Mystical Word: 7th Sunday of Easter, the Ascension of the Lord | Faith vs. Fanaticism IV
This Sunday we celebrate the mystery of Jesus’ Ascension. As Jesus was taken up, the disciples watched. Then two men in white garments told them, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
The Ascension is the event in which Jesus returns to the realm of God, to heaven. In Greek, the word for heaven is “ouranos,” which literally means “sky.” The word signifies not only the physical sky but also God’s transcendence (being beyond all things). The ancients understood God’s being God in terms of the sky. For, the sky is everywhere we look yet beyond our grasp. The sky impinges on us. It is the all-pervading atmosphere. Neither space, nor time, nor existence itself limit God. We are after the God beyond God who is not any particular thing. God is no-thing; God is nothing. This is crucial for us to understand if we want to know God. We cannot know God like we know the things of the world. Just as the heavens or the sky appear non-graspable and every beyond us, God is ever transcendent.
Even more, the sky, down on our level, is our very breath. God is so close we cannot understand it; we cannot fathom how much we cannot fathom God’s intimacy with us. Thus, “ouranos” signifies both God’s transcendence and incomprehensible intimacy with us. And when we connect with this intimately close and transcendent God, we become free and happy. If you have ever looked out the window on an airplane midflight, you would know the serenity and clarity of the sky. There is not much up there to fixate on. Sure, there are clouds and even storms, but they pass and they are lower to the ground. The heavens, however, always remain above and beyond – untouched by the worst storms and the thickest clouds. One with the transcendent yet intimate God, we are above and beyond all things, too.
Jesus is taken up into heaven, into mystery. He returns to the full life of the heavenly realm in a mysterious way. He returns to the Mystery of God. Jesus will return in a heavenly way. Jesus shows us God in a heavenly way, that is, by transcendence and mystery. Thus, we need faith. The mystery of God as well as the mystery of the Ascension calls forth a deep faith, a faith that goes beyond the mind because God’s nature cannot be grasped by the mind.
This deep faith is expressed by a monk named Abbe Monchanin: “Now is the hour of the garden and the night, the hour of the silent offering: therefore the hour of hope: God alone, faceless, unknown, unfelt, yet undeniably God.” Faith does not rely on anything at all but God. No thinking, no feelings, and no experiences make up the theological virtue of faith. Gospel faith does not rest on any props, especially not a need for certainty.
Over the past few weeks, we have all-too-briefly covered the phenomenon of religious fanaticism. It is alive and well today, even in the Catholic community. Besides being incredibly dangerous, Christian fanaticism pretends to speak for all of Christianity. This is false, of course. But fanatics seek to purge their religion, whatever it is, of people who disagree with them. This makes them very deadly at times. And Christian fanatics seems to throw out all the teachings of Jesus on compassion and mercy in favor of a god that does not exist: a punitive, cultural-validated god that only resides in their minds.
Gospel faith stops the narcissistic mania of religious fanaticism by the letting go of the mind. The faith Jesus praises means knowing beyond the mind, what the mystics call unknowing. Illusions and fanatical ideologies disappear in unknowing or the interior silence beyond thinking. In such silence, we begin to discover that God is with us, within us, and one with us.
Ancient Celtic mystic John Scotus Eriugena describes God as “The Divine Goodness, regarded as above all things, is said not to be, and to be absolutely nothing…it is the Essence of the whole universe.” God is Transcendent Mystery, Incomprehensible Goodness and Love, and the intimate Reality of all things. Eriugena advises us to abandon the operations of the intellect and enter a state of unknowing; thereby we are restored to unity with the Nothing who is above all existence and all consciousness. Wholly detached from thinking, we unknow the Divine Goodness Who is the Absolute Nothingness, the Holy Trinity, the innermost Reality of the whole universe. Then, we are participating in the mystery of Jesus’ Ascension.