A Red State Mystic.

(Note: Consider this a testimony in the strictest Baptist fashion.)

EARLIER LAST EVENING was the Maundy Thursday Mass that included foot washing. It was a moving service as always, with the familiar text sung three different ways (once in Latin by Durufle): “Where true charity and love dwell, God himself is there.” As the choir lined up to process, From the back, I saw someone I know sitting in the pew and it shocked me.

ITS NOT ODD that we have visitors, but this visitor and I have a history. Our history includes everything from passive-aggressiveness to open hostility -- not necessarily towards me, but directed towards people I dearly love. I am very protective of my friends, to say the least. I have not been the most Christian in my interaction with this person, often deriding their name whenever it came up. I have avoided this person. I have been everything but Christ-like to them. It does not matter how it started.

A LOVELY ALTO Cantor sang: “As we are all one body, when we gather let no discord or enmity break our oneness. May all our petty jealousies and hatred cease that Christ the Lord may be with us through all our days.” And there this visitor sat. “Where true charity and love dwell, God himself is there.” I began to feel what I know as the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Even worse, I knew that if I did not take care of this and then partake of the Eucharist, I would “eat and drink judgment (1 Cor 11:29)” on myself. Then I’d have to mention it a few weeks later in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And I’d be shown for the selfish, petty person I am, once again.

I TOOK ADVANTAGE of the peace, as one is wont to do from time to time. Instead of the nice handshake with those around you, it becomes a chance to seek out those we have hurt (or been hurt by), offer a hand and say, “Peace be with you.” During those situations, the peace takes a whole new meaning and restores it to the original commandment of Our Lord that we leave our gift at the altar and “go be reconciled (Mt. 5:24).”

I WENT TO be reconciled. No other words were said for all the sorrow and remorse for self-preservation, petty hatreds and overt-judgmentalism all wrapped up in one little phrase, “Peace be with you.” I do not know if they wanted to be reconciled or meant their reply back to me. I do not care. It is not my place to demand it. However begrudgingly, I did my part. The conviction left and I was free to worship the Lord. “Where true charity and love dwell, God himself is there.”

AFTER THE SERVICE, I went to dinner with the usual suspects to a German restaurant. We were loud and obnoxious, as always. Then, a friend and I spent some time doing the watch before the Blessed Sacrament. There, I read from St. Augustine’s Prayer Book (a delightful Anglo-Catholic resource):

“Christianity is not a religion which merely lays upon me, a weak human being, the hopeless task of living an impossible good life helped only by the example of a Man who lived a perfect human life two thousand years ago. Christianity is a relationship to God whereby he communicates to us his own strength and vitality which enable us to live life on a higher plane . . . In Holy Communion, I receive from Jesus nothing less than himself, all he is and all he has (352).”

ANYTHING GOOD I have done is only because He has enabled me to do it. For on my own, I am a weak, petty, judgmental and inconsiderate asshole with no hope of redemption. But thanks be Jesus Christ, that He has not let me remain that way, no matter how slow, begrudgingly or half-hearted I follow Him (which is all the time).

I THINK SOMETHING significant happened tonight, for I saw a bit of the Kingdom: in the feet of an older man that I washed; in the outstretched hand offered in peace; on my lips that sang “Ubi Caritas;” and on my tongue, which was placed the fullness of Jesus Christ. For but a moment, I saw what I am in the Kingdom, not what I am grasping to be – and the difference between the two. For “where true charity and love dwell, God himself is there.”