Liminality

A read of various religious organizations' websites reveals a point of convergence relating to attempts to find a way forward even as the same communities are in steep decline.

Brief Digression

The websites looked at range from Anglican to United Church to Evangelical to liberal Catholic to Tradition-minded Catholic parishes. By "Tradition-minded" is here meant a parish robustly configured to the living Magisterium established by Jesus Christ and the teaching handed on by the Apostles.

Convergence

What is that point of convergence so frequently being talked about? Liminality. There is agreement among foundering communities, in particular, that they are in the midst of transition and (desperately) need coping mechanisms to survive. Most are in denial about the likelihood that their communities are, according to the stats, dying. The few exceptions, those making an honest effort to conform to the will of God by honouring the Apostolic Tradition, are thriving. That growth is accompanied by an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life in those communities, largely due to the preaching of the Gospel without the varnish (acid?) of progressive ideology or laziness, and the reverent celebration of the Mass. Those who imagine themselves to be in the midst of a "Spirit-guided" process, i.e., those groups that have wholly embraced fad-religion (while expecting survival), are on, without the anchor of Tradition, the brink of collapse.

The denial mentioned a few sentences earlier is a peculiar one. It is a curious mix of nice enough language used to express ambition born of desperation combined with very little mention of conforming to the will of God. In most cases, there is language that makes clear that said communities are desperate to bring God into line with their convictions and the preservation of social agendas that barely speak of the inconvenient truths handed on by the Apostles. If there is any kind of a call to configure agendas to God's will, most often it is more of an afterthought. Conversely, where communities that surrender to the truth of the Gospel, the Gospel as it has always been taught, those communities are heralds of change that respect the dignity of the human being created in the image and likeness of God. That a community would attempt to render God in their own image confirms an astonishing degree of hubris. It should come as no surprise then that attempts to rob human identity of its divinely ordained design will result in disastrous outcomes: the tyranny of abortion; the loss of respect for childhood innocence; a rise in dissociative disorders; criminally abusive behaviour; misuse of sexual function; and the misattribution of the origin of fundamental human rights to the state.

Liminality - a smattering of similar takes

A blurb from an Anglican site.

This week, I want to introduce a ‘fancy’ word – liminal. ‘Liminal’ comes from the Latin word ‘limen’ meaning ‘threshold’. This is a place of not knowing, a place of waiting. So, it feels very appropriate in this season of Advent and speaks to our current COVID fatigued context.

Richard Rohr describes this place most vividly: “Liminal spaces, therefore, are “a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the “tried and true” but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are in between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. It is no fun.”

Words of cheer, then! However, it is also the place where significant transformation happens. Of course, that deep transformation is not easy and rarely quick – think of the long years Israel was in Egypt, in the wilderness…or in exile. Or the years Joseph; David, Anna and Simeon had to wait.

Advent summons us to an alert form of waiting – the individuals mentioned above did not ‘do nothing’. Whatever they did, their characters were formed as a result.  It seems to me that each of us is called to practice the various spiritual disciplines as individuals and as a community of faith. However, I want to caution that we are not selective in this – it is easy for these to become inward looking which would be a massive imbalance. Dallas Willard groups spiritual disciplines into categories of abstinence and engagement - times of silence and solitude, for example, lead into forms of engagement, as seen in the life of Jesus.

The attitude in which we enter into the disciplines is also important. In our present individualistic society, a great challenge we face to worry about ourselves, seeking to shape our life in a way that addresses only our concerns and fears about our life. Even a trivial example is that people debate the merits of face masks because ‘it won’t protect me from getting the virus’ – true, but it might just protect others and vice versa! The communal dimension constantly needs to be reinforced, not least in the church. Belonging to any community is not just about what we get out of it (an individualistic mindset) but the fact that the community is enriched by your active participation in it. We are all diminished when we are not learning, growing and serving together. (Saint Teresa of Calcutta, when asked how she had managed to help thousands of people, responded "One". She began with the individual in front of her. She helped Christ in each person, one person at a time. The socialist agenda of herding the collective into movements at the practical exclusion of individual need is remote to the Christian mission to serve Christ in each person in a unique way. As much as the agendas sound similar, there is a profound distinction between socialist's annihilation of an individual's need for truth, goodness and beauty, and most importantly his salvation, and actually serving Christ suffering in him.)

