Living Epistle (A poem for Wilma)

As I write these things my Grandmother, Wilma, is dying. She has reached the point of no return. There is no hope in her being miraculously preserved to live a handful of more years in her mortal body. She has already lived past ninety years. Now she is hospitalized, and unresponsive, yet still alive as of right now. She will die.

I love Wilma. She radiated God's generosity, thoughtfulness, and loyal love. As the only Grandmother I ever knew (my birth mother's side being entirely unknown to me), proverbial Wisdom echoed in every room she resided, in every phone call, in every note and hand-written card. God's handwriting was written large through her life. A "Living Epistle" read by all, is an apt description of all memories I have of her.

I spoke with her last week on the phone. I'm so very glad I answered the phone that day. She lives very far away from me, but very soon she will be nearer than most Christians realize, being with Eternal Life, Who is much nearer than most realize. 

I am at peace with her impending death. Death actually isn't her end. It is for many of us, but certainly not hers. She will continue to live beyond the moment her frail, mortal body "gives up" its life. She will continue to live beyond mortal death because, in Christ, there is no mortality, no eternal death. There is only eternal life, because Christ is God, and only in God is life-eternal, and only through Jesus Christ our God has eternal death been defeated and eternal life secured. Outside of Christ, there is just this mortal life, and just this mortal death. I'm not the judge of those outside of Christ. I'm not even the judge of those inside of Christ. I'm merely expressing, with absolute certainty, that Wilma's life has testified, and continues witnessing to participation in Eternal Life, here and now, and not in eternal death. 

"In dying, you shall die" was the warning given to human life. In Jesus, the resurrected Christ, there is no more warning--only blessing--saying, "In dying, you shall be raised with Me to life."

So then, what else could I say, given my convictions about the life and death of my grandmother? 

Well, I actually have a poem I wrote recently, inspired by a Byzantine hymn that is sung during Saturday morning lenten prayer services in the Byzantine Catholic Church, that I'd like to share, too. Consider it a meditation on what I have noted above, and a pattern of thoughts woven through many of my convictions, hopes, and dreams, all keeping my thoughts in balance in the midst of life's real turmoils:

In dying you will die

Do good

In dying you will die

Don't ask why

Do good

Don't ask why

Don't question who

Do good

Don't question who

There are no but's

Do good

There are no but's

Don't pretend to know better

Do good

Don't pretend to know better

Don't deflect

Don't ignore

Just do good

How, you ask? 

Imagine God

Becoming human

So that you can become divine

Participating

Sharing

Communing 

In the Divine Life

For ever

And ever

Who fashioned you 

Out of nothingness

With the work of His hands

Who honored you 

With the Divine Image 

The likeness of Unutterable Glory.

Whose loyal love cleanses you

Whose homeland of your heart’s desire 

Is bestowed on you

Loving to Know

What does it take?
...
To reach the point of no return
To say, I can't anymore
I don't even want to anymore
I need You
I want You
For ever more than now
Don't fix things for me—Fix me
Fix all of me or none of me
In Your mercy exact justice
I trust Your judgment—I don't trust mine

I deserve it
What ever that is 

I'm more than a fool
Lost without You
Leading others astray from the Holy
Feet running swiftly toward the void
None of my paths are peace
I only know how to survive
And not very well
When You serve me justice I will need more 

That stream which I poisoned

How can it be purified?
I don't trust my passions
I don't trust in flesh anymore

I used You as my crutch 

I polluted wells
For fun or out of spite
You were elevator music to me
I never had to learn Your rhythm
You were just there in the background

For my listening pleasure
Or to annoy me
As evil as that sounds
It's true 

Now I don't want to live without You
Have mercy on me
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies

Heal my soul
For I have sinned against You
Give me life or give me death
I know what I deserve
Whatever You choose
Do so for the sake of Your name alone
My name isn't worthy
Uproot and plant anew
Kill and make alive

As You wish

Thy will be done
Not mine
I just want what You want

Happy is he that findeth

Happy is he that getteth

Happy is he that retaineth

Happy is he
...
What must I do now? 

