The Father’s Robe

One of the innovations, you might say, of my 3rd Quarter teaching plan is the idea of the Related Passage. The Related Passage is a term I use for the step in Lectio Divina that is akin to spreading apart the blinds of the soul and letting in the light of the Holy Spirit.

What do I mean?

Some of the steps of Lectio are laborious, they are rational, they may not feel spiritual. They might seem tedious, but they are important: they are something like the warm-up of the athlete before the game. The body, before it can do creative and wondrous things, often has to do gestures that are mundane and rote. Simple gestures pave the way for higher order activity.

It is similar with Lectio. Consider what I mean with a quick retrace of Lectio’s main steps, in the terms I give the kids. The Inspect step is an exercise in being aware and noticing the practical details revealed by the text. The Heart of the Passage step determines which verse in the passage is central; which conveys the most depth of meaning or raises the most questions. The Reflect step is an unpacking of the Heart verse – spelling out what it says, what it means, what it suggests, what questions it raises. And, at the beginning of them all is the Warm-up, where one invokes the coming of the Holy Spirit to move the soul by the living voice of the Word of God.

That’s all backdrop. After a semester with me, my kids understand these steps and can practice them on any given Biblical passage.

About 6 weeks ago, towards the end of the first semester, I introduced a higher order step.

If the Bible is a mystery with depths that are vast, like the ocean, then to plumb those depths one needs the equivalent of a submarine. A thing to help you go deep. The Related Passage is that submarine strategy. It is the way by which the soul plumbs the depths of Scripture, reaching out to the bottomless heart and mind of God, begging for a ray of His living light.

How does this happen?

It’s like this. The Word of God is not a typical book. Its author is alive and present to the reader who thumbs its pages. These pages do not merely follow in an orderly sequence (though of course they do that). The pages are more like the multi-colored leaves of a great oak tree in the fall. If you stand near the trunk and look up at the sun, this is what you might see: now this leaf catches the light, now another is blown by the wind and illumined. It is a mottling of light you see, as it passes through many moving leaves. The leaves are alive and the light dances across their surface; but behind them glows the Sun and it is she who causes the soul to delight in all this beauty; the leaves merely dance in her light.

It is a little like this with Scripture. One leaf of the page absorbs light in such a manner; another lets its pass through slightly differently. Each of the pages of Scripture interlock and interpenetrate in relation to one another; they move about in a kind of dance. The meaning on one page illuminates the depths of another; together they open a space that allows the Sun’s light to pass through.

I am straining through metaphor to describe something profound that happens in Lectio Divina. Strip away the metaphor and I would say this: the overall spiritual intelligence of the Word of God forms an organic whole; it is something like the mind of God. To know it, to encounter it, to listen to it, is something like being in relationship with God Himself. The Word has a kind a memory, a depth, a multi-dimensional quality. Like a person with memories that influence the present, the Word of God has back stories, side alleys that intersect with the main avenue down which you may be walking.

For this reason, there is a pivotal step in praying Lectio Divina. After you have chosen the heart of the passage and reflected on it, the soul should pray:

O Holy Spirit, is there any other Word that illuminates this one? Is there anything else you want me to see?

This is the step I call Related Passage. Or for the kids: the Submarine Strategy. For about a month, I demonstrated this step live in class. I showed them how to do it. I gave examples. This past week, I told the kids it was their turn. They now have the grace and the ability to practice this step. I would be testing them on this step on Thursday. And so on Wednesday, we did some live run throughs.

We were praying with the passage in Matthew, Chapter 6 where Jesus encourages his disciples to seek the Kingdom of God first, trusting, at the same time, that the Father will provide for their practical needs. We saw that Jesus was not advocating irresponsibility in the practical order; He is just urging his disciples to know and to trust that the Father cares for them, practically as well as spiritually. He is saying, in effect, that just as the birds and the lilies find, in the natural order, an intrinsic wisdom, benevolence and abundance, so the soul will find, in the Kingdom, a benevolence and a providence that runs out ahead of them.

As the Heart of the Passage, the central thrust of meaning, we chose this verse:

“Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things,” (Mt. 6:32) referring to the common practical needs of a human being.

Then, as is our practice, I shared with them this Reflection (the distillation of the heart in our own words):

Jesus knows that his disciples worry about practical things. Like food, clothing – and we might add colleges, jobs, relationships. It’s normal for a person to seek these things. But Jesus encourages his disciples to realize that God himself thinks about our practical needs. Jesus describes a Father who knows us and who cares for us. Jesus says if we seek to know God he will seek to care for us.