So, in this liminal time of Advent, in the context of COVID, we need to embrace this moment and not despair of it. Of course, it may feel like a tussle between our desire to be comfortable and at ease and so keeping ourselves open to God's transforming presence. Every fibre of our being may want to find comfort and familiarity but, despite this, there is a holy discontent, yearning to be transformed into all that God wants us to become. Once again, practicing spiritual disciplines helps us to ‘abide’ in God and bear fruit that will last. 

Questions can be formed for us individually and as a community. It is not just ourselves, St Paul’s and the wider church that has been forever affected by this pandemic, it is also our context of Vancouver. St Paul’s was already grappling with a changing demographic in downtown Vancouver, now we are all in this liminal time, not sure what the future will look like.

Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta

I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time - just one, one, one. So you begin. I began - I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand... . The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin - one, one, one.

Could it be said that while the socialist window dresses, the Christian addresses the needs of widows and orphans?

James 1:27

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Hearers of Saint James would instantly know that to which he was referring when he said "keep oneself unstained from the world."

A blurb from a United Church of Canada site.

Most congregations rely on rational decision making to guide their leadership choices. Liminal seasons invite us to shift out of rational decision-making mode and into a more discerning mindset. (Is the author pitting faith against reason?) Discernment is an attentiveness to God that, over time, develops into a shared sense of God’s intention for us and our community now. (...)

Discernment [Online Etymological Dictionary]

discernment (n.)

1580s, "keenness of intellectual perception, insight, acuteness of judgment;" see discern + -ment. From 1680s as "act of perceiving by the intellect."

Penetration, or insight, goes to the heart of a subject, reads the inmost character, etc. Discrimination marks the differences in what it finds. Discernment combines both these ideas.

The author of the UCoC observation might do well to review the following from Fides et Ratio by Pope Saint John Paull II:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

An earlier citation referred to a Richard Rohr, OFM. Here is Rohr in his own words.

Limen is the Latin word for threshold. A “liminal space” is the crucial in-between time—when everything actually happens and yet nothing appears to be happening. It is the waiting period when the cake bakes, the movement is made, the transformation takes place. One cannot just jump from Friday to Sunday in this case, there must be Saturday! This, of course, was always the holy day for the Jewish tradition. The Sabbath rest was the pivotal day for the Jews, and even the dead body of Jesus (Who is God, our Lord and Saviour) rests on Saturday, waiting for God (the Father) to do whatever God plans to do. It is our great act of trust and surrender, both together. A new “creation ex nihilo” is about to happen, but first it must be desired.

A blurb from an Episcopal Church (TEC) site.

So, what is a liminal space?

The word liminal comes from the Latin root word “limen,” which means “threshold.” Liminal spaces are transitional or transformative spaces. Liminal spaces are in-between spaces, where our former ways of being are challenged or changed. Often, they are hard spaces to live in, spaces of disorientation and discomfort, perhaps like hanging in mid-air.

What do the people of God do when they find themselves in liminal spaces – when they have been waiting too long?  What happens when we become impatient and worry? Do we rush to action in anger? Make rash decisions? Do we build golden calves and worship other gods?

Apparently, yes. The promotion of, for example: a revision of human sexuality and identity that departs from God's design; a distortion of the roles of men and women in the sacred Liturgy and in the Church. Are not those golden calves, other gods?

Jeremiah 2:20

“For long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yea, upon every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down as a harlot.

Here's another word - apostasy. 

 apostasy (n.)

late 14c., "renunciation, abandonment or neglect of established religion," from Late Latin apostasia, from later Greek apostasia for earlier apostasis "revolt, defection," literally "a standing off," from apostanai "to stand away" (see apostate (n.)). General (non-religious) sense "abandonment of what one has professed" is attested from 1570s.

