[Today I am embarking on what I hope will be a series of meditations on the mysteries of the rosary, from an ‘incarnational’ viewpoint. This first post will serve as an introduction to the series.]
What do I mean by an ‘incarnational’ meditation?
In fact, I mean to communicate several interlocking ideas, with the intention of countering a root difficulty in modern spirituality, our struggle with the concept of communion. We bristle—at some level, at least—at the notion of communion these days, whether it be with God or with the Church. There are many reasons for this. I suspect that a main problem is fear: fear that communion will mean losing ourselves, opening ourselves to ‘inauthenticity’ or, worse, being used by those who would claim to desire communion with us but in fact seek to dominate, to stamp out the uniqueness that each of us possesses by divine grace.
What does this leave us with, spiritually speaking? Well, there is a tendency to reduce Christian spirituality to a kind of ‘do-gooderism’, a series of ethical exhortations and practices and prayers. The purpose of these things—when they really do take place—is for God to communicate (just enough?) grace to allow us to do some good in the world, or at least be assured that we are not completely depraved.
Now, good works are not to be disparaged, and Christians are obliged to practice them. But we stumble when we notice that there are many persons in the world who achieve good works without being Christian. So if Christianity consists in showing that we are nicer and kinder than others, we founder on the empirical reality that this is, alas, often enough not the case. Here I should insert, in keeping with the overall goal of this proposed series of posts, that meditations on the mysteries of the rosary tend, in my experience, exactly toward an ethical model: we imitate Christ or Mary in order to become ‘better people’. This, in itself, has much to recommend it, but at some point this tack will, I believe, reveal its limitations in bringing us closer to the mystery of what it means to be Christian. What, then, does actually separate us as Christians from others in the world?
The answer is baptism: in baptism, we receive the very gift of God’s own life. In this communion of the divine and human in our own hearts, we recapitulate the reality of the Incarnation of God’s Word in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and indeed all the mysteries of the Life of Christ. We do not merely ‘imitate’, if we mean by this an effort (often conceived of as our own effort) to do things that we think Jesus would do. Imitation, in modern parlance, has something of a bad name. ‘Imitation’ wool or leather means ‘inauthentic’, a rip-off of something of superior quality. But when St. Paul exhorts us to “become imitators of me, as I am of Christ” [1 Cor 11: 1], we might hear that we are two steps down on the ladder of sanctity even before we begin. But Paul’s own imitation of Christ was so intense that he was able to become alter Christus, another Christ. Let me allow St. Gregory of Nyssa to emphasize this point for me:
“[Paul imitated Christ] so brilliantly that he revealed his own Master in himself, his own soul being transformed [my emphasis] through his accurate imitation of his prototype, so that Paul no longer seemed to be living and speaking, but Christ Himself seemed to be living in him. As this astute perceiver of particular goods says: ‘Do you seek a proof of the Christ who speaks in me?’ [2 Cor 13: 3] and: ‘It is now no longer I that live but Christ lives in me. [Gal. 2: 20]’”
—On Perfection, FOTC 58, trans. by Virginia Woods Callahan
What we have the privilege of being, already in this life, is the very Body of Christ alive and sanctifying the world. To do this, good works are necessary, but we also must be ‘renewed in mind’, not that we might be the only persons in the world who do good, but that we “may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” [cf. Rom 12: 2] Being renewed in mind requires meditation, training the mind to see reality in a way different than we do by the sloth of habit. The Mysteries of the rosary have proven over many centuries to be a most efficacious means of meditation, especially for the laity. But meditate we must, not only on what we ought to do to improve ourselves with God’s grace, but to come to the understanding of the hidden growth of Christ within us. In living out the life of Christ in our imaginations, guided by the tutelage of His glorious Mother, the Virgin Mary, we attune ourselves to the quiet unfolding of grace in our lives, and are thus able to cooperate with grace more readily and gratefully. We no longer carry out good works to justify ourselves or salve troubled consciences, but truly as co-operators with Jesus Christ, alive in our hearts and present to the world in our actions.