The Mystery of Relationship

This is part of a series of posts on the invocations of the Jesus Psalter. There is a menu of these posts at the bottom. The invocations will be considered thematically.

Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, grant me grace to fear thee
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, grant me grace to love thee

THERE ARE SEVERAL Of the invocations that ask for the “grace” to do something. As a Protestant I learned that grace stands for “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense”. You can cringe for a few moments now, I’ll wait. That constant idea that God beat up Jesus for Us comes to haunt us though – even Catholic cannot get away from it. The image of the old school teacher Nun telling St Bernadette how stupid she is, or the idea that telling a lie is pushing one of the thorns deeper in Our Lord’s head on the Cross… we fail to understand what “because of our sins” means here. We fail to understand Grace, Fear, and Love as well.

Grace is God: Grace is God’s divine presence acting in our life. Because God is infinitely simple, two possible to separate God’s grace from God. This is divine simplicity: we cannot separate God’s actions from God’s person, from God’s very self. God acting in your life is not an abstract but his presence. When we ask for the grace to do something we are not asking for some sort of superpower like x-ray vision or being able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. By asking for Grace we are opening our self to participation in the Divine action in the world. So what then is this grace to fear? And why do we contrast it with this grace to love? Do we contrast these?

One wants to call to mind 1 John 4:8, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” So how can we pray for the grace to fear and then as part of the same prayer, ask for the grace to love? Would they not cancel each other out?

If you are married or in a relationship at this time, think back. If you’ve ever been married or dating someone, you can think back as well: to your first date. In fact, if we’re honest, the first five or six dates will probably fit this pattern. How long did you date before you were comfortable with, pardon me, farting in front of them? I mean we all do so – we’re humans, we eat food, gas happens. But there’s a fear of doing so in public, in front of strangers. Some scientists think that in terms of social evolution, these released body scents were a way of saying “we’re all safe here” and so the fear may not be humorous so much as an unwillingness to include strangers in a cloud of knowing and being known. But, silliness aside, we hate to do so on dates. Even though, at some point, it happens.

A less silly thing: how long did you date before you stopped cleaning your apartment when they came over?

This is fear.

I don’t mean that you were afraid they’d find out you farted or had a messy apartment. Rather you were afraid to hurt the new relationship by being too – what? – too human? too normal? too natural? too “me”?

As stilted as that part of the relationship seems, it’s also the part that gets turned into Romance Novels and RomComs, into comedy routines and famous country music duets. We know that we all grow out of this stage, but there’s something real and endearing about it. And, when we’ve been married for 50 years and have long ago stopped worrying about farting in front of each other, we still clean the house for a romantic dinner.

This balance of love and fear is the mystery of relationship not just with our lover or our friends, not just with other humans, but also with God.

Jesus is our Creator, our King, and our Judge. Jesus is also our Brother, our Saviour, and our Friend. We enter into relationship with him only aware of all of these aspects. One dursn’t fart in front of King. One cares not if one farts in front of a friend. (Carsn’t should be a thing…) One holds on to both of these aspects in all of life. Fear and love balance out, in a way. Our sins should horrify us, as the Act of Contrition say, not only because we are afraid of the pains of Hell, but “because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” And each of these can be real, fear and love, God our Judge, and our Friend is the same person.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), but wisdom doesn’t stop there. She draws us closer and closer to God until his perfect love drives out our fear entirely. As in any healthy relationship, we cannot skip over the awareness that we can break it – but as the love grows more closely to wrap us ever deeper, we also find that we become like our beloved. Until we are like the two elders sitting on a park bench in June, quietly holding hands.

But if one farts, they will still giggle.

Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi, Jesu.

Jesus Psalter Menu
– Introduction
– The Mystery of Mercy
– The Mystery of Relationship
– The Mystery of Reality