Will Christ Find You?
29th Sunday of the Year
In early Christian art, a person at prayer is not depicted, as we are accustomed, kneeling with hands folded but rather standing with arms raised and hands extended. This posture is known as the orans which literally means the one who is praying. We see the orans in the surviving frescoes in the catacombs and on sarcophagi that we can view today in museums. It is the same position that the rubrics prescribe for the priest when offering prayers at Mass. From what we know of the early Church, the orans seems to have been the typical of prayer for pretty much everyone. As we recently heard Paul express to Timothy: I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling (1 Tim. 2:8). One female figure depicted in the Catacombs of Priscilla indicates that the orans was used not only by men but also by women; not to mention the countless depictions of the Virgin Mary doing the same. Praying with hands extended was simply the way the early Christians prayed.
Over the course of time, Christian postures of prayer have developed into what they are today. We are embodied creatures who need to pray both with our souls and our bodies; and the need to pray with our bodies can manifest itself in a variety of expressions. Today praying with our hands lifted up to the sky is a gesture that is likely to raise some eyebrows and set us apart as odd. I’ll leave the decision to do that up to you. But regardless, no matter how we pray, our prayer must possess the inner disposition of the orans for it to be authentic and effective. We must, at least on the inside, lift up our hands – and thus our hearts – to the Lord our God.
At the end of today’s Gospel, Christ asks whether, when he returns, he will find faith on earth. If Christ expects to find faith when he comes again, it seems important that we know what faith is. There is a lot we could say about faith, but a simple answer comes from Joseph Ratzinger: faith is an open hand.1 Faith begins, according to Ratzinger, when we recognize our insufficiency to meet the demands put upon us. Christ tells us that the road to salvation requires the wholehearted love of God and of our neighbor. Who among us feels capable of attaining that? Who of us, then, could hope to be saved? Faith begins when we recognize our complete dependency on Christ to fulfill even the smallest letter of the command he has given us. Faith begins when we open our hands to receive what Christ desires to give.
Faith of this kind is often easy and even reasonable in time of great need. Moses knew that his people needed more than their strength alone to overcome Amalek and his forces. Thus, he went up the mountain to call upon God’s power to give Israel the better of the fight. Moses raised his hands above to the God who made heaven and earth; and from heaven God dispatched his help and wrought victory. ‘Twas ever thus.
But faith is more than mere dependency on God to get us out of a jam. The faith of an open hand runs far deeper. The faith of an open hand is a disposition to call upon God in all stages of life, no matter our fortunes or our woes, because the openness of the hand is ultimately about the openness of the person. Who I am – and all that I am – is supposed to displaced by someone else. I am supposed to receive at the level of my individuality a new subjectivity. And the person who I am to receive is Christ, as Paul writes: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20). Faith is the disposition that receives the person of Christ in place of our own.
The orans, the ancient Christian posture of prayer, is therefore most appropriate. We lift up our hands to pray with vulnerability and receptivity to surrender ourselves to be entirely overcome and replaced by the person of Christ. That is faith. That is what Christ will seek to find at his return. Christ will return to the world to seek out himself: to where he finds himself in and among us; and he will gather to himself in eternity those who have become one with him in time.
Faith requires us to admit our fundamental need; but our prosperity often eclipses that need and closes our hands around what we are able to grasp and use to make better for ourselves. What we stand to lose amidst our success, however, is becoming the person who Christ will seek upon his return; and if that is lost, then we will have gained only the world and lost our soul.Even more than Moses needed to ascend the mountain to call down the Lord’s help in the battle before him do we need to call upon the same Lord to make us victorious in our fight over the world that has eternal life as its reward. The battle against us is fought on every side with every force luring us to believe that we are the masters of our destiny and the captains of our fate.
Life remind us, however, that we are not; and we can arrive at that realization through tragedy and pain or through sacrifice and love. What Christ invites us to in every act of worship is to turn the tide and lift our hands and our hearts to him to bring to completion the work of redemption he has begun to us – to finish his new creation within us by which we become one with Christ now and forever. This is why worship is essential to our life: it conforms us to Christ. In worship, Christ speaks to us through his word: he teaches and trains, corrects and refutes, and demands that we drop what is in our hands and lift them up to the Lord our God to receive what his mercy has deigned to give. We strike our breasts for what we have done and what we have failed to do; and we open ourselves to receive the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, under our roof. In worship, the word of God speaks to us and takes flesh in us; and in this, we become one with Christ.
We know, of course, that that change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and perseverance. And as we raise our hands often and without ready result, they grow weary and become slack. We struggle to carry on with the little progress we’ve made. We lose the strength to fight when the battle ahead looks to overwhelm us. But that is why worship always requires the Church. As the Body of Christ, we are one; and we all rely on each other to become members of that Body full and true. We stand in need of one another to lift our hands, as Moses relied on Aaron and Hurt to support his. Consider those who used to stand in this holy place and used to lift their hands and hearts to God but who do so no more. Think about those who struggle to find the courage to fight or who have given it up altogether. We all bear a responsibility toward them. Paul charges us in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead… proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. Proclaim the word that the Word may become flesh in you, in me, in all God’s people near and far.
Whether upon his return Christ will find faith on earth depends on us. Will he find us in himself? Will he find himself in others because of us? Let us find him here and hear him speak to us; and may his word be on our hearts, in our hands, and our lips as we speak and proclaim him to the world.
Homily preached October 15 & 16, 2022 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, What It Means to Be a Christian, 72-77.