Lord, I am worthy
Adele R. McDowell, Ph.D.
April 17, 2008
There once was a savvy New York Times reporter who wrote that he was no longer a lapsed Catholic. Given all the recent shenanigans in the church he was now a collapsed Catholic. Isn´t that a great term? Collapsed Catholic says it all; it speaks to the depths of disappointment and resignation that many people have felt over the actions, inactions, and choice points of today´s church.
I was raised by very Catholic parents, attended Catholic schools, and even considered becoming a nun. If my current sex life is any indication, I have become a nun. There was even a brief time in my college life when I attended daily mass. I was thoroughly enveloped in the Roman Catholic Church. I appreciated the religious foundation I received. I loved the rituals with candles and incense. I found home in the nuns who taught me. To this day, I am quite content hanging out in the sweet energy of an empty church. My idea of peace is sitting in a church awash in a colored splash of sunlight filtered through stained glass. And the concept of the "communion of saints" still thrills me, as I feel enveloped by many spiritual beings who are working so hard for the good of humankind on an invisible plane.
Over the years, I found myself increasingly irritated with specific words, words one might consider the very foundation and essence of the mass. During the celebration of the mass and, specifically the consecration part of the mass, the holiest of holy moments, the priest raises the chalice and says, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, say but the word and my soul will be healed." I take this to mean that I am not worthy to receive God until God has given His/Her stamp of approval and I am healed of my sins. Therefore, we, God and I, are separate; we are stratified. God is one up on me and we require an intermediary to being us into union, or, in this case, communion.
I have another spin on these not-worthy words.
I believe that each of us carries a part of the Divine within us. With each breath, with each heartbeat, we are connected to the Source. We are, in effect, fractals, reiterations of the Divine. There is no great divide. The divine part of us is our Best Self or Higher Self, which becomes animated through open-hearted compassion, balance, and intention. Our Best Self operates from a belief that all living beings are connected. We are all one; we are all part of the whole.
Jesuit theologian, Teilhard de Chardin said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience." It is that human experience with all of its pushes and pulls that can bring us closer to our divine nature. Our human experience makes us vulnerable; it creates an opening where compassion, tenderness, justice, love, and the like can move through, sever the suffering, and find wholeness. By our very humanness we can, if we so consciously choose, access the Divine within and create the sacred.
Unfortunately, we humans often act in horrible, ungodly ways towards one another. We can also create the profane. We do not show our divine colors; much less remember our divine connection. We can be unconscious, in denial, or happier looking at the small self-serving screen versus through the big view finder. It is a matter of choice, a matter of perspective.
Do you remember the story of the monastery? The monks had been living together a very long time. Their individual idiosyncrasies were wearing thin and the annoyance factor was inordinately high. The Abbott announces news of a visitor coming to their monastery; the purpose of which is to identify the God living in their midst. The monks are stunned, a God in their midst? Who could it possibly be? They begin looking at one another anew. Their irritations with one another slip into the background, and out of the foreground emerges a new lens of seeing the divinity in each of their fellow monks.
This is not a new concept; the words "namaste" and "aloha" are salutations that acknowledge the divine within one another.
Once we see the divine in the other or accept a sliver of divine inheritance within ourselves, is not unworthiness a moot point?
Lord, I am worthy. Lord, we are all worthy.
I was raised by very Catholic parents, attended Catholic schools, and even considered becoming a nun. If my current sex life is any indication, I have become a nun. There was even a brief time in my college life when I attended daily mass. I was thoroughly enveloped in the Roman Catholic Church. I appreciated the religious foundation I received. I loved the rituals with candles and incense. I found home in the nuns who taught me. To this day, I am quite content hanging out in the sweet energy of an empty church. My idea of peace is sitting in a church awash in a colored splash of sunlight filtered through stained glass. And the concept of the "communion of saints" still thrills me, as I feel enveloped by many spiritual beings who are working so hard for the good of humankind on an invisible plane.
Over the years, I found myself increasingly irritated with specific words, words one might consider the very foundation and essence of the mass. During the celebration of the mass and, specifically the consecration part of the mass, the holiest of holy moments, the priest raises the chalice and says, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, say but the word and my soul will be healed." I take this to mean that I am not worthy to receive God until God has given His/Her stamp of approval and I am healed of my sins. Therefore, we, God and I, are separate; we are stratified. God is one up on me and we require an intermediary to being us into union, or, in this case, communion.
I have another spin on these not-worthy words.
I believe that each of us carries a part of the Divine within us. With each breath, with each heartbeat, we are connected to the Source. We are, in effect, fractals, reiterations of the Divine. There is no great divide. The divine part of us is our Best Self or Higher Self, which becomes animated through open-hearted compassion, balance, and intention. Our Best Self operates from a belief that all living beings are connected. We are all one; we are all part of the whole.
Jesuit theologian, Teilhard de Chardin said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience." It is that human experience with all of its pushes and pulls that can bring us closer to our divine nature. Our human experience makes us vulnerable; it creates an opening where compassion, tenderness, justice, love, and the like can move through, sever the suffering, and find wholeness. By our very humanness we can, if we so consciously choose, access the Divine within and create the sacred.
Unfortunately, we humans often act in horrible, ungodly ways towards one another. We can also create the profane. We do not show our divine colors; much less remember our divine connection. We can be unconscious, in denial, or happier looking at the small self-serving screen versus through the big view finder. It is a matter of choice, a matter of perspective.
Do you remember the story of the monastery? The monks had been living together a very long time. Their individual idiosyncrasies were wearing thin and the annoyance factor was inordinately high. The Abbott announces news of a visitor coming to their monastery; the purpose of which is to identify the God living in their midst. The monks are stunned, a God in their midst? Who could it possibly be? They begin looking at one another anew. Their irritations with one another slip into the background, and out of the foreground emerges a new lens of seeing the divinity in each of their fellow monks.
This is not a new concept; the words "namaste" and "aloha" are salutations that acknowledge the divine within one another.
Once we see the divine in the other or accept a sliver of divine inheritance within ourselves, is not unworthiness a moot point?
Lord, I am worthy. Lord, we are all worthy.
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