 If my family were to sum up my grandfather in one word, it might have been, affectionately, that he was very frugal. Aside from his love of musicals, movies, and a good laugh, he loved saving money and providing for his family.
Born in the Great Depression to the son of an Eastern European immigrant, he understood the value of money and made it his hobby – almost a game - to nickel-and-dime his budget by counting coins and cutting coupons. So, when he was dying of cancer, back in 2010, one of his deathbed concerns ended up being his car insurance. My dad thought it was funny, and the least of his concerns as he was dying. He promised to take care of it and told him not to worry. And so, after my grandfather died, my dad called the car insurance. Turns out my grandfather’s insurance ran out the day he died. Not a penny wasted! A little wink from eternity. A little stamp of the eternal nature of life and a God outside of time. A little sign of God that seems to say: I am concerned with and know every part of you. That the tangible characteristics of a person, no matter whether they are seemingly material or trivial, have a meaning outside of time for God. Tangibles are signs of the mysterious and invisible. Because for God, when he made man body and soul, it became by order that He would speak to him through the sacramental physical: people, places, and things. For Catholics, sacraments and sacramentals are visible signs of God: Jesus in the Eucharist, healing through anointing oil, a holy relic of a saint, scapulars, and holy water. God works through matter as well as spirit for humans because we are both body and soul, unlike the angels. And so, in discerning God’s answers to our questions in prayer I think it makes sense that God would speak to us through the physical reality around us. I sometimes find myself trying to conjure the voice of God out of thin air when I want to hear an answer.. But He is sometimes already speaking through the physical in front of me. Say the coffee table book in front of me. Because God works through tangibles. We can’t disregard any method by which God might speak as being too “un-spiritual.” Recently, I was really straining myself to hear God. When I do this, I usually think to myself that I should put down “all distractions” (as spiritual self-help articles suggest) and try to hear God. Turns out, in that particular instance, picking up a book I was ignoring, right next to me on the shelf, helped provide the answers I was looking for. Sometimes doing a small, physical task is also a good way to hear God. The moments I can think of when I have had a new thought pop into my head (a thought that I can believe or attribute to God) came when I was washing my hands or in the shower. One particular God-thought came to me as I washed my hands on a slow Sunday evening about two months ago. I was thinking about possibilities and new work ventures going forward and the thought “work smarter, not harder” came to me. It seemed a good thought, but I didn’t really attribute it to God. Then maybe an hour or two later that day as I did some sewing and listened to a Christian YouTube video, the speaker in it, out-of-the-blue mentioned that he felt God was saying “Work smarter, not harder”. Confirmation in the physical. The tangible voice of God that requires no conjuring to see or hear. For God lives and breathes through all being. Look in front of you and see what interests you. What might God be speaking through it today? . . . . . “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God].” - Revelation 21:3 Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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 When I was a kid, I kind of felt sorry for Pontius Pilate. He tried, you know. He recognized that Jesus was righteous and tried to save him. But he was just too afraid of the crowds to see it through.
I have heard theologians draw parallels between the passion and death of Jesus with the Garden of Eden story. One parallel is that Jesus died on a tree (the cross) because the fruit from the Garden of Eden was from a tree. Another parallel is that when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, she first mistook Him for a gardener, hearkening back to Adam’s job in the Garden of Eden. But, in the New Testament, Jesus is the new Adam. We get lots of “undoings” in the New Testament of Old Testament symbols. And a lot of the New Testament seems to deal with restoring the dignity of women, undoing approaches documented in the Old Testament. One New Testament "undoing" in particular, the single verse of Matthew 27:19, holds this same emphasis in a short, easy-to-miss line, that still manages to pack a punch. So, Pilate’s wife has a dream and sends a message to her husband, while he is on the bench, that he should have nothing to do with the death of the righteous Jesus. Pilate, who knows that Jesus is being accused out of envy, tries to save Him but eventually gives up and washes his hands of Jesus' execution. And it goes down in history that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. In the Garden of Eden, Adam, who is charged with effectively “governing” the garden – as Pilate governs the people - follows his wife Eve and her bad counsel, and eats the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so sin enters the world. But with Pilate, through failure to follow through with his wife’s good counsel, the power of sin to murder an innocent human being is raised and then defeated on the cross. God wastes nothing! The dream of Pilate’s wife makes for an effective and dramatic story, but perhaps God had it happen to make a point about women as co-heirs in the salvation of Christ. Since Adam listened to his wife regarding sin, God would have to use a New Testament husband's not listening to his wife in virtue. Since her Immaculate Conception, and certainly since her exhortation to her Son at the Wedding of Cana, Mary is the true New Eve. Mary is a model for us all, including Pontius Pilate's wife. Perhaps we can think of Pilate’s wife as echoing the wisdom, the Sofia, of Mary, in whom is redeemed the counsel of women, the co-heirs in Christ. |
Quis ut Deus?In search of the Face of God. Personal blog with musings, thoughts, and stories. Archives
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