They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.
I wonder how this happens…these words from the prophet Isaiah (Is 40:25-31). How does one run and not grow weary? As a runner, I am very conscious of how my body feels as I am running, especially with regards to speed and distance. While training for marathons in the past, the regiment I chose was very specific both from the standpoint of my diet and my actual physical training. There was the best time to eat, and the correct foods to eat, the days during the week to work on speed, and the days of the week to work on distance. It was a discipline for sure. But in this disciplined training there were moments – several as a matter of fact – that I did feel weary and even faint. As I reflect back on the actual running of the marathons, in those middle miles and then of course, the final ones, there was always a point in the midst of extreme fatigue where I asked myself, ‘why did I think I could do this?’ or more to the point, ‘why would anyone ever WANT to do this?’
The prophet Isaiah seems to be drawing up a comparison between our human frailty and weakness and the eternal strength and power of our God. But more than just comparing human weakness and divine strength, the emphasis is on the relationship between the two. It is not just that God “does not faint or grow weary and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny,” but more importantly, God GIVES “strength to the fainting, for the week he makes vigor abound.” That our God IS, means that God gives constantly and freely to his creation, to his creatures, and in a very special way to humanity. This gift is what we call the Incarnation, where God gives the Divine Self by entering into creation itself. What power is this that can give so totally and completely to another? It is not enough that God created us, but God wants to BE with us in such an intimate way. This is a different kind of strength and power than what we see so many times operating in our world.
The 14th century mystic, Meister Eckhart, speaks of the intimacy of the self-giving of God in terms of a ‘birth’ in the human soul itself.[i] The human soul itself is divinely designed to receive the gift of God – this ‘birth’ – in such a way that “God streams into the soul in such an abundance of light, so flooding the essence and ground of the soul that it runs over and floods…into the outward man [sic].” Of course, we have to be able to ‘see’ and recognize this ‘birth’ for its full effect to be actualized, but isn’t that the struggle of our journey in this life? It is as if human ‘weakness’ is perhaps the ‘failure’ of not taking full advantage of this divine capacity within our soul. We often seem to mistake strength and power in individualistic and isolationist contexts so that we cannot ‘see’ much less respond to the kind of strength and power of God that Isaiah is speaking about. This is the divine power of God giving Himself away and in so doing sustaining us in that Loving gift. The more we can ‘see’ and respond to this great gift, it can do nothing else, as Meister Eckhart tells us, but flow out as a flood from our soul into all of our actions and relationships.
So what would it take for us to begin to see the act of graciously recognizing, receiving, and responding to the Self-Giving of God (the Incarnation) so that our notions of ‘power’ and ‘strength’ are transformed from individualistic accomplishments into relational sharing? Matthew in his Gospel today (Mt 11:28-30) has Jesus tell us quite simply what it will take…release and surrender – two words we culturally associate with ‘weakness’ and to be avoided:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
Jesus as the Christ is inviting us here to come to Him with everything we have – all the baggage, the joys, fears, defeats, hopes, sufferings, illusions and dreams – and ‘learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.’ Those are two more words – ‘humble’ and ‘meek’ – that, like release and surrender, culturally carry with them negative or at least unattractive connotations. We many times may ‘glaze over’ when we hear this passage because it can seem to us that Jesus is asking us to be ‘doormats’ for the world. But again, could this interpretation simply be our application of conditioned cultural connotations that may in fact not represent the Gospel message at all?
I wonder if this Gospel passage is possibly giving us a definition of ‘faith’ which carries with it the potential of transforming familiar ways of operating in our world into new and even ‘divine’ ways of engagement. The Spanish Catholic priest philosopher, Raimon Panikkar, speaks of ‘faith’ as the gift of ‘seeing’ and then responding or appropriating this consciousness concretely into one’s life.[ii] This experience of faith is a personal – not individualistic – experience that “reveals to us that the name Christ is not only the name of a historical personage but a reality in our own life.” In this way it has the capacity to transform our entire being. We are receiving Christ into our life in such a way that we are indeed manifesting Christ. Although this sounds pretty ‘heavy,’ Jesus is telling us that it is actually an ‘easy yoke’ and a ‘light burden.’ This is the matrix for transformation.
How idealistic and naive does this sound – this notion of ‘faith’ which means releasing and surrendering to the gift of God coming into our souls and lives in our world as it is, in the people we meet as they are? We sometimes shortchange the power of what the Gospel message may be. Could the incarnation of our God really mean that we give up the prescribed notions of power, strength and individualism that we so heavily depend upon, and receive – here’s the clincher – the ‘humility’ and ‘meekness’ of Christ? Could this mean that we then become givers of the same gift we receive and truly then live in the Incarnation of Christ?! And even more so, could this mutual giving actually CHANGE our world and universe so that faces of terror, fear, bigotry and violence transform into smiles of compassion and solidarity?
When we give what we have been given, we are in a way making the same journey in life, or to use my metaphor – and Paul’s – we are running the same race (2 TIM 4: 7) . It is during those last miles of a marathon, where it does seem almost as if it is not me at all who is running, or at least it is not only me. Barring delirium from fatigue, it is as if everyone I have ever known and all those I have not known are there with me, running beside me, un-weary in solidarity – the Christ Run!
[i] The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. Translated by Maurice O’C Walshe (Crossroad Publishing Company: 1979) Pages 39-40. https://philocyclevl.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/meister-eckhart-maurice-o-c-walshe-bernard-mcginn-the-complete-mystical-works-of-meister-eckhart-the-crossroad-publishing-company-2009.pdf
[ii] Raimon Panikkar. Christophany: The Fullness of Man. Translated by Alfred DiLascia. (Orbis Books: 2004) p. 21.
Peace,
Thomas