Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

 Lectionary: 469

Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
These you should have done, without overlooking the others.
Woe to you Pharisees!

The American rabbi and philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, wrote,

Most of all, man is in need of a sense of the unconditional. Otherwise, he will perish. "Without relating himself to the unconditional," Kierkegaard says, "man cannot in the deepest sense be said to live... that is, it may be said he continues to live, but spiritlessly.
Kierkegaard... felt that man's gravest danger lurked in the loss of his sense of the unconditional, the absolute. We conduct our lives according to conditionals, compromises, and concessions, all relatives.
In faith an individual commits everything to the Absoluteness of God. But the Absolute is cruel; it demands all. (A Passion for Truth, Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995, page 112)

Our age of partisan, polarized ideologies feels acutely the unconditional challenge of being human, even as we are continually dealing with the nonsense of conditionals, compromises, and concessions. The challenge is born of very real threats to human existence that humans have created. If we have not mastered hurricanes and pandemics, we fear them far less than a nuclear winter. 

The atomic bomb seemed at the time to be the best answer to the threat of an endless, savage war of attrition on the island of Japan. And then, after World War II, we could match the overwhelming resources of Russia with The Bomb -- until Russia acquired the same technology. Then it devolved into the real threat of Mutually Assured Destruction and nuclear winter.

Unable to think through that existential threat, we have generated dozens of others threats to one another. We can only agree that everyone else is wrong. 

But polarized, ideological thinking, despite its intensity, cannot surrender to the unconditional demand of God. Terrified of the monsters it has created, it wants the other party -- The Other -- to surrender to it. God does surrender to us, as we have seen Jesus surrender on that fatal day in Jerusalem; but we can accept His surrender only by surrendering to Him. 

And that seems unthinkable. It is beyond our comprehension. Standing on a ledge fifty stories above the ground, we fear to relax even for a second and take the hand that is outstretched and ready to receive us.  

A 17th century poet offers hope for the weary twenty-first century: 

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,

Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.”

George Herbert (1593—1633)