My Beloved and Bewildering Jesus
During the ReVision conference’s main-stage session on recentering Jesus as prophet, Fr. Richard was asked why the first of the CAC’s principles is “the teaching of Jesus is our central reference point.” He explained that the reference point has to be personal, not abstract, because we are drawn to people. “Jesus has the potential to keep your spiritual life a romance,” Fr. Richard elaborated on that Friday afternoon.
Those words stuck with me through Sunday, when I had an opportunity to speak with Fr. Richard at the book signing. “That’s how I feel about my relationship with Jesus,” I explained to him. “My spiritual life is a romance.”
Like any romantic, I struggle to put my feelings for my beloved and bewildering Jesus into words. All I know is that I have always been drawn to him. We started out as friends. He was someone I could tell everything to, who would always listen, and whom I learned to listen to as well—whether in the silence of an empty church or in the rustle of the wind through the trees.
When I think about the question of what we do with Christianity, I understand that Jesus has been—as with the memory of many holy people—weaponized by empire, manipulated to serve agendas utterly antithetical to the Beatitudes he preached.
Through divine providence, I somehow went through years of Catholic upbringing relatively unscathed. Even when I was seduced by the idea of being a “good Catholic” by following all the rules, at my core I believed the two things they made us repeat in grade school: “God is love” and “God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good.”
Beneath all the rituals and dogmas, my foundation was Love and Divine Goodness as a totally free and unmerited gift. Isn’t that the epitome of romance?
Jesus romanced me so much that I gradually moved from the rules of Catholicism to a relationship with Christ, making what Fr. Richard calls the “erotic decision” to allow Jesus to animate my life. As Dr. Barbara Holmes stated in a video played at the conference, “Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world.”
When I read the Gospels, I see this in how Jesus treated those deemed outcasts. He ate with people society called “sinners.” Jesus went out to the margins, as Fr. Greg Boyle says, so that the margins would no longer exist.
This is my sacred call. This is what I do with Christianity. I cast aside all the rotten fruit, and I hold onto Jesus, who—as Randy Woodley reminds us—did not mean to start a religion but calls us into a new way of life.
So, I sit in the silence. I allow my beloved and bewildering Jesus to transform me so that, like him, I can be a healer, I can be a peacemaker, and I can be love manifested in the world.
Paulina Gonzales is a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, aunt, and friend who lives and teaches in San Diego. In 2024, she participated in the Living School’s Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course. Jesus daily romances her with poetry, sunshine, Scripture, and quiet moments in nature.
The Center for Action and Contemplation’s mission is to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action. In this issue of the Mendicant, we are honored to share with you articles from five members of CAC’s community about what loving action looks like in their lives. Download a PDF of this issue.