In the world but not of the world

“In the world but not of the world”: it feels like a wrestling match some times, and I usually think I’m losing.

Flight is not an option - if I take the wings of dawn to the furthest stretches of the ocean, still I would not escape myself, that microcosm of all I long for and all I loathe.

To be in the world but not of the world is to be embodied in my own self without being ruled by that self. It is to heed the soft, unwieldy animal flesh and myriad desires and innumerable limitations; and yet to be divine, to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect, to be that glorious mystery of resurrected flesh renewed by the power of a Spirit I do not understand.

Freedom, most of all, is the longing of my heart. I want to cast off the soft, unwieldy animal flesh and myriad desires and innumerable limitations; I want to be divine and perfect, a glorious mystery. I want to be free to believe, to hope, to love; to run and not grow weary, to dance and never tire, to listen and not lose attentiveness, to give and not to count the cost. It is Kate who weighs me down – whose finiteness constricts and imprisons in an inescapable microcosm of sin and weakness and littleness.

The flesh or the spirit?

Incomprehensible dichotomy – for if I must choose between the two, I am bound to loss. Flesh I will have and hold, till death do us part. I cannot cast her off; without her finiteness I cannot exist. She is, in fact, me.

I am chained to my Kate, in sickness and health, for better and worse. She is in the world; she is of the world; yet she is glorious and divine?

Can I hold these truths in creative tension?

Can I possibly believe in an Incarnate God? How could the Author write Himself into the story? How could He let go of freedom to be consigned to animal flesh?

He is elsewhere, surely; not here in the story. If I wish to know Him, I must escape the story. I must flee to the land where desires and limitations are no more; to the place of perfection and divinity and freedom.

At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. (Matthew 27:51)

He broke the fourth wall, and suddenly His story was our story and our story was His story and there was no more veil of mystery separating heaven and earth.

Divinity humbled; humanity exalted; unjust equivalency realised; we look upon I AM even as He looks upon us.

He was in the world. He was of the world, made of the very dust He created; consigned to the same fate He spoke to Adam.  

He made Him to be sin. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Christ, supreme act of contradiction to reason! Christ, who by your Incarnation chose the ultimate degradation!

Yet all the while You were without blemish, unspeakably holy, beloved of your Father, pleasing in His sight.

You are the final Revelation: God enfleshed, the immutable answer.

I will not cast You off. I will give my Fiat to Incarnation – most loathsome limitation, most glorious freedom!

It is flesh that gives weight to my soul.

How peculiar that we refer to seriousness as Gravity! How odd that Mass should denote not only the quantity of matter in a body, but also a collective grouping and the sacrifice of the Eucharist!

Three meanings in one: to be me, to be us, to be in the very Body of Christ. To embrace the flesh, to embrace community, to embrace divinity – are these, in fact, the truth of Vocation?

He calls us to Himself – but He became flesh, and said “Whatever you do to them, you do to Me.” To love our neighbour is to love the Lord.

Oddly enough, it seems to be the very act of reconciling my flesh and my spirit that gives me capacity to love them. While I remain paralysed by the dichotomy, I subconsciously associate others with my hateful flesh, the story from which I ought to be trying to escape. I only see the ways they limit me, the ways I desire their approval, the weighty demands of life tied to their limitations and desires.

When I say Fiat to Incarnation, I say Yes to their bodies, Yes to their souls.

I say “Yes, I see I AM in you, for you too are a glorious part of the divine story.”

I say, “He is not elsewhere; He is right here, in you, in us, in this fleshy, divine communion of Saints.”

I love you, because I love the You who loves you and loves me, whom you love too.

And that Love opens infinite horizons before our gaze; that Love is our freedom here in this world, in this Incarnate reality that gives weight to our souls.

AMDG