What faithful Christian wouldn't open to the will of God in the midst of transition, and configured to His agenda? It is not foreign to the Christian vocation when one assumes communion with Almighty God while 1) remaining disobedient and willfully rejecting the demands of the Gospel, and 2) remaining in schism from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the apostolic community founded by Jesus Christ upon the rock of Peter?

"Comfortable" (c)hristian groups, rather than seeing the Catholic realities present among themselves, realities impelling toward unity, rally around catchy concepts, turning them into walls, rather than investing in the unity prayed for by Jesus Christ (John 17:21).

Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ. Unitatis Redintegratio

By not keeping the Lord's commandments, and by sidestepping the divine worship of Him in the beauty of holiness, only fleeting satisfaction might be found in pseudo-religion, in buffet-religion. The Lord knows we need real food, so He offers His Body and Blood to satisfy and save us from sin and death, darkness and despair.

John 6:51-57

I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.

Of course, where the Sacrament of Holy Orders has been lost, the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, too, has been lost. There is an odd contentment among those who deprive themselves of the very thing they seek and need. They cannot bring themselves to seek communion with the Bishop of Rome and the Church that Jesus founded upon the chief apostle, Peter, for to do so would mean becoming uncomfortable with their comfortable religion. Irony!

When you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you... provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise, who urges you to shed the masks of a false life, who reads in your heart the choices that others try to stifle, Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives. - Pope Saint John Paul II.

It is a crass thing to expect God to guide us when we have little or no intention of clinging to His revealed Truth and to actually follow Him. It's like clinging to chaos expecting peace, yet experiencing the same result - chaos and decay, day after day - all the while continuing to advocate and/or engage in the same sinful behaviour that alienates one from the God of truth and consolation. A vicious and vacuous circle! Is it any wonder, then, that so many communities are in decline, fixated as they are on keeping the commandments of contemporary culture which is obstinately alienated from reality and hostile to the hope-filled saving message of Jesus Christ?

The barbarism of the new era will not be like that of the Huns of old; it will be technical, scientific, secular, and propagandized. It will come not from without, but from within, for barbarism is not outside us; it is underneath us. Older civilizations were destroyed by imported barbarism; modern civilization breeds its own. - the Venerable Fulton Sheen

Rohr rightly states that the trust and surrender to God that allows God to shape our lives toward Him "must be desired". However, what is often missed or marginalized is the Lord's wisdom that a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit (Matthew 7:17-18). The desire for the good cannot come from a heart drugged on sin and disobedience.

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Thankfully, when crises arise, God is there waiting for us to turn to Him and be saved.

Intentional Christians are first and foremost faithful to Christ and His Church. The faithful run toward Christ and His Church, not away from truth when confronted with difficult teachings that require real commitment, and possibly crucifixion - socially, and possibly physically.

John 6:68

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

The faithful love Jesus by keeping His commandments (John 14:15-31).

A religious community that claims to be Christian necessarily bears the burden of proving its faithfulness to Jesus Christ by keeping wholly Jesus' Gospel preserved in the Apostolic witness (John 14:15-31).

Matthew 7:21

“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

A bridge to nowhere.

A community that pretends at faithfulness to Christ does not merit that which God offers in Christ Jesus. In other words, we must be willing to hold up our end of the bargain by seeking what God wants to give us. No sweet sounding declaration, no clever appeal on the part of man encouraging us to be content with transition, has any merit in the eyes of God if that declaration is not born of conforming our thoughts and actions to God's holy word. When communities and individuals declare their need for God yet continually reject His designs for man, ironies and contradictions will abound, contradictions that lead to sin and death.

Luke 9:62

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Catholics who are blind to the relationship between God and His Liturgy cannot show the necessary respect due to both. That is, liturgies that are filled with deviant teachings, and are rife with abuses small and large, reveal the content of the hearts of those who habitually impose their own misguided agendas and ideas about God on to the sacred Liturgy.