The Christ as Recapitulation
[Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024.]
O Lover,
In her splendid tracing of the last years of the spiritual journey of Thomas Keating, OCSO (1923-2018), Cynthia Bourgeault, OSB, Episcopalian priest and mystic, employs the term “recapitulation” for the re-sounding of the “primordial point of [cosmic] origin” in every subsequent nanosecond of now. It might be said that the term paradoxically conflates repetition of engendering event with Your evolutionary expansion within, around, and beyond. Musically speaking, ”recapitulation” references the successive pipings of a theme repeatedly orchestrated beyond its initial form (e.g., J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations & Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations). “Recapitulation” melds repetition with enriching elaboration. In short, ever-burgeoning oneness.
The epiphanic scent lingering, I use “recapitulation” in this post to explore the open-ended and crescendoing significance of Incarnátio upon all having being. I am persuaded that, beyond mere original event or promulgated dogma, the Christ event is Your revolutionary paradigm for everything from origin into the eternities! That this embodiment of Your Mystérium (Eph 1:10), this “splendor of the Father” (Heb 1:3), is beyond the reach of human language, thought, or image has not surprisingly given rise to ensuing elaborations upon the Christ event. Beyond that, it is no longer possible to ignore that over the centuries practitioners of myriad spiritualities have and continue to intuit Your Self-disclosure in ourselves.
As such, each “now” includes the invitation to live out of Mary’s fiat; (Lk 1:38); in each “now” we too hear the words “you are my beloved one in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17); the perplexity and incomprehension of each “now” is allowed as with the doubting disciples; in every eucharistic “now” we become more aware that we too are bearers of Your Real Presence; the larger picture of each brush with mortality in the “now” is signed by the Chrístos anésti (“Christ is risen”) of the Eastern Orthodox tradition; foundationally, in each “now” Your enfleshment in the Christ (Jn 1:14) is encompassing all humans, indeed, all gifted with being. Your relentlessly unfolding Christ event—from antecedents of the Annunciation to the writing of this sentence, and counting—is the timeless declaration of Your disposition toward all that is. Even our most self-destructive Babylons are fair game for your ever-burgeoning recapitulation of Bethlehem.
The Christ is thus above all else an embodiment of Your lavish and tenacious Agápe (“Love”) for all You have gifted with being. Implicit in this ever-unfolding Christic embrace is both You as Source before time itself (Jn 1:1-5; Col 1:15-20) and You as End (Télos), as “all in All” (I Cor 15:20-28). Hail the son of Mary: in the proliferation of his impact all of us are shown to be expressions of Your Self-embodiment! So cosmic, so uncontainable, Your Christ! So profound Your Self-embedding in our creatureliness! So uncircumscribable the expanse of Your heart!
And where all might this story, this Your recapitulation of the Christ, yet go, O Lover? O the “depths, . . .[and] . . . incomprehensibility” (Rom 11:33) of You, O Incarnator!
