Peter Ryan on the Catholica Forum started it by suggesting Eucharist is a verb, not a noun. It's a valuable tool for meditating on the central Sacrament in Catholic practise. John Chuchman in today's lead reflection extends the same tool today for this exploration of the Divine itself. How does considering "God as a verb" help in our understanding of this Mystery at the heart of Life?

God as a Verb

True Christians are mystics,
or they are nothing.

Christian mystical experiences unite,
allowing me to begin to feel connected with,
part of,
united with,
aware of,
one with
something or some activity larger than myself.

God is an experience.

Christian saints and mystics have described this encounter with God
as putting on the Mind of Christ.
Christian literature includes such expressions as
One with Christ,
Temple of the Holy Spirit,
the Body of Christ,
the Divine Indwelling,
Participants in the Divine Nature.

This is an understanding of the non-duality of God
that begins for Christians with emptiness.
It is a way of understanding Christ as the Incarnate Word.

"Let the same mind be in me that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness."

This is an encouragement to empty myself,
to become as servant to another,
del. and to enter into the fullness of my humanity
and my full human potential.

This practice of putting on the Mind of Christ
and emptying myself
is one way I, as Christian, may come to understand Jesus as
redeemer,
revealer,
reconciler,
and to accept him as savior.

The ideal of Christian life is to lose one's own self-centered identity
in the wider activity of the risen Christ-Spirit.
It is to step back and let this Spirit live within us.

This stepping back or emptying myself of myself
resonates with the Buddhist bodhisattva,
who develops universal compassion
and a spontaneous wish to attain Buddhahood
(the state of perfect enlightenment)
not for his or her own sake but for the benefit of all sentient beings.

It is also in the Bible:
"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit,
because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

I am convinced that neither death,
nor life,
nor angels,
nor rulers,
nor things present,
nor things to come,
nor powers,
nor height,
nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Stepping back,
letting the Spirit live in me,
allowing the Spirit to pray in and through me,
practicing meditation as a Sacrament of Silence,
emptying and letting go of myself,
all offer a way to nurture and grow within myself
the graciousness of spirit that God gives to each of us
in ways that are known only to God.

This offers a path in which the mystery and light of Christ
may become known through dialogue and practice with other sacred traditions;
here the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity becomes boundless,
without limitations,
infinite in love,
infinite in acceptance,
infinite in potential,
endless in compassion and wisdom.

God must act and pour into me when I am ready;
in other words when I am totally empty of self and creatures.
So I try to stand still and remain in a state of emptiness.

I try to discard the form
and be joined to the formless essence,
for the spiritual comfort of God is very subtle.

Only the hand that erases can write the truth.
On the Buddhist side,
there is the experience of nirvana or emptiness
and the related concept of dependent origination or arising.

God is best understood as the Ground of Being,
translated more freely and more engagingly
as Inter-Being:
the interconnected state of things that are constantly churning out
new connections,
new possibilities,
new problems,
and new life.

Understanding God through relationships is critical.
The source and power of our relationships
are driven by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Behind and within all the different images and symbols Christians use for God:
Creator,
Abba,
Redeemer,
Word,
Spirit,
the most fundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God
is that God is the source and power of relationships.

God as a verb is the activity
of giving and receiving,
of knowing and loving,
of losing and finding,
of dying and living
that embraces and infuses all of us, all of creation.

If I'm going to talk about God,
God is neither a noun nor an adjective.
God is a Verb!
God is much more an environment
in which I live and move and have my being, or
God is above all things, through all things, and in all things.

The more awake I am to this presence and this mystery,
the more I come to know God is here in this very moment,
in the eternal Now.

This is the central message of Jesus
when he teaches me that his relationship with God is intimate,
eternal,
and within.

This presence above, through, and in
constantly calls me into relationships of knowing and loving another
all through my life,
filling me with the deepest joy
when I empty myself for the sake of others,
seeing and finding myself in others.

This presence is what I feel when I am loved and accepted,
when I love and accept others,
and when I open and give of myself selflessly.

As it says in Scripture:
"And when the Pharisees had demanded of Him
when the Kingdom of God should come,
He answered them and said,
'The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show.
Neither shall they say, 'Lo, it is here!'
or 'Lo, it is there!'
For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.' "

A better image of creation
might be a pouring forth of God,
an extension of God,
in which the Divine carries on the divine activity
of interrelating in and with and through creation.

This pouring forth of God is the engine or fuel of creation,
but we as a People of God,
created in the Image of God,
are also a part of this pouring forth.
How this all works is also part of the mystery.

God as the Trinity is the silence and the stillness before all things,
out of which all creation arises from the nothingness and emptiness
that is without form and void,
an image taken from the first chapter of Genesis
when there was nothing except God.
It is out of this nothingness (no-thing) or emptiness that we all arise.

The way of Christ
is a way that calls me to love others unconditionally
with great compassion and loving-kindness.

This is a call that I have tried to answer by loving others
in all their diversity of beliefs and ethnicity,
even in all their suffering,
and in showing them through that love
how Christ lives and dwells within my own being.

Jesus is not the way that excludes,
overpowers,
demeans other ways;
rather he is the way that opens us to,
connects us with,
and calls us to relate to other ways
in a process that can best be described as dialogue,
now shunned by many institutional religions.

If Jesus really is the Way that is open to other Ways,
then dialogue with other religions and other believers,
should be part of what it means to be a Christian.

As many Asian bishops and theologians are saying today,
Dialogue is a new way of being in church.

Today I am called to be religious inter-religiously.
Committed to Jesus and the Gospel,
I must also be open to other religions and believers.

As a Christian,
someone grounded in Christ
and intimately involved in this interfaith dialogue,
I am learning to value the truth and teachings of other faiths
while sharing my own,
another way I feel embraced by the risen Christ
while encountering the Holy Spirit at work in the world.

Love, John

This reflection is also published on John Chuchman's blog.

IMAGE CREDITS:
The background images used to support today's reflection are scans from the The Shorter Oxford Dictionary.

John Chuchman

[Index of Commentaries by John Chuchman]