That was the Reflect. “What happens next?” I say to the kids. “What’s the next step?”

Related Passage,” comes a voice from the back.

“Yes,” I respond. “But (as I have been reminding them) this step is more like a prayer than simply the next practical step in the process. This is the point at which we turn to God and pray:

‘O Holy Spirit, is there any other passage that illuminates this one? Is there anything else you want to say to us?’”

Oh, if you could have been there! If – at the moment I uttered that prayer – you could have seen the look that came all over S’s face, in the first row, by the window! All light, all wonder, all joy, all youthful delight and love!

“I know!” She says, not even bothering to raise her hand. I call on her. She blurts out, all in a tumble:

“That man who lost his children, his property, then he got really sick, but he never cursed God, he just kept praying and believing, until God spoke to him and blessed him in the end.”

“That was Job,” I replied. “What connection do you see between Job and this passage?”

“He lost all the practical things, but not his love and trust in God. He kept believing,” she said.

“Yes, he kept believing,” I added, filling out her thought. “In a way, he lived the kind of trust that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 6. And then God spoke to him in Job Chapter 38. He helped him see that He had created the world – all of it – from its ineffable majesty down to the smallest details; that He was the author of all its wisdom, even things Job didn’t understand, like his current suffering.”

“And when Job came to accept this,” I continued, “when he came to see there was a wisdom even in suffering, what happened?” I asked.

“God blessed him with the return of his practical things,” she said.

I was beaming with pride and delight as she spoke, but there wasn’t even a second to take it in, for immediately I was interrupted by another shining face and eager voice.

It was M., whom the class lovingly refers to as Pastor M, for her consistent spiritual insights. From the second row, third seat from the front, she cried out:

“I have one!”

“What is it?” I reply, quickly shifting gears.

She too blurted it out, all in a single sentence, in a whir of inspiration.

“The father who had a son who took all his things and went away and lived with hookers and then he ran out of money and got really down and realized it was better at his father’s house and came back and the father said let’s kill the cow for him and celebrate and then his brother got all mad.”

“Beautiful,” I said. “That’s Luke 15, the story of the Prodigal Son. You’ve said a lot there. What exactly from this story do you see as illuminating this passage?”

“That boy had all the practical things but he left his father and then he felt empty,” she said.

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“He went back.”

“What was he looking for when he went back?” I queried. “More money?”

“He just wanted to live.”

“And how did the father respond?” I replied. “What did he give him?”

“Everything.”

“Yes. He gave him everything.” I added. “The son just wanted to live, even as a mere worker in the father’s house. His life was a mess. Just to be one of his father’s workers would have been better than what he had on his own. But that’s not what the father gave. He gave him his life as a son back. He gave him practical things: the finest robe, a ring, sandals, a feast. But more importantly he revealed to him the father’s heart. And he made him a son again.”

As I said these things, tears began to well up in my eyes. I could not believe we were having this conversation. I myself had never made this connection before, between Mt. 6, the story of Job and Lk. 15. Between the Father of the lilies and the birds and the Father of Job and the prodigal son. I felt joy in my student’s learning, but I also felt a kind of spiritual cardiac shock. It was a little like when Job, in the midst of the storm, was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with the voice of the Father ringing out in all depth and thunder and majesty and clarity (Job 38). I could have wept right there but I didn’t want to ruin the moment by having my class feel puzzled at my reaction.

It is not suitable to weep profusely at a high school at 11 am on a Wednesday!

So I backpedaled from the girls’ desks to the front of the room where they could not see the tears welling up in my eyes.

We moved on. I put a lid on my emotion and hit the next slide in my notes.

At the end of my day, when the halls were empty, I did what I usually do: I prayed a monastic office, the wise little structure of prayer that a monk will recite in his small, private chapel. A few prayers, a psalm, a Gospel passage, a pause for silent prayer.

For the Gospel reading, I took the verses that M. had called to mind:

“He got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast. . .’” (Lk. 15: 20-23)

And I thought: what is happening here? What just happened in my classroom?

And I knew, like a warm piece of wax knows the shape of the seal that is pressed into it:

To the soul that turns to the Father, He reveals the abundance of His love. He places upon the soul, the glorious robe of a beloved child. A robe that sings of the Father’s love; and the child is covered in it. It is a divine embrace. It is an exchange beyond words. It is a candle coming up against and getting taken up into flame.

This is the Father who provides food for the birds; colors for lilies. He is also the one who awaits us, who turns to us when we turn to Him. Who shines on us, in all His warmth and radiance, like the sun shining behind the many illumined leaves of great oak tree in fall.

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