Monday, April 12, 2010

Being Catholic...

Paradoxically, one of the hardest things about being a Catholic Christian is facing the immense grace of God. It's hard in one respect to be Catholic because you never have the luxury of writing people off, condemning them entirely to their sins. You are always hamstrung in the urge to "write people off" by the insidious, untiring grace of God, which you know never completely writes off anyone. It's hard in another way to be Catholic because you never have the luxury of resigning yourself to your own sins. You can never completely "let yourself go" since you know the insidious, untiring grace of God is never finished with you, will never let you alone. We are created in the image of the Triune God, and therefore our being is to be-with, to co-exist. There are no pure individual persons and grace--the very presence of God-as-given--is the way this fundamental ontology is strengthened and illuminated in time. To the Catholic eye, there is always a glimmer of hope in every intolerable person we meet, and always an echo of redemption in every consuming situation in which we find ourselves. No one is ever stuck being "the perfect asshole" we want to type-cast them as, and we are never stuck being "just who we are," for the fragrant, unseen figure of Christ always lurks to conform us, and them, to His own scarred beauty. Tragicomically, grace is the space in which we write ourselves off, the rope by which we either climb up or hang ourselves.

1 comment:

desid. said...

"We are created in the image of the Triune God, and therefore our being is to be-with, to co-exist."

Well, therein lies the answer as well: there's a distinct difference between imago Dei vs. similtudo Dei.

The truth of the former is rather obvious. It is to be found not only in passages from our Scripture but perhaps even in the sutras of others as well.

Yet, because the latter is not true; don't expect me (or others) to [re]act accordingly since, after all, we remain human.