Thin Places (Not About Dieting!)

 

I had paused in some TV channel surfing to watch a program about Louisiana American Indians. A man spoke about a lake which is very significant to his tribe and he spoke of his uncle who said that on the lake the space was thin. This was not explained, but immediately I understood what his uncle meant.

 

Perhaps I had heard the phrase "thin place" before. A little research and I found that the term is often used in Celtic (Irish and Scottish) spirituality. In an article by Sylvia Maddox, she writes:

 

"A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God. A contemporary poet Sharlande Sledge gives this description:

 

‘Thin places,’ the Celts call this space,

Both seen and unseen,

Where the door between this world

And the next is cracked open for a moment

And the light is not all on the other side.

God shaped space. Holy.’"

 

There is something indescribable about certain places where that door between our world and the next does seem to crack open for a moment and in enters Mystery.

 

Tomb of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy

I experienced such a place in Assisi where St. Francis was born and where he was buried. There is a large Basilica Church of St. Francis and in its crypt is the tomb of Francis. It’s not a very large space if memory serves me correctly. I knelt on a simple wood kneeler. It was quiet–this in itself was most unusual in Italy because Italians are usually noisy in church. Or are those tourists?

 

As I prayed and people simply walked around the tomb, I had the distinct sensation that St. Francis was there. Well, of course, his body was buried there. But that’s not what I experienced. His living presence was there and I felt the most incredible peace. From the world in which Francis lives (heaven) and the world in which I live (this life) the "separating wall" seemed very thin, porous even, in that crypt.

 

I seem particularly prone to such things–when I slow down and pay attention.

 

The Eucharist as Portal

In one of my blog entries (May 10, 2013 HERE)) I spoke about the Eucharist in terms of a portal (or door, if you prefer) between heaven where Jesus is Risen and Ascended and earth---the place around the altar and the Sacrament. I would describe the space occupied by the altar and the elements of the Consecrated bread and Wine to be a thin place.

 

Of course to be truly orthodox I must confess that the Eucharist is more than a spiritual portal into heaven. Jesus himself is the Portal and the Door; just as Jesus is not merely symbolized by the Eucharist but is the Eucharist by virtue of his Real Presence.

These matters always require attentiveness. If I come to Mass and am inattentive and worried about many things, I may feel nothing when hearing the Word of God or when Christ is truly Present at the altar. If I had merely come to the tomb of St. Francis that time and rushed through or was anxious to get to lunch or to some other activity, I probably would have missed the grace of that "thin place."

 

Prayer itself can assist us in becoming attentive to grace-filled moments in our life. This will be part of Advent's message (Advent begins this year on December 1). There is also a mind set, difficult to sustain, which looks for the Presence of God always and everywhere (though it is often only sometimes and some places). Proven "thin places" help us with this: pilgrimages to holy places, visits to a church for prayer, wild places in nature like mountains or deserts.

 

We seek the Reality behind the realty; the invisible God behind the visible world. We call this the "sacramental approach."

 

Today I might ask myself: "Where shall God appear in my world today?"

 

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Heaven and Earth Overlapping

 

"In the Bible, Heaven and Earth mesh together. You find Jesus in the middle of that, you find the Bible in the middle of that, and you should find yourself in the middle of that.

 

"Part of the point of being a Christian is that we are meant to be living at those strange overlap points of Heaven and Earth. That’s what prayer is all about. That’s what sacraments are all about. That’s what actually ministering to the poor, in Jesus’ name, is all about."

 

                                                                                                                 — N.T. Wright

 

I like Wright’s point about heaven and earth overlapping, meshing together. I understand what he means in this way: there are moments when heaven seems to mix with the earth; when the sacred invades the secular; when what is invisible becomes visible; when God and humankind touch together.

 

Wright says this is what prayer is all about. Sometimes we see prayer as simply a duty–and it is that. A duty reminds us to do what is valuable and worthy in life, even if we don’t feel like it. But prayer transcends duty, including it and ascending higher. God is coming to us all the time on earth, and if we don’t stop and listen and watch and pray, we may be dumb to his Presence. Even when we pray we may be so distracted and not really letting God speak to us.

