What Is Man?

“What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him?”  – Psalms 8:5

Every week I spend an hour in our parish’s Adoration Chapel in the presence of the Reserved Sacrament, a consecrated Host become the Body of Christ. In such hours of contemplation, with the Monstrance centered on an altar below a life-sized Crucifix, I find myself sometimes struggling with the inadequacy of my response.

Of course I grew up with Crucifixes. (I have a small scar at my hairline  where I cut my forehead at age six on the crucifix affixed to the headboard of my bed. Okay, mostly below my hairline at this point. But not entirely, thank you!)

Anyhow, I must admit that I am somewhat acclimatized to the sight . . . except in those moments when God grants me grace to see the unimaginable sacrifice with fresh eyes, reawakening the awe and dread I feel from that profoundly holy act.

What, Indeed, Is Man?

Further along, the Psalmist expands the wonder of his own question by writing,

“. . . you have made him little less than a god,
crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands
put all things at his feet . . .”

This has led me to contemplate how someone can be worth amazing things while still being unworthy. It seems to be the essence of paradox, resolved only from God’s perspective . . . and I will certainly never reach even a fraction of that point of view.

Crossing The Gulf

Last month I wrote about grief after losing my cat, a beloved companion and source of undiluted affection – love if your definitions allow it.

And yet . . . there was love between me and a simple creature.  She could not talk, discuss books or appreciate music with me. I watched her play, but she had no interest in my  play. She did enjoy my reading because it kept me still enough to be a solid and dependable surface on which to snooze or cadge pettings, strokings, and warmth.

Despite my inability to hear mice in walls, groom myself with my tongue, or appreciate her identifying smells, she loved me and sought me out.

I bought toys – she especially appreciated her mortal enemy, the darting, swiftly moving red dot. I bought treats. I let her alone when she was crabby.

The point being that love bridged the gap between our species despite the expectations produced by reason alone. Far apart in perceptions, senses, intellect, and virtually every other way, we were even so bound by love, ensnared by an indefinable mutual attraction that constituted its own reward and was its own justification.

Love crossed that gulf between species.

Love Is The Bridge  

So too, love is how God crosses the gulf between his unimaginable majestic, glorious splendor and our constrained, mortal, painfully limited ability to see beyond our own nature with our cramped imagination and intellect.

The gap between God and us is far greater than the gap that existed between my cat and me.  At least she and I shared the same general physical space.

But if it were not for God’s effort, we would not even know He is present across that gap. We see hints of Him in Creation, of course, but nothing to come close to what He has revealed about Himself directly, most to a few selected faithful but to some degree for any soul that cares to receive Him in whatever form He is manifest. There are plenty of people who are blind to His presence in Creation; it helps them deny any possible perception of Him through other channels of perception.

We are fortunate that we have a history of His revelations and interactions with humanity; we can participate vicariously in many encounters with Him over the centuries, and thereby prepare ourselves for our more direct encounters as we grow and mature.

“That Love That Moves The Sun And The Other Stars”

Which brings me back to the life-sized crucifix in our adoration chapel.

Some 50 years ago I went to an exhibition of crucifixes produced in New Mexico since the introduction of Christianity in the early 1600s. They were astonishingly lifelike (as it were) with knees scraped to the bone, blood having flowed copiously from the many wounds and abrasions before death finally came.

In comparison our crucifix is antiseptic, with its oddly beige cream color, unrelieved with any splashes of color from wounds. The Corpus is relaxed in death, hanging limp and spent. It is not particularly graphic, but neither is it sterile or sanitized. The ordeal is ended, but the body still shows the signs of the torment just passed.

This is the ultimate cost for the ultimate love, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). And yet the cross is not the end of it, for after the death came the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, and eventually the Ascension. This background reality is not lost in realistic depiction of trauma and suffering, neither is it lost in an idealized, genteel presentation.

Dante ends his Divine Comedy by referring to the Love that moves the sun and stars. This is love beyond comprehension or imagination; the mind cannot hold it; the heart is overwhelmed. The closer we approach to this the harder it becomes to grasp or imagine.

Not only did Jesus accept suffering the worst of human cruelty and brutality, He returned to assure us that even our worst did not diminish His love.

It For Sure Isn’t Hollywood

I once imagined how Hollywood might rewrite the resurrection – Jesus bursting from the tomb with crossed bandoliers and a grenade in each hand, with the caption “This time they crucified the wrong Messiah”

Hollywood mistakes lust for love with depressing regularity, but their imagination never gets confused when it comes to violence.

Death seems to us in our present to be the ultimate gulf. If we accept that one of the signs of love is the bridging of gaps, then Jesus returning from beyond death must be the ultimate bridge – the result of ultimate love.

It was not a short, temporary moment, but an extended stay of teaching, reconciliation, and healing. It was love, crossing the gulf between Heaven and Earth, and in the end the final answer to the question “What is man that you are mindful of him?”

Despite the seeming absurdity, the unlikeliness, the many observable reasons now and throughout history illustrating human unworthiness, love crosses the gulf and binds us in our several feeble weaknesses to God the eternal, Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the Beginning and End, the point of perspective at which all paradoxes are reconciled and all estrangement healed.

There was – and is – nothing (or very little) Hollywood about it.

This Is Man

There is not really an answer to the Psalmist’s question, because it is answered in its asking.

“What is man that you are mindful of him,
and a son of man that you care for him?”

Man is that being God is mindful of. Man is that being God cares for, enough to die and return. There is no knowing the whys or wherefores of these truths; they are beyond the explanation and understanding of ordinary humans, though the great saints may understand, or at least have an inkling.

We don’t have understanding; we simply have the knowledge: God became man in order to save us from our worst selves. He instituted the Eucharist to nourish our best selves, and taught us both in word and by example.

Man is that being God is mindful of and cares for. What more revealing a sentence could be said?

Prayer

Thank you God for your loving care and the light of your attention. Grant us the Grace to grow in the light of that care and attention, so we might become what you wish for us to be by allowing you to work in us your will for us. And let us be ever mindful of your love for us, that we may mirror your love by loving others as you would have us love: in Spirit and Truth.  Amen.