What I want, my God, is that by a reversal of forces which you alone can bring about, my terror in face of the nameless changes destined to renew my being may be turned into an overflowing joy at being transformed into you.[i]
What will it take to convince us of something? With the mind, it is a thorough investigation, replete with separating piece by piece each shred of evidence, followed by analysis and judgement, in an effort to ascertain whether or not the evidence adds up to a composition that supports whatever is being proposed. In all the value and wonderful functioning of the mind in supporting the progress of life, it can fall into exhaustion and exasperation and even delusion when it attempts to do it alone, i.e., without bringing the other human centers online – namely the emotional and the sensate, or more generally, the heart and the body.
How many times do we become fearful and confused when we literally let our minds run loose, set free the unbridled imagination, without any real grounding? This is one way of discerning a distinction between what we may call reaction in contradistinction to what could be more an authentic response. Reactions are automatic and it is the mechanical wiring of our intellectual minds that drive them many times, all the more so when not balanced or integrated with our heart and body. Put another way, we can respond so to speak more authentically when we are physically grounded in the present moment so that the mind is not bracketed or cut off, but rather drawn into a center that seems to reside or abide in the heart area. This idea of centering is a holding attentiveness and calmness together and it can only come about through the art of integration and resonance, and never through reactivity and spouting off.
After walking with the disciples from Jerusalem and dining with them in Emmaus, the next scene in Luke’s Gospel (LK 24: 35-48) has Jesus appearing to all of the disciples back in Jerusalem.
… he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
Jesus’ first words were “Peace be with you.” What could this peace mean?
The disciples are startled and terrified. Jesus immediately senses this. Resurrection experiences can seem to be this way. But that’s just the beginning or the entrance level. As the presence deepens, so does the new recognition. There’s a movement that seems to grow deeper drawing everything into a new type of environment. The disciples thought they were seeing a ghost – totally operating in the head space of reaction and judgment, this encounter challenges the one-dimensionality of their mental capacity in isolation; without the heart space and the body space online, it just seems to be an appearance, a specter that frightens the narrowness of the mind by itself. Put another way, to experience reality directly, we have to engage our feelings, sensations and thinking in a unified field.
When Jesus asks them “Why are you troubled and why do questions arise in your hearts,” it is as if Jesus is leading them through their own integration and potentially growing receptivity to the subtle yet real power in this encounter – this encounter of Peace. They move from only the head to the heart or to put it more integrally, the head space is being drawn toward or really into the heart space. The questions that arise in the heart are the opening to the possibility to truly surrender to and receive and participate in this Christ encounter.
We are sensate beings as humans, and it is toward this material grounding of the human person that Jesus is leading the disciples now. “Touch me and see, a ghost does not have flesh and bones…he showed them his hands and his feet.” With the body, the grounding sensation brings the visceral reality together with the mental experience inside the wideness of the heart space. It is this wideness and expansiveness of the heart field that essentially explodes their recognition, while at the same time allowing an abundant abiding within the dynamic field of new wholeness. There is nothing timid about this dynamic abiding peace offered.
Perhaps finally, the real test of new life and reality is its capacity to nourish and be nourished. This is the ability to surrender and reception, not as two separate movements, but one movement of communion that radiates a new world of abundant possibility. The efficacy of transformation involves chewing on and consuming the nourishment so that it can become the root of our living. The ghost has been transformed into a new living sense of being that radiates from a dynamic aliveness within. “Have you anything to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.
Teilhard de Chardin, that great French scientist and mystic, speaks of this brilliant inner radiance that transforms the world as a living field of fire within ourselves that serves as food.
If the Fire has come down into the heart of the world it is, in the last resort, to lay hold on me and to absorb me. Henceforth I cannot be content simply to contemplate it or, by my steadfast faith, to intensify its ardency more and more in the world around me. What I must do, when I have taken part with all my energies in the consecration which causes its flames to leap forth, is to consent to the communion which will enable it to find in me the food it has come in the last resort to seek.[ii]
The diaphanous shining forth of the fire within brings wholeness into what I would call a dynamic abiding peace, a holy communion that holds, illumines and activates (feeds) the living way ahead. Easter, as a transformative event, must include the integration and activation of our total persons in order for it to be effective. There is no short-circuiting the real thing. Jesus’ surprise visit to the disciples is no isolated event. This is a way of life that can make the most common everyday occurrences shine forth with a new wondrous luster that can effectively and lovingly reshape our external world.
The more we can recognize the mental phantoms and delusions for what they are and rather than flee from them or try to chase them away, instead, invite them into the wideness of the burning heart space, they can there miraculously be embodied and transmuted into an unimaginable newness. The more we can see, touch, embody, and feed each other, or to put it another way, the more we can radically surrender in engaged participation – be present – within our own lives and relationships, the more Christ is encountered, and the more Easter there is! Abiding peace can then be a real Christ greeting!
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself…
You are witnesses of these things
[i] Teilhard de Chardin, HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE (Harper and Row: 1961), 29
[ii] Ibid.