In the class I am presently teaching (on the Liturgy), we are wading through the deep waters of Jean Corbon’s book on the liturgy.
It’s really extraordinary, dense and filled with endless mind-blowing insights. I have read the book several times and still feel like a novice.
Plunging into Christ
A part that struck me forcefully this past week was a particular reflection he offered on what it means to say that Jesus, as the God-Man, is the hearth and core of the liturgy.
We believe that Jesus is the singular-point of a perfect union of God and humanity, i.e. in Him human and divine cleave together in an unbreakable, perfectly harmonious covenant. Jesus IS the covenant because He is the locus where God and humanity are forever-sealed as two-in-one.
So imagine what it is like to enter His heart, the space where that union burns brightest and hottest; where his two minds and two wills (human-divine) exchange their thinking and loving. It is into that enfleshed Furnace that we are drawn in Baptism, and into which we choose to enter each time we pray, receive sacraments, read Scripture, choose to obey, love our neighbor, die to ourselves. We enter ever more deeply into that ‘space of exchange’ that is forever roiling and burning in the heart of Christ.
Think Your Thoughts in Me
As I mused on that deep mystery, I recalled St. Paul’s assertion that we have the ‘mind of Christ.’ We might think of that as a mere moral assertion – we think like Jesus, like the WWJD slogan says. But, Corbon, reminds us, there is far more: we have been drawn into the very core of Jesus the God-Man, the living Temple, the holy-holy-holy place where God’s living mind and our human mind think together; where God’s living heart and our living heart beat together. And what holy fear I feel when I catch a glance of where I am, being privy to this most awful exchange, when I choose yet again to be ‘in Christ.’
As for the liturgy, it is this ‘new space’ in Jesus that powers the Sacraments and Mass – that draws the whole cosmos into the very hidden recesses of the life-creating Trinity.
Sell Your Cleverness
And if you say, after reading this, ‘What he is talking about?’ you’re on the right track. Next step: pray like Moses.
You’ve addressed this theme before — the Fire of Divine Love. How shocking it was to me to think the Fires of Divine Love and the Fire of Hell have the same source — it is our reaction to His Love that shapes our experience of Divine Fire.
You know, you comment makes me think of Plato’s allegory…for the one who has long lived in darkness, being made present to the Sun’s light causes great pain; but for the one who has lived in the light, the Sun illumines the beauty of the world and reveals its beauty. Same light.