Because You Want Too Much

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.” (Jn 8:4)

Israel is the woman caught in adultery, and so are we.  Hosea uses the image of adulterous wife to accuse Israel of unfaithfulness to God.  The prophet is called to the symbolic act of marrying a promiscuous woman.  She bears him children who are given the rather heavy-handed names Lo-ruhamah, “not pitied” and Lo-ammi, “not my people.”  Here sexual promiscuity is a symbol of a people putting faith in pagan rituals and political alliances to meet their needs, instead of in their covenant-partner who has promised to provide for them.  There are many ways of being unfaithful to God.  Adultery is a symbol.

In the gospel we find another woman caught in the very act of adultery.  She is placed in the middle like a scapegoat, as if carrying the sins of her people.  Perhaps this is why Jesus challenges the scribes and Pharisees: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (Jn 8:7).  He is not dismissing sexual promiscuity as unimportant, but is looking deeper, to a level at which no-one can hold themselves blameless.  In another place, he will say: “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28) – and there are worse things that reside in the human heart.  I am reminded of a number from the musical Grease, set in an American high school in the 1950’s.  One of the characters, Rizzo, thinks she is pregnant and is shunned by all.  She sings:
“There are worse things I could do
Than go with a boy or two
Even though the neighborhood
Thinks I'm trashy and no good
I suppose it could be true
But there are worse things I could do.
…
I could hurt someone like me
Out of spite or jealousy
I don't steal and I don't lie
But I can feel and I can cry
A fact I'll bet you never knew
But to cry in front of you
That's the worst thing I could do.”

Israel is the woman caught in adultery, and so are we.  There are many ways of being unfaithful to God.  Adultery is a symbol.  We are caught in the act of seeking satisfaction where it is not to be found.  How many times have we tried to claim love, affection, esteem, fulfillment, safety or security somewhere other than its source?  How often have we looked to arrange circumstances, acquire possessions or control relationships so that we get what we want, what we think we need and have a right to?  Have we found satisfaction?  Have we been filled?  Have we found the source of life there?  Or are we left empty, yearning, aching caverns of desire?  Even with the most precious and tender of human relationships, there is something left to be desired, some empty space, some lack of understanding, the dreadful realization that I cannot find the final answer to my cry for belonging in this person.  Here we begin to understand chastity.

“You want too much.”  My former spiritual director, a diocesan priest, told me of an experience he had as a young man with his girlfriend.  As he looked into her eyes adoringly, she grew uncomfortable and said, “You want too much.”  He wasn’t being fresh, he was looking for the fulfillment of all his desires, his deepest, most spiritual desires, infinite desires, as St Therese would say.  The poor girl knew she could never fulfil this desire, and she was brave enough to tell him so: “You want too much.”  He has carried these words with him ever since as a symbol of his vocation to celibate chastity.

Brother John Mark spoke to us of the spousal mode of celibacy, which is very familiar from our Cistercian tradition.  Fr Isaac made it the centerpiece of his retreat this January.  Not everyone finds the language of romantic or sexual love and marriage a suitable way to speak of their relationship with the Lord.  I think it was helpful when Br John Mark defined “spousal” as “unmediated.”  The challenge is that opening ourselves to an unmediated relationship with God does not deliver immediate satisfaction.  We still feel the emptiness.  Why?  Not because God cannot fill us, or does not want to, but because we are not ready.  We are not yet spacious enough.  I am made to contain the ocean within me and nothing else will do.  But I am not yet ready for that fullness, so I live with yearning, with thirst.

Our task, our challenge as consecrated celibates is to live this thirst consciously, remembering the source of our satisfaction and seeking satisfaction only there.  All other relationships – with family, friends, sisters, brothers, people we meet – mediate God’s love in giving and receiving.  They play their part, their beautiful irreplaceable part in our lives.  But each is limited, necessarily so.  I have voluntarily made an empty space in my life by choosing not to marry and bear children.  Why?  Because I am a sucker for punishment?  Because I like pain?  Because I was called, because I want too much, because I cannot be satisfied by anything or anyone but God.  This empty space hurts, sometimes a great deal.  But it can be a clean pain – versus a pain muddied by resistance and self-deception.  A clean pain pierces to the center to illumine who I am, who God is, and what he is doing in Christ, in me and in the world.

St Gertrude gives us a word to live by: “When I love him, then I am chaste.”  Guerric of Igny tells us what we are living for: “You implored the kiss of my mouth; rather, the whole of you will be kissed by the whole of me.”  I have never found another text that puts it better: the desire of our human nature is for total belonging, a complete embrace.  Knowing this is what sets us free to live with thirst, to live chastely.

When we fail in chastity, and here I wish to speak of more than sexual behavior – there are many ways of being unfaithful to God – when we fail to treat others as ends in themselves but use them as means to meet our own needs, whether these needs be sexual, emotional, intellectual, or for power or control, respect or esteem, safety or security; when we fail, and we all do, we find ourselves standing before Jesus.  Today, you and I, and in us the Church, and in her the whole world is called to stand before Jesus.  We are called to stand before him in lowliness, that fearful, trembling, awesome, painful, wonderful stance before the One to whom we have not been faithful.  It is a clean pain that pierces to our center.  We are grateful for it, even though it burns, and our thirst is great.  This free self-exposure brings with it not shame but trust and hope.  We find our home in lowliness, eyes cast down to the ground, but it is he, the One without sin, who kneels.

“Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.” (Jn 8:6)
He is at our feet.  But what is he doing?  Drawing in the dust.  The dust from which we were formed by his hands, the dust he uses to sign us as his possession, the dust to which we will return as we follow the way he has gone before us.  What is he writing?  He writes a name, and then another: Ruhamah, Ammi.
“And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah,
    and I will say to Lo-ammi, ‘You are my people’;
    and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’” (Hos 2:23)
“On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ‘My husband’, and no longer will you call me, ‘My idol.’...  I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.  And I will take you for my wife for ever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy.  I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.” (Hos 2:16, 18-20)

Image: Crypt of the lower church of St Pio of Pietrelcina, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy