The Abbey of the Genesee

Fr. Gerard dSouza, OCSO

2nd Saturday in Ordinary Time

In the life of the saint there is the usual struggle between good and evil. There is the slow progress in wisdom that comes through serious failures. Holiness is a process of development. That is why you cannot call Our Lord a saint. The movement from the hidden life to the public ministry is abrupt, a sudden irruption of mighty deeds from out of nowhere. That this was sudden, unexpected is borne out by the fact that His family, those who knew Him intimately were totally unprepared for this. He was not a Jewish saint. So they had one explanation, that is the last resort of small minds – He was insane. He was out of His mind.

There is something tongue-in-cheek here. Our text says’ that he was out of his mind’ but the Greek word means literally that Jesus stood outside Himself. Our word ecstasy comes from this. And it is perfectly true. Jesus always stood outside Himself in the will of His Father. This marks His whole life. Gethsemane and Golgotha are nothing but this standing outside in the will of the Father pushed to its extreme. So the relatives are right and they are wrong. They are right in that He was out of His mind. They were wrong to think Him insane. He was the sanest person that lived because He was always at rest in the will of His Father.

Which brings me to Chesterton’s definition of the madman. The madman, says he, is not one who has lost his mind or his reason. The madman is not out his mind. The opposite is true. The madman, says Chesterton, is the one who has lost everything else but his reason. He is too much in his own mind and cannot get out of it.

Yet it is this that is prized today. We are told to be our own masters, to be absolutely independent of everyone – even God. We are told to stay in our own ego, to guard it and prize it and think of nothing or no one else but number one. Our world then becomes one big lunatic asylum and we, for our security, have to keep the sane ones locked away. Trapped in ourselves, always standing in ourselves  we do not love or care, we do not wonder, we do not sacrifice, we cannot look beyond our own selfishness. This in not independence but a cruel slavery. Is that why we are so unhappy?

To be truly sane we have to repent. Turn around from ourselves and open ourselves to God. We can only find our peace in the will of our Father. He promises true rest to the poor in spirit. The poor in spirit are in that sense, insane, out of their minds, they are dependent on God alone. This is why they are also happy and ecstatic. The experts in natural contemplation can create their alpha brain waves through their techniques. But rest in the will of the Father is the only real rest and sanity that there is.