 

Maybe I can describe it like this: prayer is like the overlap of the ocean with the shore. One could walk all day on the seashore and never get their feet wet. Sometimes we plunge into the sea and swim a far ways out; but sooner or later we must come back to shore, because we aren’t sea creatures. Third, we may walk along the shore where the waters overlap with the sand. Here we get our feet wet and experience both shore and sea together.

 

 

For my example, the shore is our daily life. The water is near, but we can ignore it, perhaps even walk a great distance from it so that we cannot even see the sea or hear it. The sea is like the Presence of God, the divine and transcendent. Sometimes we have these moments which make us "high" and joyful; or to use my metaphor, which plunges us into the depths of reality, like diving into the sea, not just being at the surface (living the superficial).

 

By the way, when we don’t experience God much in our lives, we usually try to get high artificially in some way.

 

Christ of the Abyss-- Key Largo FL

Prayer, walking in the overlap of everyday life and God’s oceanic Presence, which is also an experience of heaven, keeps us aware that there is a great big ocean out there (God) and we need to keep at least our "feet wet" to remember this. I can’t help but want to link this to the waters of Baptism, as well. We need to remember that we were immersed in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, at our Baptism. We need to remember that often —as  when we bless ourselves with holy water when we come into the Church to worship or pray.

 

I find myself so often crowding out times of daily prayer when I am busy. I always have some prayer time daily, but sometimes it’s like when you see a child run down to the water at the beach and then immediately run back to safer ground. If I get too busy, I feel like I’m running away from God if I don’t take sufficient time to pray.

 

The Sacraments, also mentioned by Bishop Wright, are by their very definition an enmeshing of heaven and earth. God uses matter and earthly realities to reveal his heavenly Presence. Or the old definition for a sacrament is "a visible and outward sign of an invisible and inward grace" instituted by Christ and his Church. Catholics recognize 7 Sacraments officially, but there is a whole sacramental approach to life normally embedded in Catholics. Read more about this, if you want, HERE.

 

When the Son of God took flesh and dwelt among us as Christ Jesus, he is called the Ultimate Sacrament of God. In Jesus, heaven and earth overlapped and united. Orthodox Catholic Faith does not say Jesus was a mixture of God and human, like one might mix flour and yeast to make bread. Instead, "We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person..." (Council of Chalcedon, quoted in Catechism #467) Thus Heaven and Earth, God and humanity united with neither losing their own proper nature in Christ Jesus.

 

 

I like to look also for those moments when it seems that heaven has indeed overlapped with earth: in beauty; in places that seem mysterious or have a sacred association such as churches (I think of so many places in Assisi with St. Francis); in art and music that is inspiring; in assisting someone in need (for Christ associates himself with those in need: See Matthew 25:31-46) As Catholics we let these "overlapping" things and moments nourish our minds and hearts with God’s Presence.

 

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The Eucharist: Door to Heaven

I shall share some thoughts about the Ascension as it relates to the Eucharist which also may speak to your faith, as it does to mine.
 

When Jesus ascends into heaven, he enters heaven as our Great High Priest. In the Jewish worship offered in the Temple, the High Priest would enter annually into the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies, on the Day of Atonement to offer blood sacrifice for the sins of the People. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews compares Jesus’ entry into heaven to this entry of the High Priest into the Holy of Holies. The Ascended Christ brings his own Sacrifice on the Cross for our sins before God and opens the way for us to follow him to heaven. (See Hebrews 4:14; 9:11; 10:19,20)
 

In heaven Christ is our Priest. He presides over the Heavenly Liturgy which includes the angels and saints and all the blessed of heaven. As Priest he offers his One Sacrifice, once offered on the Cross, i.e. himself in his Body and Blood. The Catechism (#1187) says about this Heavenly Liturgy:
 

"The liturgy is the work of the whole Christ, head and body. Our high priest celebrates it unceasingly in the heavenly liturgy, with the holy Mother of God, the apostles, all the saints, and the multitude of those who have already entered the kingdom."
 

Christ also makes intercession for us in heaven. (See Hebrews 7:25) This is why at our Sunday Mass, at the time of the Intercessions, we say we are joining our Intercessions with those of Christ.
 

