May 2007 Print

Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P.

There is a vital necessity to adapt to Christ in a world radically at odds with His spirit.

 

Every one of us, whatever his situation, is a cause, a fountainhead, an origin, a principle. When a principle is tainted, it calls down disaster: On the contrary, when a person espouses what is superior, he too becomes superior in his way of considering things below him.

So what does it mean to adapt? It means taking the measurements of a map in order to "conform" oneself to it. At the starting point, there always has to be knowledge of a measure. You should know the measurements of the gift of yourself, of intimacy with God, of adoration, in function with your past, with your graces, with your invitations, etc. Adaptation presupposes a model that does not depend on us and the reproduction of that model, which does depend on us.

We have to assume the measure of Christ. We have to be willing to measure ourselves against the infinite. It will stretch us apart. What is the measure of Christ? "I am come that they may have life. Thy will be done."

The measure of Christ is the will of God and the salvation of others. It is only on Calvary that the full measure is accomplished. We become a question for those around us to the extent that we are secretly an answer for God. When we continually say yes to God, we become a question for those around us.

"I have come to trouble the earth," to pose a question. We do not know what it means to trouble the world. The good and even the best of us are only timid.

The measure of Christ is the Cross. He adapted Himself to the dimensions of the Cross; and they were dimensions that stretch apart. We need to love and to consent to that stretching apart which alone can raise us to the dimensions of Christ.

He adapted Himself to the form of the Cross: rigid, pitiless, brutal. A cruel rigidity, indispensable for supporting the body of Christ in order to guarantee the Redemption. The rigidity of spiritual commitments, guaranteeing their solidity, as opposed to feelings and religious emotion, which are still a kind of self-seeking: if it feels good, you're ready for anything; if it doesn't feel good, you're not so ready. Whereas with the solidity of the Faith, whatever the cost, you're always ready.

Christ adapted Himself to the weight of the Cross–and it was a weight out of all measure with the strength of the One who sought nonetheless to measure up to it, and who only managed to do so by an excess of love. When you have the acute realization that for one reason or another–physical, moral, spiritual–you cannot shoulder the weight of your day, God becomes for you someone very real and very near, and you can only carry that weight by an excess of love for Him, that is to say, by surpassing your duty in superabundance.

What did Christ possess that let Him take on the dimensions of the Cross? He possessed His acceptance of the will of the Father. He possessed His repulsion for evil and for falsehood, to which He preferred labor and pain. He possessed His intense love, in the constant service of the Redemption.

As soon as we start dreaming of dispensations and of adapting to ease, we can no longer adapt ourselves to Christ. God does us the honor of adapting us to things nobler than us. All of our own value, in the deepest sense, comes from letting the Cross take the measure of our spiritual dimensions. The role of the Christian is to adapt himself to the cross: the cross of an unforeseen suffering; the cross of a chosen rule of life; the cross of a voluntary penance.

To the degree we adapt ourselves to it, the Cross hides for us a sweetness, meaning a solution: one we would turn to look for in the pleasures and satisfactions that un-adapt us to God. Sin draws us through pleasure to bitterness. The Cross draws us through bitterness to the sweetness of God. That is precisely the paradox which nobody wants to experience any longer.

God asks us to give our full measure–and He has measured and weighed us from all eternity. He makes us pass through the purgatory of love which is called the Cross, or else through purgatory pure and simple. The solution is to adapt ourselves to the divine dimensions, which are redemptive, not intellectual or emotional. After all, where is real productivity? In divine, redemptive solutions: "Unless the grain of wheat fall to the ground and die..."

We do not want to be redeemed. We do God the "honor" of drawing His attention to our lives, but we eliminate the Redemption. We do not know what it means to let ourselves be redeemed. Calvary alone can bring about the resurrection and the ascension of masses and individuals. Calvary alone.

Nothing is more realistic, nothing more "flesh and blood," more positive, more true, more concrete than Christ, precisely because He is spiritual. Religion does not boil down to intellectual conceptions that dispense us from living redemptive methods. The first of those methods is prayer, that gaze of the poor man begging for light: "I am hungry...give me to eat!"

Prayer is the most fundamental act of the redeemed, a cry from the depths of one who knows he is lost and who begs for the Redeemer. We see our Lord constantly talking about prayer. He forces man to realize that prayer is like breathing if he wants to be saved.

In order to live, therefore, it is necessary to step beyond purely intellectual notions. When we want to participate in the life of Christ, we have to put ourselves on the line: a confession that hurts, an effort that weighs on us, a disproportion that puts us in proportion. This is the method that separates us from the world. But we want to be of the world, we want to be like everyone else, we do not want to take on wholeheartedly the position that redeems. The Faith is essentially heroic.

I said that we are each called to be a fountainhead, a spring. Springs are always in the heights, on the summits. A summit is far from the world: summits of professional conscience, giving the impression that, even on the human level, you are already on the summits; summits in the moral life, breathtaking with supernatural tact. People will say: "Where did that come from?" It came from contemplation, penance, intimacy with the life of God.

"Pure": Agios, without mixture. Personal purity: an absence of mixture with flesh and blood. Crucified in his flesh, liberated in his soul. Crucified in his time, liberated in his activities.

When God takes hold of a being, He takes hold of it by its substance, by its points of reference, by its intentions, and He changes everything around. He shakes everything up. But nothing is shaken up, and nothing changes, because Christians no longer have a thirst to adapt themselves to God, but an obsession with adapting themselves to the world.

 

Originally published as "L'adaptation a la mentalité du Christ," Carnets Spirituels, No. 10, October 2006, pp.14-18. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press.