Incarnation: A Franciscan View
Jesus Is InterFace with God
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Franciscan spirituality emphasizes the imitation and love of the humanity of Jesus, not just worshipping his divinity. We recognize how humble and human Jesus was, which makes him imitable for us. Doing what he taught—“Follow me”—might actually be possible! Francis’ earnest desire was to be like Jesus; his simple rule for the Franciscans was “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.”
God as Trinity validates the Transpersonal level (“Father”), the Personal level (“Jesus”), and the Impersonal level (“Holy Spirit”) of God-experience. They are all true—God as “I,” God as “You,” and God as “That,” which is full mystical experience. But most people begin at the personal level. You can’t fall in love with a concept, a moral force, high vibrational energy, or consciousness itself. God raised up Jesus and made him the Christ (Acts 2:32, 36). Jesus revealed in human form the incarnation of God, the union of the spiritual and the material, which has been true for about 14 billion years. In Jesus, God took human form, human face, human eyes, and human endearment; God is finally someone we could fall in love with. God was given a face and a heart in Jesus.
The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) said the only thing that really converts people at a deep level is seeing “the face of the other.” Receiving and empathizing with the other leads to transformation of the whole person. This exchange is prepared to transform both persons—the seer and the seen. According to Levinas, the face of the other, especially the suffering face of another person, creates a moral demand on your heart and your mind that is far more compelling than the Ten Commandments. Just giving people commandments doesn’t change the heart. It may steel the will, but it doesn’t change the heart.
So many Christian mystics talk about falling in love with the face of Jesus. The mystical encounter is not just cerebral, analytic, or morally correct; it actually is an I-Thou encounter. There is no doubt that this was the experience of both Clare and Francis, and I think this is why Clare uses the word “mirroring” so much. You are mirrored not through concepts, but through faces. I know there have been moments in my life with a confessor or a therapist where I have come in hating myself, as we Enneagram Ones are very prone to do. When I dared to look up at the face of the therapist or the confessor, they were smiling at me— giving me the face that I couldn’t give myself.
You can’t mirror yourself. If you are a loving person today, you likely received a loving look from your mother and your father in the first years of your life. That is the initial mirroring, the template that some say we seek for the rest of our life: someone delighting in us with the pure freedom with which our mother and father first delighted in us. If you did not experience such loving gazes from your parents, I hope you have found other compassionate people or creatures to show you your own belovedness. Only then are you prepared to pass the mystery on. You can only give away what you have received, and in fact you must pass it on or you cannot and will not keep it.
Gateway to Silence:
The Christ is everywhere.
Reference:
Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism: I Am That Which I Am Seeking, disc 3 (CD, MP3 download)