Filling the Void

Wisdom hurts 

Like a broken nose

It cannot be touched lightly

Its damage is done

It can’t be unspoken

Rewinding the clock doesn’t heal its bruising

Even without batteries it keeps ticking

Only more can be spoken 

Even its silence is speech 

Beware of its soft words 

Many bones are broken by them

Its quietude is as cloaked daggers

That which has been done in silence is worthy of the Father

To possess this Word is to hear its silence

For it acts through what is spoken

And is known through its silence

Its mysteries were loudly proclaimed

Yet are accomplished in the silence of God

Matthew 11:29

Expose the dishonest

Listen to the self-deceived

Confront the rebel

Support the surrendered

Bring low the pride of the haughty

Offer forgiveness for the guilt-crushed

Abolish the schemes of nations

Provide hope for the despairing 
Humble the exalted

Exalt the humble

Ransom the prisoners

Comfort the discouraged

Impoverish those rich by corruption

Enrich the poor in spirit

Turn back those who wander

Destroy and make alive

Die for the sake of others

Practice resurrection
Like Jesus

St Maximos the Confessor & God wisely dividing the ages

The following excerpt is from a very recent translation of St Maximos the Confessor’s (ca. 580-662) Responses to Thalassios, the Libyan abbot of a monastic community, probably in Carthage, whose letter to Maximos contained a lengthy series of questions, requesting written interpretations (p. 8).

What is presented below is (at least in my own estimation) one of the most profound responses to the eschatological question, “If God in the coming ages will show his riches (Ephesians 2:7), how is it that the ends of the ages have come upon us (I Corinthians 10:11)?”

Here is the written response by St Maximos:

He who brought all visible and invisible creation into being solely through the momentum of His will, had in His good counsel determined—before all ages and even before the very genesis of created beings—an ineffably good plan for his creations. And this plan was for Him to be mingled, without change, with human nature through a true union according to hypostasis, uniting human nature, without alteration, to Himself, so that He would become man—in a manner known to Him—and at the same time make man God through union with Himself, and thus He wisely divided the ages, determining that some would be for the activity of His becoming man, and others for the activity of making man God.  

Thus, inasmuch as the actual “ends of the ages” predetermined for Him to become man “have come upon us”—since the divine purpose of the Incarnation has been fulfilled through the events themselves—the divine Apostle, having carefully examined this, and seeing that the end of the ages intended for God to become man had come about through the very Incarnation of the Word of God, says: “The ends of the ages have come upon us”—not simply “the ages” as we ordinarily understand them, but clearly those which, intended for the actualization of the mystery of embodiment, have reached their proper limit, according to the purpose of God. 

Since, then, the “end of the ages”, predetermined according to God’s purpose to become man, “has come upon us”—inasmuch as God has in truth actualized and brought to completion His own perfect Incarnation—we must henceforth await those other ages that are to come for the actualization of the mystical and ineffable divinization of human beings, in which "God will show the overflowing riches of His goodness to us,” completely and actively effecting divinization in those who are worthy. For if He Himself reached the limit of his mystical activity of becoming man,—becoming like us in every way but without sin, and having descended into the lowermost parts of the earth to where the tyranny of sin had driven man—then there will certainly also be a limit of God’s mystical activity for the divinization of man in every way (with the obvious sole exception of any identification of man with God’s essence), making man like Himself and raising him beyond all the heavens, to where the natural grandeur of grace dwells and calls fallen man through the infinity of goodness. And this is what the great Apostle mystically teaches when he says: “in the ages to come, the overflowing riches of God’s goodness will be shown to us.”1

1. St Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios 

(The Fathers of the Church, Volume 136), Translated by Fr Maximos Constas; Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018; pp. 150-151

John 3:20

Light investing the saint

crowns the virtues with dispassion

fulfills the desires beyond expectation

chases away all distracting passions

banishes the powers of darkness

opens up the depths of oracles 

makes the saint himself scripture

giving boldness before God

receiving the robe that Human Life lost

interceding on behalf of others

consuming the stains of sin

radiating the presence of the age to come

shimmering the brilliance of its pledge of immortality

Light invests the saint

My Lady

At nights and at the dawn of day, I bow before the great radiance of the light of your loveliness
Light unfailing you allowed to dawn upon me, letting me tell everyone of your wonders with fitting loyalty, each one in their proper season
In the name of the father who made you a jewel of his heart, and of the son who veiled himself with your flesh, and of the spirit whose hovering over you brought sweet and glorious new creation, I sing to you
Sacrifice I offer you, my lady, even the fullness of praise that my heart can conceive, and my mind able to perform
O lady, my garden that brings forth aromatic herbs and pleasant aromas, my summer and spring, you are my portico of prayer, my festoon of heavenliness
Night and day I beseech you, my lady, that I may enter your sanctuary, where I am protected from the whispering of those who malign and slander, and find rest from the tongue of the proud who find fault in me