In my 25 year career at UPS, the worst that could be said of a supervisor or candidate for management was: "No sense of urgency!" Everything at UPS was urgent, stressful, anxious: combating weather, human error, accidents, strikes, breakdowns and laziness to deliver the packages on time, safely, in compliance with rules, efficiently, and cost effectively. The management person had to be aggressive, but especially urgent to get the job done.
By contrast, the urgency of the Transcendent is free of anxiety, time worries, and negativity of any sort. It flows from abundance and therefore is entirely positive and patient.
The primal, metaphysical urgency was, of course, that of the Trinity to share its Glory...with creation, with us. And then, as we fell into sin, the urgency to retrieve us back into fulness of life. That urgency sent Christ to earth, into the flesh, and to the cross. We might think of God as a hopeless compulsive: impelled to give, share, exult, delight...boundlessly, eternally, ecstatically!
The stability, persistence, and continuity of the Church is the expression of God's urgent desire for us. We see this in the entire life of the Church...the sacramental economy, Church buildings, art, dogma, moral ethos, care of the poor, passion for justice...but most clearly in the abiding presence of Christ in the daily Eucharist and in every tabernacle in every Church in the world.
The urgency of Christ and his Church is not primarily negative, reactive to sin/evil/Satan/hell. Primarily it is positive: urgent to express, embody, manifest, dramatize, celebrate the abundant, eternal, infinite love of the Holy Trinity.
More broadly even, across the entire created and natural realm, the Transcendent (the Good, the True and the Beautiful) presses urgently to manifest, to communicate, to exalt.
When I walk where I live (Bradley Beach, NJ) to the beach, every front lawn is modestly, but beautifully offering a unique display of shrubbery, flowers, and plants. It is as if every single plant is clamoring for my attention as I walk: "Look at me! Am I not beautiful?" And as I walk I can only nod in agreement: Yes you are beautiful. All of you. Even more awesome is the ocean itself. Spectacularly so on a bright, dry day; or a windy, pleasant one; or even an overcast day where clouds, sky and ocean all harmonize in a soothing calm and serenity. Beauty, in all its diversity, is urgent to manifest, to be appreciated, to celebrate.
Truth, likewise, is persistent, not in a hurry. There is no rush with this patient urgency. Time is a friend. Eventually, at the right moment, truth will manifest itself. Secrets and lies do not persist. Scholars persist endlessly to review memories and records to unveil fresh perspectives on the endlessly fascinating drama of human life.
And then the Good! Effervescent and irrepressible is the impulse to give, to care, to bless...in maternity/paternity, friendship, politics, ministry and all realms of human life. All the evil, pathology, dysfunctionality, and morbidity of the universe cannot inhibit the simple movement of the human heart, in God's grace, to love.
Jesus himself proclaimed, embodied, and implemented the Kingdom of God, in all its urgency, assertiveness, exuberance, dynamism. In union with Jesus, by the power of his Holy Spirit, we the Church do the same. His promise is that "the gates of hell will not prevail." In this image we see that here on earth hell is on the defensive, heaven is on the offensive. So, in Christ we are ever assertive, confident, forceful, triumphant; never passive, victimized, fragile or vulnerable. Certainly we will suffer, but not accept defeat; stumble but not submit; grieve, but not despair.
We are complicit with, participant in, baptized into the agency of God...urgent, efficacious, invincible, victorious. Abiding in Christ...in worship, contemplation, receptive/expectant Trust...we surrender to the urgency, the agency, the fruitfulness of the love of Christ!
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