he may send our way, collapsing into his arms in total surrender to his will. And there are few things harder, for me or for you.
For when I look in the mirror, I know what I want to see. I want to see youthful perfection. I want to see the me I want folks to see, perfect in every way. I want to see the me I want my friends to see, warm, loving and ever so patient and giving. I want to see the me I want God to see. I want him to say, “What a good job I did with that one! He is truly the Son in whom I am well pleased.
But while you can fool some of the folks most of the time, and many of your friends some of the time, there is no fooling God. For “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” We are naked before God, whether we want to be or not.
Which makes it strange that we spend our entire lives running away from who we are, always afraid that it’s not enough. That’s because vulnerability is hard work and requires nightly examinations of conscience and constant vigilance and good and honest friends, and really smart and strong spiritual directors and shrinks to stay honest. Because we run from vulnerability like it’s the plague.
But what is more vulnerable than the baby in a manger or the man on the cross.
Though he was in the form of God he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born into the likeness of man and accepting even death, death on a cross.
And as he did it, he opened his arms and looked us right in the eye, and said, love one another as I have loved you. Take up your vulnerability and follow me. Vulnerability. It is the key to unlock what God wants of us… But it is never easy.
A case in point…
I was, I suppose, a typical late seventies seminarian. Each night of my senior year at Holy Cross, everyone would gather in my room and we would sit in a circle, burn incense before an icon and sing Compline. Each morning, I would pray Morning Prayer and there was always a Gelineau Psalter jostling around in my book bag. I came to the Seminary entirely devoted to the Psalms and the essential role of the Liturgy of the Hours as a sanctifier of time and a participation in the very prayer of Christ.
And so the preservation of the LOH, to exclusion of almost all other versions of Christian Prayer, became something of a crusade for me. Novenas and devotions were nice, but they were so yesterday. I belonged to the enlightened ones who did not pray to get something but to join our hearts and souls to the cosmic praise which transcended more primitive forms. I would graciously tolerate the imperfect usages of others, but I knew God liked my prayers best of all.
So when my spiritual director, suggested I might benefit from an introduction to the Jesus Prayer, I smiled at him indulgently, but never really took it seriously.
For, you see, this prayer had no drama. It lacked dramatic rubrics. There were no prescribed postures or incense or bells or intellectually challenging prayers. You just sit there, he said, and say over and over again: Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner. “Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner”? Yes, he said. But more slowly and with your eyes cast on the cross or closed.
So, skeptically, I tried it. Over and over and over again. And by the fourteenth time, I was getting bored…longing to go do something useful, like matching my socks. But I stubbornly kept on. And by the twenty-eighth time I was angry: “this is not doing any good. I could have gotten through mid-day prayer by now. I’m not accomplishing a darn thing. I didn’t say darn.
But at least I had enough sense to keep pushing on…until I pushed through, and started to listen to what I was saying, with more than my head. Slowly, very slowly, my heart came out to play. And I began to pray: to see the face of Jesus, and to see it as something more than a reflection of me. And then my voice began to blend with the voice of the Leper by the side of the road: Jesus! Son of the Living God! Have mercy on me, a sinner! And by the sixtieth time, I didn’t want to stop, for I felt embraced by the mercy of God, overwhelmed, washed over and transformed. Only when I had unmasked my vulnerability, was I able to begin to learn how to pray…
So, you wanna be a better person than I was? You wanna be what God wants you to be?
Seek out the narrow gate. Be vulnerable.
For conformity to the vulnerability of Christ as we open our arms on all the crosses God gives to us is the way he makes us the kind of people that he wants us to be.
