Word to the Wise
Thursday, December 14, 2006 - St. John of the Cross
[Isaiah 41:13-20 and Matthew 11:11-15]From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.
Dramatic and violent language are not rare in the scriptures. The psalms are full of such vivid words, and sometimes to a degree that truly repels. Even in the passage from Isaiah for today we see the words, "I will make of you a threshing sledge, sharp, new, and double-edged, to thresh the mountains and crush them, to make the hills like chaff." Yet, despite this, the words of Jesus about the Kingdom of heaven suffering violence still jar. All the sources I have indicate that the saying is obscure and I found various interpretations. It appears today in the season of Advent and I am letting that shape my thoughts. Jesus' own birth was marred by violence. Herod sought to kill him and the suffering of the "holy innocents" is related as an event! Hopefully our own experience of this season will not be subject to violence of a life-threatening kind. At the same time, it is a common experience of us all that anything going on in our lives that is hurtful or stressful seems to hurt and stress more in this season. We wind up literally limping to Bethlehem, almost like the boy in the opera, AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS. Nor can we ignore the violence of the"secularization" of a holy event which is annually characterized by lawsuits that object to any representation of the original event! Shall the violent bear it away? John the Baptist is a reminder to us that our faith must resist a process that seeks to reduce it to a set of private values and civil homogenizing. The Kingdom is indeed subject to violence but do we have to stand by and watch it happen? AMEN