100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (11 page)

Kala

The Gospels have retained some of the words that our Lord spoke on the cross in the Aramean language, such as, “
Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?
” (Matthew 27:46). Others are known only in the Greek translation.

One of Jesus’ utterances as He died can have different meanings. This is the word, “It is finished” (John 19:30), in the sense that the work of redemption of our sins through His shedding of blood has now been accomplished. The corresponding Hebrew word is
Kalah
, which also means “bride.” Could this not have been a last thought of love for Jesus’ bride, the Church? Does it not perhaps show that she and her purity until His return were His last desire?

If a cry after His bride was one of our Lord’s last words, we can be at peace. He will help us to overcome all of our handicaps.

Isidore of Seville ran away from school, finding scholarship too difficult. Sitting down beside a spring that trickled over a rock, he watched the water as it fell in drops, one at a time. The drops had worn away a large stone. This sight inspired him with hope that his dullness could be conquered. Later he became one of the greatest scholars of his time. These drops of water gave Britain a brilliant historian, and the Church a famous teacher.

Everyone belonging to the Church, the bride of Christ, can be confident, however humble and backward he might be. For over three years Jesus was aware of the sins, doubts, and misunderstandings of His apostles. Once He had to call Peter “Satan” to bring him to his senses (Matthew 16:23). He said to them all, “How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17). But He loved them passionately, and when nailed to the cross, He sighed, “O, bride.”

The sins of believers are only temporary. “When He is revealed, we shall be like Him” (1 John 3:2). Each of us will be another aspect of Jesus, as beautiful and pure as He is.

We were His last thought. May He have pre-eminence in our lives today, and be our last thought too. May our parting word be “Bridegroom,” as His perhaps was “bride.”

Identification With Christ

David sang, “You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life” (Psalm 16:10,11). Peter explains in Acts 2:27–31 that the prophet was speaking these words about Christ—that is, about someone other than himself, someone who would appear on earth many centuries in the future. Why then did David use the first person, not the third, speaking about the Messiah as if He were David himself?

This is because believers and the Messiah are not two persons, but one. We are His body, we are “of His flesh and of His bones” (Ephesians 5:30). The unity between ourselves and Christ could not have been expressed more realistically.

It can be understood figuratively that we are His flesh, but how can one explain symbolically that we are also “His bones”? It is a common expression that the Church is the mystical body of Christ, but it is not biblical. The words “symbolic” and “mystic” never occur in Scripture.

We are called
His
body, period. My body is myself. My legs do not walk:
I
walk. My lungs do not breathe:
I
breathe. It is not Christ’s members who suffer or rejoice: it is always Christ Himself. The identification is complete.

David speaks about the Savior using the first person, exactly as the Savior uses the first person when He speaks about me, the sinner for whom He dies. Psalm 69 is also Messianic. It is Christ Himself who speaks through the pen of David: “For my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (verse 21), and “zeal for Your house has eaten me up” (verse 9).

In the same psalm, we also read the words, “O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You” (verse 5). Christ does not say that He will suffer ignominy for someone else’s foolishness and wrongs, but for His own. He has identified with the sinner. Luther writes in his commentary on Galatians, “the Christian is Christ.” By the same token, we could say, “Christ is the Christian.”

Identified with Him, we must share His fate. “In the day of trouble He shall hide me in His tent” (Psalm 27:5, according to the Hebrew). The rule established by the Jewish teachers called Masoretes for writing the “s” in the Hebrew word
sukkah
, “tent,” is that it be exceptionally small, half the size of the other letters. This is to show that one who wishes to be protected by Him must accept confinement and constraint in a small place just as He Himself found solace with only a little flock. (I was in a small cell with space only for two steps to and fro.)

But the letter “m” in
iom
, “day,” in “day of trouble,” is also written unusually small. For believers, days of trouble are small in comparison with the eternity of glory. We are identified with Him on His cross, but also in His victory.

The Undivided Bible

The original manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments are not divided into chapters and verses. The first division into chapters was made by Cardinal Hugo of Santa Clara in 1250; the first division into verses, by the Parisian printer Robert Stephanus centuries later.

In its original version, the Bible is not even divided into words. A whole book of the Bible, sometimes several together, constitute a single word. When Scripture is read in this manner, it makes an extraordinary impression.

