_by_Auguste_Rodin_(5899907192).jpg)
How am I to know that I shall possess the lands you tell
me you are giving me?
Abram asked God. Abram received the covenant with God in a mystical way[1].
God provided the fire for the immolation of the sacrifice. A smoking pot and a
flaming torch passed through them. The covenant was sealed with the action of
the spiritual[2].
Jesus,
Peter, John and James, go up a mountain to pray. Then the spiritual meets the
physical. Jesus’ face changes, his clothes become dazzling white, and Moses and
Elijah appear. They speak about the Exodus, but not the deliverance of the
Hebrew people from Egypt that Moses led fifteen hundred years earlier, but the
Exodus that would begin in Jerusalem, the deliverance of the people from the
grasp of evil.
So
we don’t belong to this world. We belong to the spiritual world. Our citizenship is in heaven. Our Savior will come from there to restore
the world to God’s original plan. We belong to the spiritual. We belong to God.
We are made in the image and likeness of God. But the image of God, our
capacity to be spiritual, is hidden deep within us. The Lord will reveal it,
though, if we let Him.
There
is a story about a Parisian who went for a walk to the outskirts of the city
when he heard hammering and chipping coming from a large home. He was bold
enough to walk across the large front yard and peer into the door. It was the
studio of the famous sculpture, Auguste Rodin. The man had the nerve to walk
into the studio and interrupt Rodin at his work. “Excuse me,” he said, “but how exactly do you
do that?” “Do what?” Rodin asked, somewhat perturbed. “How do you create such
beautiful works?” the man asked. “I’d
love to be a sculptor myself.”
Rodin
was perturbed; his work was interrupted by this uninvited stranger. He was about
to explode in anger, but he calmed himself and just said to the man, “Well,
let’s say that you wanted to do a sculpture of an elephant.” “Yes,” said the
man, “how would I do that? “It is
simple,” Rodin said, “You just get a very large block of marble, you get a set
of chisels and a few hammers, and then you chip off everything on the block
that doesn’t look like an elephant.”
Rodin
was being sarcastic. But the method of creating a masterpiece described in the
story is not that far away from the work the Divine Sculptor does on us: each
of us is created in the image and likeness of God. But that image is hidden in
the hard rock that is our resistance to God. The Lord chips away on us. He
hammers out our selfishness. How can we be followers of the one who sacrificed
all for love and be selfish? The negative drives within us are also chipped
away, our anger, our greed, our lust, our jealousy. When we commit to the Lord,
the Divine Sculptor chips it all away. That is why He came. He came to remove all that which is not the
image and likeness of God and reveal each of us as the masterpiece God intends
us to be.
“May he make of us an eternal offering to
you,” we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer. Jesus transforms us into a gift
to the Father. Allowing him to work on
us, remove all that is not the image and likeness of God, is the work of our
lives, work that intensifies during the season of Lent.
There
is an old expression, “God is not through with me yet.” It is true. He is still chipping away at each
of us. Sometimes we are impatient with ourselves. We want to be better, but we
don’t see it happening. We are fighting
our anger, but still lose our temper. We are fighting against a sinful manner
of living, but still feel the intensity of the temptation to fall back into the
destructive patterns of life we had embraced. We have to be patient with
ourselves. We need to realize that God is working on us, each of us. On the
negative side, if we fall, He picks us up, and we learn the location of the
stumbling stone. And we can avoid
falling there again. And He chips away a
part of us that is not His Image and Likeness. Or, on the positive side, people
come into our lives that need special help, significant actions of love. Maybe it’s the old man down the block whose
wife died and has no one to look in on him.
We make him a part of our lives, going over to his home frequently just
to chat, perhaps getting his groceries, whatever, and the Lord chips away and a
beautiful image of His Presence begins to emerge from the hard stone. Perhaps, a member of our family is going
through a difficult time, physically, psychologically, emotionally. We bite our tongues, try to be as understanding
as possible, and the Lord keeps chipping away on us.
We
can all add many examples of ways both positive and negative that the Lord is
transforming us. We belong to the Kingdom of God. We are made in His Image and Likeness. We are
physical and spiritual. We have our citizenship in heaven. Jesus Christ is
transforming us into an everlasting gift to the Father.
The
Divine Sculptor’s work will not be unveiled until our mission on earth is
complete. What will we look like if we let Him complete His Work? Well, we also will
be transfigured ■
[1] He was told to make a very large
sacrifice, but not in the normal manner. He was to sacrifice a heifer, a goat,
a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon, but instead of burning them, he had to cut
them in half, except for the birds. Then we have this scene of Abraham spending
the day keeping the vultures away from the carcasses, no small job. Evening came and Abram fell into a trance.
[2] Sunday 24th February, 2013
2nd
Sunday of Lent. Readings: Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18. The Lord is my light and my salvation—Ps 26(27):1, 7-9, 13-14.
Philippians 3:17 – 4:1. Luke 9:28-36.
Ilustration: Eve (1881) by Auguste Rodin (this is a copy cast in 1968 by the Rodin Museum in Paris)
