Based on a chapter called the Final Judgement in Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini’ s book “Piccolo Manuale della Speranza – Vivere con Fiducia il Nostro Tempo” [A Small manual of Hope – Living our lives in Trust]. Giunti Editore S.p.A. Milano, 2012.
Journeys of our personal anxieties.
There are many ways to reject God. The most common, and one of the best hidden in our subconscious, is to refuse to accept death.
Yet, we are all on a journey, whether short or long, that will take us inexorably towards it. Some try to console themselves by thinking that, when they die, they will no longer exist and so until then death does not exist.
A meager consolation. Death looms large over every second of our life. It frightens us with a simple question: what will happen to me after I die?
This is a challenging question. It pushes us to a profound reflection. Death is like a rock that impedes us from sinking into superficiality. It conveys a strong message to us to seek a goal to make life worth living. At the same time, its apparent unassailability tends to create in us a counter-reaction against its tyranny by seeking a meaning in life and to justify our daily slogs.
Perhaps, on reading these words one may be tempted to reject them: Is not this blog called Rays of Hope? What kind of hope do these words elicit? I will remind you of a well-known parable that will shed light on the problem of death, even if there is no mention of physical death at all. This is the parable of the prodigal son.
Briefly, a man had 2 sons. The younger asked his father for his share of the inheritance and left for a faraway country. There he squandered away his fortune. When a famine hit that land, the only job he could find was on farm feeding pigs. He was hungry but he was not allowed to eat the pigs’ husks. He then remembered the house of his father where even the servants have as much food as they want and here, he was dying of hunger. So, he said to himself, I will return to my father and confess that I made a mistake and ask him to keep me as one of his servants. That is what he did. He left that place and returned to his father.
The father saw him while he was still far away and ran to him, hugging him and kissing him. He did not even let him speak but took him back home where he instructed the servants to dress him up as a son should be dressed and to have a party with the best meats, music, and dancing.
The elder son was returning from the fields when he heard the music. He asked a servant what this was in aid of, and the servant told him that his brother was back and that his father threw a party for him. The elder son was livid and refused to enter. His father went out to him and begged him to join the party, but the son refused accusing his father that although he had slaved for him for many years and never left him, he had never even given him a kid goat to eat with his friend. The father replied that all he has now was his, but it was necessary to celebrate and rejoice the return of his brother as his brother had been dead and has now returned to life, he had been lost and now had been found.
When the younger son hit bottom, as if in a counter-reaction, he remembers that at his father’s house even the servants live a good life, have dignity and “more food than they want”. The experience of misery allows him to look at the path of death he had chosen in the face and to rebel.
When we feel lonely, when nobody seems to want us anymore and when even we feel that we have reasons to despise ourselves or to be unhappy with ourselves, when the prospect of death or of a grave loss scares us and shoves us into depression, it is than that from the depths of our heart re-emerges the intuition and the longing of Another who can accept us and make us feel wanted, irrespective of our past and present actions.
God the Father, in this sense is the image of one in whom we can trust without reservations, a haven where we can rest, convinced that we will not be rejected. However, the bible shows the Father as also having many motherly traits. So, it would make more sense to speak of a Father-Mother figure who reminds us of our roots and gives us the feeling of security evoked by cosy images of our hometown where we grew up, our parental home, and the warmth of the fireplace in winter.
In this light, the words of the prodigal son: “I will leave this place and go to my father” expresses the need for roots with which to identify oneself, for companionship where one feels loved and forgiven, for a goal to aim for. The in-built anxiety caused by our destiny to die, of practically being hurled towards death and the longing for the Mother-Father figure to whom we desperately plead for salvation, are two aspects of the same process. A development that occurs in our heart, even when it does not occur in a dramatic fashion but is expressed in the small daily hopes and anxieties. As we all suffer from anxiety to some degree, we are all in a pilgrimage towards the Father, driven by the nostalgia of our parents’ home, wherein we can find ourselves again with the assurance of being understood and welcomed in spite of everything that has happened.
If this description is correct, then why do so many people have a strong, even visceral rejection of the father figure? Why is the Father-Mother figure of our roots for many simultaneously also an enemy to give battle to, the counterparty from whom to escape and from whom to emancipate oneself? Why does the younger son in the parable leave “for a distant country” far away from his father? This points to the compulsion we must demand an explanation from those we think are somehow our superiors, about what is due to us, so that we finally are really independent, and we can do whatever we like. But for this to happen, we somehow need to obliterate the father figure, live like it never existed, suppress its memory. Among many voices one identifies this rejection: “The feeling of nothingness that often dominates me – writes Franz Kafka in November 1919 – originates largely from your influence […]. I could enjoy what you were giving me only at the price of shame, exhaustion, weakness, and guilt. In short, I could be grateful to you as a beggar would, not with facts. The first visible result of this education was to shun everything, even if remotely, I still remembered you.” [loosely translated from Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka].
The rejection of the father figure by many today, should make us wary of using the father figure (and up to a point even the mother figure) as a way of talking about God, in a facile way. What we mean when we talk about “returning to the Father” is not a regression to an infantile dependency and even less to a reawakening of the deep conflicts that have scared certain types of personalities. The Mother-Father figure that we are reflecting on serves as a metaphor of the ultimate and mysterious Other, in whom we can trust without fear, in the certainty that we will be heard, forgiven and purified. This reflection of the Father-Mother face that loves unconditionally, has been positively felt by many of us who have had happy experiences with their parents. However, those who had only partially experiences or even negative ones, feel, perhaps even more strongly, the longing to abandon themselves to the absolute Other. This Other, who offers himself to all as Mother-Father with love, as “Thou” of mercy and faithfulness, is the one revealed by Jesus Christ. It is not just a wish, a desire, or wishful thinking: it is a reality that was revealed to us and on which we can rely as if it were an immovable rock, as if it were a pair of strong hands that hold us tightly, as if it were a heart beating for us.
Of course, it remains relevant to bring our anxieties, fears, and weaknesses into our meeting with the word of God, with the burden of human hope and expectation of Another that they entail. The revelation of God the Father intersects with our anxieties and our hopes; but it is not derived from them, it comes first, having an undeniable, verifiable history. Providentially, the revelation meets us half-way and gives meaning to that return and rediscovery of the Father that is meant to be the earthly pilgrimage of every human being.