Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker, said once that “The Shekinah is between beings.”[1] Now the word Shekinah is sometimes translated “glory,” yet it is not some ordinary glory but the glory of the presence of God, the dwelling of God; the idea is kind of synonymous with the “word” of God or even the “face” of God. In John’s Gospel, for instance, his opening argument is basically that Jesus is the Shekinah of God made flesh and dwelling among us.[2] The way we normally use the word “glory” is too thin in comparison to what is sometimes meant in the Bible. The way the Bible uses the word, it’s full of theology, it implies the presence of God.
Which is what’s so amazing about what Martin Buber said—that the “Shekinah is between beings”—because that’s what he meant. He meant that between two people, the Shekinah of God—the word of God, the face God—well, that’s where you can find it sometimes, between two people, he said. You just first need to be the sort of person who can see that; that is, you must have the right sort of character to see such glory. Which, of course, is the challenge.
Christians talk this way too. St. Aelred of Rievaulx, for example, in his beautiful book On Spiritual Friendship: the opening line is just breathtaking; he says, “Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.”[3] He’s saying the same thing, really, as Martin Buber—though from a theologically very different place. St. Benedict, for another example, begins his Rule with the same intimacy; “Listen carefully, my son…This advice is from a father who loves you,” reads the very first line.[4] Von Balthasar, the great twentieth century theologian, called it the “sacrament of the brother.”[5] They were all trying to get at the same thing, I think—the same mystery, the notion that between two people, two faces—when love is there—there exists something you’d call glory, something you may even call God.
Our problem, though, is that we have been numbed to this sort of language because of sentimentality, because of the polite, shallow language of advertising and the screen. That is, when we use words, we either don’t think about them deeply enough or, worse, we just don’t mean what we say. We live in a world of dulled words; we don’t use words or hear words well anymore, it seems. And because of that bad habit of language, sentimental language and sloganized language, we have a hard time grasping the reality of sacred language. We have to force ourselves to stop and think about our words and accept, for example, what an astounding thing it is to say that God may truly be present between two people—not merely to say it but to believe it, to believe that God can really be that close.
I am talking, obviously, about the gospel reading from Luke, the story of the Visitation. Mary, pregnant, visits her cousin, Elizabeth, who is also pregnant. Both of them, unlikely pregnancies, and both of them full of prophecy and presence, both mysteriously part of the providence of God. And both of them are alert to it, alert to the invisible fact that their meeting is fuller than what’s visible on the surface. “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”[6] Elizabeth sees more; she’s the sort of person who sees more than what is visible on the surface of things.
And that’s the point. I could spend a lot more time on the biblical theology of the story, which would be fascinating and illuminating—especially for those who’ve never entered the vast magical forest of the Scripture. But we’re Catholics, lovers of short homilies, so all I’ll say is that you can indeed see how Elizabeth sees—mystically, beautifully—but that it doesn’t come easy. You can’t just ask for it; you can’t buy it on Amazon or read a book or listen to a podcast and all of the sudden become a mystic; you can’t expect to see anything beautiful or mystical at all if you refuse to let go of the ugliness of the world, refuse to pray, refuse to read the Bible, refuse to be silent; it just will not work if you keep pushing those simple yet very holy things out of your life. Which is not just the challenge, as I said, but the potential tragedy; because there is so much to see that is beautiful, so much that we’re missing, so mired, as we are, in the material, so enslaved by the screen.
Now to think about what all this means this week, I want you to think about your in-laws, your co-workers, your neighbors, the worker at Target you’ll see when you run out for that last minute purchase, the kid at the Chick-fil-A counter. What will you see? Obviously, it’s not going to be as tremendous an encounter as the one between Elizabeth and Mary; I do not expect you to sing, waffle fries in hand, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” That’s silly. But it’s not silly to be the sort of person who is aware of the fact that every single face you see is created and loved by God, that even when disfigured by sin, every face is still beautiful and a reflection of God, that in every person is Christ. “Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst,” St. Aelred said, didn’t he? The thing is that’s always true. That’s the simple lesson, that it’s possible to be the sort of person who sees other people like that—that, in fact, for we Christians, that’s the expectation. That’s the sort of people we Catholics are meant to be.
Which is a beautiful lesson the Church gives us today, so near Christmas, right before company comes. I’m going to pray I see my family like that, everyone else too. It’ll be a difficult thing to do; I mean, if you met some of the people in my family, you’d get it. Maybe, from your own experience, you know what I mean. But I’m going to try this week to pray this week to see spiritually this week. Because it just seems beautiful seeing the world like that, seeing Christ in them and in everybody. Maybe you’re in the same boat I am, so maybe pray like I will; let’s try to be mystics like Elizabeth together. Because I think it will make us happier, and perhaps it’ll even make the world a better place—like some side-effect of Christmas. In any case, let’s say we try it; let’s open our spiritual eyes this week. I think it’ll be worth it. I mean, who knows what we’ll see? Amen.
[1] Maurice Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Bridge, 126
[2] John 1:14
[3] Aelred of Rievaulx, On Spiritual Friendship 1.1
[4] Benedict, The Rule Prologue 1
[5] Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, 243
[6] Luke 1:43
© 2024 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
