Francis of Assisi knew that if you can accept that the finite manifests the infinite, and that the physical is the doorway to the spiritual (which is the foundational principle we call "incarnation"), then all you need is right here and right now—in this world. This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth. Time opens you up to the timeless, space opens you up to spacelessness, if you only recognize them as the clear doorways that they are.
There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. The Christ Mystery refuses to be vague or abstract, and it is always concrete and specific. When we stay with these daily apparitions, we see that everything is a revelation of the divine—from rocks to rocket ships. Our only blindness is our own lack of fascination, humility, curiosity, awe. The only thing needed is a willingness to surrender to the naked now which God always inhabits, where the incarnation is always taking place and always mysterious, where God in every moment is perfectly hidden and at the same time perfectly revealed. Hold that paradox together. Those who have eyes to see can allow both to be true.
He then offered some of his thoughts about the Eucharist and its meaning. For example, he repeated something he said last time about the Eucharist not simply being a prize to be handed out, but the food we eat to be healed, i.e., it's ultimately a rite of reconciliation. He also gave some background to the Eucharist, saying that the Last Supper took place on Passover, a Jewish holiday where bread was blessed, broken, and shared in commemoration and remembrance of going from slavery to freedom. But to celebrate the 'new covenant' between God and humanity, Jesus told his disciples to do this in remembrance of him, the 'passover' of his death and resurrection, the connection of the finite and the infinite.
Fr. Michael stressed the importance of remembrance for the Jewish people, which for them was dynamic, about making the past present. It brought to mind the importance of mindfulness in Buddhism. Sati, the Pali word that's often translated as mindfulness, basically means to keep something in mind. Mindfulness is arguably the cornerstone of the Buddhist path of practice, the noble eightfold path.
This led into a discussion about the celebration of mass, which Fr. Michael said was something to be participated in, not just watched. He said that over time, the mass got so loaded with things that it became more something to be watched than a communal activity, which is one of the reasons they changed things during Vatican II. Ideally, communion should be 'stunningly simple,' a celebration of the mysteries of life and the wonder and awe all around us, where the finite and infinite consociate. The Eucharist, then, is both the source and summit of the Christian spiritual practice, and is akin to an awakening experience, removing our blindness to "the naked now that God always inhabits."
I still find it rather difficult to believe that God literally becomes manifest, in the flesh, in bread and wine. But thinking about it in this way — that there's a divine nature in everything, and that the physical is the doorway to the spiritual — I find it easier to understand: we all have a divine nature within us; and through the mystery of the Eucharist, the finite manifesting the infinite, our divine nature becomes one (reunites?) with the divine nature underlying all things. Communion as a contemplative act.
From that perspective, the idea that God became human in order to show us how to unite with that divine nature doesn't seem so crazy to me. What Rohr says, at any rate, about the finite manifesting the infinite, the physical being the doorway to the spiritual, time opening you up to the timeless, space opening you up to spacelessness, etc. reminds me of the Buddha's words to Rohitassa in AN 4.45:
I tell you, friend, that it is not possible by traveling to know or see or reach a far end of the cosmos [a metaphor for the five aggregates, the six sense spheres, and/or the internal world of fabricated experience] where one does not take birth, age, die, pass away, or reappear [i.e., attain the deathless]. But at the same time, I tell you that there is no making an end of suffering & stress without reaching the end of the cosmos. Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos.
The conversation then shifted towards the need for synthesis between the teaching side and pastoral side of the church. Fr. Michael mentioned the recent interview of a cardinal who, when asked about the current synod, said that he thought the teaching and pastoral sides of the church are moving closer together. He also touched upon the idea of graduality that's emerged.
Graduality is basically an extension of the idea that conversion (coming closer to God, realizing the divine nature) is an ongoing process, that the spiritual life is also a spiritual journey. In that sense, graduality refers to the practical side of the spiritual life, the 'how to' if you will. There's a similar idea in Buddhism, that of "a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual practice, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch" (Ud 5.5). From the Christian standpoint, the divine is everywhere; and our participation in the Eucharist helps us to become more awake, more aware of that divine indwelling.
I find it rather similar to the Mahayanin idea of buddha-nature, in fact. Buddha-nature, like the divine indwelling of God within us, isn't something we create or gain through our development of moral conduct and contemplation, it's something we wake up to that's always there in the present moment, "where God in every moment is perfectly hidden and at the same time perfectly revealed." Buddhism achieves this, in part, by stressing the non-selfness of conditioned phenomena (i.e., the aggregates), while Christianity does so through the similar idea of 'dying to self' (e.g., see In the Spirit of Happiness, The Monks of New Skete, p. 86).
The more I explore Christianity, the more I'm coming to see that, although there's a deeply devotional aspect to it, there's an equally deep and rich contemplative side to it as well. And it's the latter I'm principally drawn towards. I read this in Merton's The Sign of Jonas today and found it exceptionally relevant:
[Quoting from a letter he received from Dom Porion]: "Most people find their balance in doing, in creating something, mere contemplative life requires a special grace—and a special fidelity. It requires a ripeness too, a maturity of soul which is not often to be met (with)in converts. ... But to contemplate in the first meaning of the word; to look directly at God and keep quiet—calm and purity being at once the condition and consequence of the vision—this indeed seems to me the true life, the life everlasting we are made for. The modern world seems to fly from that ideal: but I am convinced that mankind in the end will find again the way of contemplation—nature and surnature, in their deepest, leading to this divine joy." (176)
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