setting is a garden. There are two players, but dominating it all is God, his voice heard, his presence felt. We watch what happens. Encouraged by that subtle snake the man and the woman, whole in their nakedness, disobey the very simple command given to them by God. The relationship of God with the men and women of his own creating has been challenged and damaged. Then immediately they discover that they are naked, and so they sew fig leaves together to make a garment which will cover parts of themselves. Here is a split within themselves, for when they cover their nakedness with leaves they are rejecting their original wholeness. And then God speaks to Adam, and Adam blames Eve, but Eve says it was all due to the snake. Then God speaks to Adam of the enmity that there will be between him and the woman, and he speaks to Eve of the pain that she will feel in child-bearing. Now there are splits in the relations between persons. And finally God tells Adam that he is to till the earth with sweat on his brow – there is no longer any harmonious relationship with the earth. Here is the split with the environment.
All these elements are part of the drama. They tell me that I must not think that I can try to heal myself without also trying to heal my relationships with other people, those with whom I have to live. Nor must I forget that I have a debt to the world around me, to the earth and the environment that gives me life. But above all there is God himself, the root and ground of my being. Unless my relationship with him is made whole I shall remain standing in the shadow of the tree in the Garden of Eden, instead of standing under the shadow of that tree which is the cross on the hill of Calvary – the cross that speaks to me of God's forgiving and redeeming love.
The cross also tells me that there are no short cuts. The wood that went to make the cross was taken from a living tree, but a tree that has been cut, shaped, transformed. The process of cutting, stripping and reshaping is never easy or comfortable; it is protracted and painful. Then the cross itself stands there, its main thrust downwards into the ground, its arms stretching outwards, a balance of two opposing forces, vertical and horizontal held together in a dynamic tension. Only so can it be life-giving. In that tension lies a most powerful image for what is at work in my own life. In that transformation I must expect to be shaped, formed and re-formed; nor can I ever hope to escape the tension that lies at the centre and makes possible the holding together of the whole.
Another way of expressing this truth would be to see it in terms of a continual dying and rebirth throughout my life. That I cannot have new life without death is the most fundamental and inescapable of all the tensions I have to hold on to. Here I remind myself of what was really involved in the nativity at Bethlehem, putting aside all the popular representations that have obscured a rather harsh reality: a child laid in a hollowed stone trough, warm human flesh placed on cold, bare stone, a prefiguring – right at the moment of birth – of the moment when that same body would be laid to rest in the stone of the tomb, death and life inextricably bound together.
St Anselm opens one of his prayers with the disarmingly simple words, “O God, who has formed and reformed me…” As I pray them I realize that this is one of God's mercies: that he allows me to remain open, vulnerable, sensitive to the ways in which he is ready to shape and mould me; that I am indeed clay in the hands of the potter; and that continually throughout my life the old gives way to the new – if I am willing (O let it happen, if I am ready to play my part.
I also realize that my own co-operation comes into play; that I must genuinely desire to move forward. My difficulty is that this desire is not always there, that often it seems so much easier and more appealing to stop, to look back, to fossilize, to refuse to grow. I also realize that I must be willing to receive, not proud and isolated, standing confident and aloof in my own self-sufficiency. Can I identify myself with those who sought out Christ in his earthly ministry, coming forward to find him and urge him to heal them? Seeking him out, waiting for him, making their way to him by themselves or with the help of friends? I can read the gospels as an account of a God of healing at work amidst the pain and suffering of the world. Certainly they make it plain that Christ walked in constant awareness of the pain of the world, as well as of its beauty and potential. He never minimized the problems of suffering and of evil. He never offered an explanation which would trivialize human anguish. But by taking human suffering seriously he took human dignity seriously. This comes over most poignantly in St Matthew's Gospel (9:35–6):
Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching and preaching…and healing…every infirmity. When he saw the crowds he had compassion for them, because they were harrassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
That analogy with a shepherd is a very powerful image. Ezekiel describes the care of the shepherd for his flock:
The Lord Yahweh says this: I am going to look after my flock myself, and keep all of it in view. As a shepherd keeps all his flock in view when he stands up in the middle of his scattered sheep so I shall keep my sheep in view…I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the wounded, and make the weak strong…I shall be a true shepherd to them. (Ezekiel 34:11–16).
“To bandage the wounded, and make the weak strong…’ In the Benedictine community the abbot holds the place of Christ and plays the role of good shepherd to the sheep. The shepherd is above all the one who seeks, who goes after the stray, who searches for the lost and who brings them back to the fold. There is here something which we all recognize. For not only are we seeking God. He is seeking us.
To seek God
means first of all
to let yourself be found by him.
He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
He is the God of Jesus Christ.
He is your God
not because He is yours
but because you are His.
To choose God
is to realize that you are known and loved
in a way surpassing anything you can imagine
long before anyone had thought of you or spoken your name.
We are being sought, just as we are in all our weakness and woundedness. St Benedict writes as a man full of compassion and understanding. He expects much from all in his monastery, and yet he also recognizes that some are frail, old, sick, slow, lazy – and I may be any of these at various times in my life. He accepts this, indeed he starts from this, making concessions and allowances, building on the frailty and brokenness of our humanity. He points us a way to God which nurtures as well as challenges, which believes in our potential and yet makes sure that no more is asked of us than we can actually bear. A later Benedictine, St Anselm, writing in the twelfth century, expresses this nurturing, this gentleness in a prayer which asks
And you Jesus, are you not also a mother?
Are you not the mother who like a hen
Gathers her chickens under her wings?
St