When we celebrate our Eucharist on earth, we spiritually ascend to heaven, to participate by faith in the Heavenly Liturgy with Christ. I have learned a great deal about this "ascension in the liturgy" from an Orthodox Priest and Liturgical scholar, Fr. Alexander Schmemann. He writes:
 

"But the liturgy of the Church is always...a lifting up, an ascension. The Church fulfills itself in heaven in that new eon which Christ has inaugurated in His death, resurrection and ascension, and which was given to the Church on the day of Pentecost as its life..." (For the Life of the World, p.42)
 

The U.S. Bishops say much the same thing about Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist:
 

"Christ does not have to leave where he is in heaven to be with us. Rather, we partake of the heavenly liturgy where Christ eternally intercedes for us and presents his sacrifice to the Father and where the angels and saints constantly glorify God and give thanks for all his gifts." ( "The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist: Basic Questions and Answers," USCCB, June 2001)
 

In the oldest Roman Eucharistic Prayer (Now called Eucharistic Prayer I), after the Consecration, the Priest prays:
 

"In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God:

command that these gifts be borne
by the hands of your holy Angel                                                                       

to your altar on high

in the sight of your divine majesty,

so that all of us, who though this participation

at the altar

receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son,

may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing."
 

This prayer refers to the altar in heaven mentioned in several places in the Book of Revelation (). Christ is Present at that altar. As one commentator says: "The community in the church on earth is mystically gathered at God’s altar on high." (Paul Turner, The Supper of the Lamb, p.89)  Our altar  on earth participates in the Heavenly Altar.


 

The question as to how Christ is now in heaven (after his Ascension), yet Really Present in the earthly Eucharist, "under" the appearance of the Consecrated Bread and Wine, was the subject of some debate in the Middle Ages. Does he "come down" from heaven to be Present in the earthly Eucharist? The Bishops answer he does not; and yet he is truly Present to us at the Eucharist.
 

For myself, I understand this matter in this way: first, when we speak of Christ’s being in heaven, we cannot really say "he is up in heaven" or that "he comes down from heaven" (i.e. after his Ascension). Heaven is not a location like a geographical location on earth. The Catechism (#2794) says: "[Heaven] does not mean a place (‘space’), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic. Our Father is not ‘elsewhere’: he transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness."
 

I am able to understand this by imaging heaven as a "dimension," so to speak, that transcends our world of time and space. Perhaps I first thought this from a passage (again) from Fr. Alexander Schmemann. He speaks of the Liturgy of the Eucharist as a "journey into the dimension of the Kingdom [of God]":
 

"We use this word ‘dimension’ because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies ‘come alive’ when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life." (For the Life of the World, p.26-27)
 

(Because of Einstein, we often call time the fourth dimension, but Schmemann is not referring to that description; indeed, his fourth dimension would be eternity)
 

As a "fourth dimension," paradoxically heaven is nowhere and everywhere. It is like the Ultimate Reality "behind" our earthly reality. (We have to keep using spatial language for a reality that is not spatial) I can image the Eucharist, then, as opening, a portal, so to speak, to heaven: "the gates of heaven."
 

The Psalmist says: "I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let's go to the Lord's house!’ Now our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem." (Psalm 122:1-2)
 

The Psalmist was speaking of the earthly Jerusalem. With the Eucharist, I am thinking of the heavenly Jerusalem, about which I have written quite a bit lately. What I am saying is that in the Eucharist we are standing spiritually within the heavenly gates of the New Jerusalem.
 

When I think this way, I think of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where four children discover in a closet wardrobe a doorway to a magical country called Narnia. (Narnia also is not on the same time as our world).
 

Another way of seeing this is that heaven and earth join in the Eucharistic celebration. Christ does not leave heaven, nor do we literally leave earth, but we meet and receive the Risen Christ in heaven in the Eucharist, the "meeting place" at "the gates." Again the Psalmist says: "Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation." (Psalm 118.19-21)
 

 

 

Listen HERE to Handel's  "Lift up your heads, O ye gates" sung by  the Brandemburg Consort and the Choir of King's College Cambridge
 

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