In English, “male and female” in Genesis 1:27 evokes the picture of two separate beings who are united and can therefore also be disunited. Whatever is compounded can disintegrate. The original version reads “maleandfemalecreatedhethem.” “Maleandfemale” is something so essentially united that the idea of separation is impossible to consider.

In our Bibles we read, “Peter and Andrew, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, etc.” (Matthew 10:2,3). The original has “Peterandandrewphilipandbartholomewthomasandmatthew.” It is one indivisible word. There is one God who has revealed not tens of thousands of words, but only one. Not a single part can be omitted without deforming the whole and making it crumble.

The Lord’s Prayer, in the original, does not begin with “Our Father,” which suggests that He might be a Father without being ours, or that He might be ours without having a fatherly relationship with us. The original reads, “Ourfather.” We Christians cannot conceive of a god which should not be ours. He is a Father toward us or He ceases to be our God. The Hebrew as used by Christ for “Our Father” was a single word,
Avinu
, the possessive pronoun being part of the whole.

A Jew came to a rabbi and asked him to pray that he might earn a decent living. “Unite with God and you will get a livelihood,” the rabbi advised. The Jew said, “But I do not know how to unite with God.”

The rabbi was amazed. “You do not know how to unite with the Godhead and yet you complain about having no livelihood? You want a minor wish granted and are not worried about the major problem?”

The main thing is to realize the unity of the Godhead, “thefatherthesonandtheholyspirit,” one God expressed in one word, the unity of His revelation, the unity of reality, our unity with the whole of it and with God. Einstein’s concept, “The whole reality is one electromagnetic field,” is expressed by the manner in which the Bible is written in its early manuscripts.

Why Such a Strange Book?

It is strange that for the purpose of our salvation we were given a book that is so difficult to understand, with whole chapters of boring and seemingly useless genealogies or enumerations of persons without importance. Ezra 10, for example, contains a long list of priests conspicuous only for the fact that they had taken foreign wives. The book is also repetitive with some episodes recounted three or four times. Religious writers with the clarity of John Chrysostom or Charles Spurgeon could surely have written better literature than some of the biblical authors.

The Bible is written so as not to be understood at first glance. In Acts 22:11 Paul writes about being unable to see because of the glory of the heavenly light. I have lived in dark prison cells. When I saw the light again it blinded me, and I had to readjust myself slowly. Only those who grow accustomed to dwelling in glory can understand the secrets of the Bible.

The carnal mind longs after limitation, accuracy, precise definitions, and well-established borders. It shuns eternity where these things disappear. God sometimes refers to commune with us in silence. The thirty years in which Jesus spent in silence reveal more about God than what He spoke in three years.

Words express only part of reality; the best part of wisdom is that which words cannot contain. The moment a soul speaks, its inner nature is sullied by its transitory passions, interests, prejudices, surmises, or theatricality. The true nature of the soul is desecrated by expression.

The Bible is not a great work of art. Rhetoric begins when the last reality has been drowned. Eloquent style is a sign of degeneration.

The lives of many great poets were unhappy because they spoke too much. Romeo and Juliet spent their first night together declaiming poetry to each other. Could their marriage have been a happy one?

The Bible is a strange, silent caress of the bride by the Beloved. It contains words and whole chapters whose value no one can see. But this is their value. If a bride is reading a passionately interesting novel, filled with exciting detail and embellished with beautiful style, the bridegroom remains uncaressed. But in the Bible there are whole chapters of endless genealogies and lists of names. One grows bored and puts the book aside. This was the purpose: to put the book down sometimes and entrust yourself to the inebriating silent embrace where the problems of the text cease to exist. You have His kiss. To prepare you to receive it is the purpose of the Holy Book.

Bible Monologues

Being in a lonely cell, for many years the only talks I had were monologues. The Bible contains several monologues of God, such as, “Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26), and, “They will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37).

Let us learn from God! Speaking with oneself has a healing value. God put some of His revelations to us in the form of monologue, not because of His need for healing, but in order to teach us how to find it.

