How do we receive what we are given? More specifically, do we view our lives as something given to us, something that we have received? Do we experience the things in our lives (nature, relationships, the earth, the universe, prosperity, loneliness, talents, challenges, etc.) as gifts or as things we have at our disposal to do what best serves us? How do we see, hear, and take in the reality that we encounter on an everyday basis? Do we view what we encounter as something that we create and control or as the opportunity for creative interaction with others (people, animals, the world)? Most of us are probably on a sliding scale with regard to these questions.
Some time ago, while sharing in a small contemplative group, one of the members brought up a saying maintained by one of the great spiritual masters, Thomas Aquinas.[i] The quote goes like this: “Whatever is received, is received according to the manner/mode of the receiver.” What could this mean? Although it is not meant to be immediately translated or understood, I will offer my interpretation of some meaning that this phrase could have.
There is perhaps an unconsciousness that we experience as humans regarding the wide range of consciousness levels that we have as individuals and as groups. Our immediate experiences that come to us through our senses and our mind do not always allow us the reflexivity to question our experiences from the standpoint of who or where we are. What I mean here is that the particular culture into which we are born, the education that we have received, the trans-generational opinions and biases that we carry, and many other factors that go unnoticed by us.
We unconsciously identify ourselves with these hidden influences and they become the location from which we experience our lives. When or if we begin to look at all these sometimes hidden forces in our lives, we can begin to see the extreme effect that all of these have on our lives, how we interpret our experiences and relationships, and in some cases how these hidden forces govern how we receive all that is presented to us in our lives. This process or practice of awareness can be difficult, but it can also lead to a more humble, modest and compassionate way of receiving and responding to life.
The Gospel passage today (Mt 18:21-35) gives us a description of how detrimental this unconsciousness can be with regards to our relationships. It all begins with Peter asking Jesus:
“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants…”
And so the story goes on to describe how a debtor who owed the king a large amount was compassionately forgiven the loan by the king instead of being thrown into prison. Rather than emulating this compassionate behavior, the ‘forgiven debtor’ demands that another servant, who owed him a much smaller amount than what he (the ‘forgiven debtor’) owed the king, pay him the debt immediately. Despite the fellow servant’s pleading for patience, the ‘forgiven debtor’ has the servant thrown into prison. The other servants witnessing this report it to the king, which results in the king confronting the ‘forgiven debtor’ asking him why he could not forgive the fellow servant in the same way that he had been forgiven. By the end of the story the ‘forgiven debtor’ who did not show the same compassion as the one who had forgiven was ‘handed over to the torturers,’ ending up in prison after all.
So, of course this story is about forgiveness and the need to receive and share forgiveness. As Jesus tells Peter, forgiveness itself cannot be quantified by numbers, but as the story goes, forgiveness is revealed as qualified by the heart of the one forgiving.
So this kingdom of heaven as Jesus tells us at the beginning of the story is a kingdom of relationships, of accountability, wherein we can begin to see our lives as the gift of interaction with each other. Too often we find ourselves in a posture of feeling that we are owed something. This is a form of privilege that arises from the wrong-headed (or wrong-hearted) notion that we earn what we get by class, race, work ethic, etc., rather than receiving graciously our share in the great wonders that life constantly provides. Perhaps the most insidious form of this is when this sense of control and privilege deprives others of opportunity because the dignity of human persons and relationships is cast aside and trampled. The most unconscious level of this is how the privileged’ cannot see that the disenfranchisement resulting from their behaviors effects everyone, including themselves.
If our manner or mode of receiving life is contrarily the opposite of receiving, i.e., if we see life as something to be grabbed, held, manipulated and squandered, then everything appears that way to us. We take everything in this specific way without question. This could mean that even an act of kindness or compassion expressed towards us will not of itself move us off this ‘center’ of the individual self. We then behave as the ‘forgiven debtor’ who does not – or even cannot – see life other than that way. This rigidity can come from the deep blindness of what it is that is leading the heart.
This is not to say that acts of compassion and patience – forgiveness – cannot influence us. Indeed they can and many times do. However, the accountability or qualification of these acts of kindness can only be received through the mode or consciousness that we have of those factors that determine how we receive life. First and foremost, whether or not we even consider life as git – as something received. If we can allow the possibility of humbly questioning our own framework or view, then new possibilities of for-giving open up in our relationships with each other and the world.
This gospel seems to be not so much about ‘do unto others as has been done to you,’ as it is about paying attention to how we receive everything that comes to us in life. If we don’t question our own motives sometimes and leave ourselves open to the possibility of our mode of receiving being challenged and even transformed, then we end up in a mechanical mode of processing everything like a plant production-line, where the pieces all fit because we know the casting and the mold. Is this the ‘handing over to the torturers,’ the ‘prison’ that we end up placing others AND ourselves in?
When Jesus says that “in anger his master handed him over to the torturers,” could the ‘master’ be this unchecked mode of receiving that has gone haywire? What we do to others we do to ourselves. If we can start to practice looking at our own view or mode of receiving within a backdrop of compassion and humility – not destructive criticism – this can start to build a kingdom of forgiveness where accountability is qualified by the mercy and love we have for ourselves in and through each other, rather than quantified by debts owed due to unconscious and unchecked rigid mental wiring.
Our mode of receiving does not have to be set in stone. We can practice observing it and honestly questioning where we may be ‘coming from’ in how we approach and receive life in all its wonders and simultaneously allow others’ views to confront and challenge our view. This is the merciful ‘king,’ the divine receiver that forgives over and over again. Our growing awareness of the modes of receiving that we all have can lead to the possibility of transformation by increasing the capacity to liberate and include without debt. This is a way of setting the prisoners free, by realizing that we are all prisoners in need of liberation!
[i] Dunstan Robidoux OSB, “Applying a Thomist Principle: Quidquid reciptur ad modum recipientis recipitur” The Lonergan Institute, October 16, 2009, accessed March 21, 2019, http://lonergan.org/2009/10/16/applying-a-thomist-principle-quidquid-recipitur-ad-modum-recipientis-recipitur/
Peace,
THOMAS
(Originally published March 6, 2018)