Catholic as in Universal
[“But Moses said to (Joshua), ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put (the LORD’s) Spirit on all of them!’” (Num 11:29)]
[“John said to (Jesus), ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in my name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is for us’” (Mk 9:38-40).]
O Lover,
There was a notable correlation in the Hebrew Bible and Gospel texts in Sunday’s 26th week of ordinary time. In each complaint is raised about some outside the circle who claim to be doing Your work; in first the mouth of Moses and then in that of the “New Moses” such exclusion is rebuffed. Appearing in the lectionary in tandem, the impact of the two texts is disquieting and disrupting.
Indeed, there is a tension here, both dissentive and delicious, within the tradition of Jesus. On the one hand, throughout the newer testament’s writings his teachings, ministry, and vision of You are set forth as the fulfillment of the largely Hebraic antecedents with the Johannine “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me” (14:6) often viewed as unapologetically normative and exclusive. While much doctrinal ink has been expended in the morphing of this pole into judgmental and triumphal exclusivism, Jesus remains for me the central aperture to You.
On the other hand, that same tradition of Jesus includes numerous intimations that Your Self-disclosure cannot be confined by dogma or particularity. For instance, in the Acts (3:21) Peter uses the term apokatástasis (“universal restoration”) which would be theologically elaborated upon in various ways. In the same work the words “[God] did not leave [God’s] Self without witness” (14:17) are placed in the mouths of missioners Paul and Barnabus of which Your gifts of rain, harvest, food and gladness are examples. Three chapters later the vast scale of Your Self-disclosure surfaces in Paul’s sermon on Athens’s Areopagus (17:22-34) as he cites various pagan poets in making the case for Your ubiquitous paternity. Yet another non-exclusionary example might be 2nd century Justin Martyr‘s use of Lógos spermátikos (“seminal Word”) for Your Self-broadcasting throughout the creation and thus witness-bearing. This seed-sowing image is based in part on the initial chapter of both the Fourth Gospel and Paul’s Romans letter. It is this Your unfetteredness to which the Numbers and Marcan texts cited above point.
To the above examples I must add repeated experiences of persons of both other religious traditions, or none, whose embodiments of the way of Jesus compare favorably with that of many of us baptized—e.g., the Crusades, the Inquisition, ecclesiolatry, contemporary Christian Nationalism. I never give or receive the Vedantic greeting of Namáste (“I acknowledge and bow to the Divine in you”) without being aware of this inclusionary impulse. It is this enlarging and encompassing pole of our “delicious tension” which has long been neglected and is now in dire need of revisiting.
And what is the form, O Lover, which that revisitation is taking? As starters, I am experiencing Your draw into the cosmic scale of Your Self-disclosure. Texts like “heaven and earth are full of Your glory” (Sánctus of the Mass) herald both Your ubiquity and universal disposition of Love. Despite imperfections and distortions either within or without religious traditions, the drawing power of Your Love is operative everywhere. You outsize any and all traditions, mine included. Although all of our finite vessels are invariably fractured, Your Loving Flame continues to shine through the cracks. The impact of my confession of Jesus as LORD ranges far beyond religiosity, Christianity, or any other demarcation.
In short, the first and central meaning of “catholic” is universal.