None of us is a unitary being. We are all to some degree split between conflicting tendencies in our personalities. Everyone has his ideal self or “I,” what the psychologist Jung calls the “animus,” and everyone has an evil urge which attracts him as well. An ancient Christian writing asserts that every man has a personal devil just as he has a guardian angel. We are torn by many influences coming from opposing directions.

As often as we say “yes,” there is also something in us saying “no.” This is our inner counterpart with whom it is very important to clarify matters.

I have known men with powerful criminal instincts who overcame them by using the method of the monologue. First they proclaimed aloud to themselves their desire to commit the wrong action; then they pleaded the victim’s defense, loudly crying his cry when attacked; they spoke out the reproaches of their wives and children for what they had done, the prosecutor’s condemnation, and their own possible defense. At last they determined not to do the deed.

A man was greatly troubled because he had killed an enemy in a bayonet fight during World War I. He discussed the matter with the victim within himself. He convinced his counterpart that it had been a fair fight in which both had obeyed orders and had been dedicated to the good of their respective fatherlands. He expressed his regret and promised to make restitution by adopting a child from the former enemy nation.

Whenever conscience nags or doubts haunt, it is best not to repress these voices, but to weigh the pros and cons aloud to oneself. The blood of Christ will always be sufficient for past sins. The light of the Holy Spirit will be enough to dissipate doubts.

The purpose of God’s monologues differs from ours, but we can learn from Him of their value.

The Value of Willing Rightly

She said to herself” (Matthew 9:21). “He spoke to himself” (Luke 7:39).

What is important is not so much what we say with our lips as what we say within ourselves. Whenever we speak to others we look to the consequences of what we say in case we should be held responsible. We might be drawn before court; we might lose our jobs; we can have all kinds of complications. For many reasons we do not outwardly express everything we inwardly feel.

God looks at the heart. He hears our inward speech, both good and bad, and it is according to this that He judges us.

Now a man’s inward speech can be as diverse and incongruous as his outward speech. I speak within myself; I also inwardly judge what I say. I may criticize my inward speech or, at other times, approve it. Man is not of one piece. We are always torn between conflicting desires which are expressed by contradictory inner voices. Behind all this strife is the final reality within us which, observing this whole life in serenity, hears our inner talks, but remains silent. This is Christ within us.

The battle must be won within. Outwardly your talk might be most edifying, but perhaps the Lord’s words apply to you: “You cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25).

How can we make the inside clean? Simply by willing. The Lord once said to Mechthilde, “When you have to receive My body and My blood, will for the glory of My name to have the fervor and all the zeal which the most burning heart has ever had for Me. Then you will be able to approach Me trusting, having this preparation, because I will look to the fervor which you wish to have and I will take account of it as if you would really have it.”

Something similar is told of St. Gertrude. She, upon approaching the sacrament, expressed the desire to receive it with the same sentiments as the virgin Mary and the greatest saints. Then the Savior appeared to her and told her: “Now you appear to the citizens of heaven really adorned as you wished to be.”

God looks to the best in you. From the whole biography of a Roman officer the Bible records only a few minutes in which he showed strong faith (Matthew 8:19). Of the whole degraded life of a Samaritan woman, the Bible retains one day when she was a zealous missionary (John 4:28,29). From everything you think, if you have the desire to be as holy as man has ever been, God will retain this one inner wish. All your other thoughts will be set aside.

Inwardly formulate the highest wishes even if you do not have the slightest power to fulfill them, and you will receive the highest praise.

Outwardly we can master ourselves only in part. Our strongest decisions are consumed by the fire we have in our blood. We cannot check the inner movements of our souls while we are awake, and we have even less control during sleep.

Have the right desires and do not be afraid. It is written, “The Lord was with Joseph” (Genesis 39:2). Perhaps not everything Joseph did was right. Anyone who knows what despots the ancient kings were can imagine that as prime minister of Egypt Joseph may have at some point compromised his conscience. He may have had to bow before the gods of Egypt, or conform to the habits of the heathen. But, if so, God also knew his moments of victory over temptation. And He knew Joseph’s highest desire, which remained valid before Him even if it was unfulfilled in Joseph.

The Lord was with Joseph and will be with you, if beyond outward deeds and inward thoughts, even if not feeling love, you desire to love. If you desire holiness without having the slightest beginning of it, holiness will be imparted to you.