Union

In college I took a class called Language and the Text, taught by a professor who seemed to be attempting to resolve her ambivalence about leaving her Catholic upbringing behind. We read bits of Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin and Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and we were instructed to apply their ideas to texts that included Augustine's Confessions and St. Teresa's autobiography. The cover of our edition of the latter featured the marvelous Bernini statue.

"I am not the first person," our professor informed us, "to think that Teresa's expression looks like sexual ecstasy." Discussion ensued: obviously it's hazardous to repress one's sexual desires, etc. I was 20 at the time, the only believer -- or at least the only person willing to identify as a believer -- in that class of a dozen comparative literature majors. And I wanted to speak up. I wanted to say, "I believe that God created sex to teach us about deeper joy: union with Him. I believe that even the best sex can offer a person only a pallid foretaste of the delights of heaven."

But I didn't. And even at the time I was ashamed of the reason: I didn't want that roomful of black-clad artsy types to think "That Jamie Most just needs to get laid. That'll teach her about pallid foretastes." I had found it hard going that quarter, trying to say that perhaps we should let Ss. Augustine and Teresa speak for themselves instead of dissecting their purported delusions.

It's been almost 20 years since I sat in that classroom, but I was thinking about it yesterday morning. We went to my in-laws' church and I was struggling. I have a hard time with the liturgical innovations there and I usually spend Mass arguing with myself. Is it ostentatious to kneel after the Sanctus if no one else does, or is it disrespectful to remain standing? It was a good place for me to hear yesterday's gospel, because I may be a slow learner when it comes to spiritual things but even I can see the dangers of sanctimony when you tell me about the publican and the pharisee. I was secretly relieved when Stella needed to be taken out after the sign of peace.

So it was a shock for me to have one of those jolts of recognition and deep gladness when I received the Eucharist -- a brief taste of what union with God might be like. If I were a different kind of blogger I might say more about the parallels between Eucharistic and marital communion [.pdf link to John Kippley's essay comparing the two], but I'm not. I'll say instead that sometimes I fumble for analogies to describe an experience that is profoundly right: it's like sunshine, I might say, or it's like an organ chord. (I'll also say that another thought occurs to me about the Bernini sculpture: if you ask a sculptor to depict blissful union, what's his referent most likely to be?) Maybe, though, all my experiences of profoundly right things are meant to remind me not of other profoundly right things but of the profoundly righteous One -- the "full-of-right" One.

Maybe it's no coincidence that I encountered God more powerfully than usual during a Mass when I was working hard to eschew self-righteousness. It's hazardous to think we can explain encounters with God, or, worse, summon them up, but it makes sense to me nonetheless: when we are resolute in saying "God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (instead of "Aren't you glad you have someone as awesome as me on the team, God?"), then we can see real awesomeness.

For almost twenty years it has niggled at me that I didn't speak up in that class, and for such a pathetic reason. Yesterday it finally dawned on me: I could take it to confession and then let it go. Life's too short, too full of glad surprises-in-waiting, to cart around regrets like that. And the best part of being a Christian whose petition is "God, have mercy on me, a sinner," is the assurance that when we ask, He always does.