The familiar: a key to understanding beyond

Vive memor leti

To live remembering the gloomy shade of death (William Shakespeare, King Henry VI) might sound pessimistic, but it recalls us to our senses because we easily make choices that ignore the limits imposed by death. This is one reason why we need to focus on our familiarity – the little things in life that inform us as light gives way to the magical – the privilege to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love. 

Life’s familiarity enhances our discipleship. It reminds us how God quietly relates to us. It is in our familiarity that God reveals himself, where we are challenged to understand and respond to committed love (Agape).    

It should not, therefore, surprise us that God uses this familiarity to attract our attention as He did with Moses: “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There, the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within the bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought: ‘I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.” (Exodus 3, 1-3)

In the familiarity of his environment, shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep (the secular), Moses encountered the unexpected (the sacred): “the flames of fire from within the bush.” 

If we are receptive, God does the same: this awareness of the ‘Wholly Other’ draws us to “go over and see this strange sight”: to interpret our familiarity as a response to God’s presence. Rather than isolating us from our surroundings, our response leads us to a deeper understanding of them. 

The fear of risk can condition our response: to let go of our certainties and embrace unknown horizons. In other words, to let love enhance my familiarity by embracing the truth revealed in my thinking, talking and doing.

Within the limits of our familiarity, we are invited to appreciate what we have received, which is far more than we give: gratitude enriches our understanding, sharpening our awareness because time stands still best in an unappreciated familiarity.

Ignoring our familiarity can blind us because we are deafened to the Magister’s warning that whoever does not receive the kingdom like a child will not enter it at all (Lk. 18,15 17).

We become evangelical when we explore our heart and ensure that it does not lose its child-like qualities, so that all days are extraordinary, because living the joyfulness of the resurrection is itself extraordinary.

When our hearts harden – when they are no longer childlike – weariness overwhelms us so that the familiar is burdensome. When this happens, the cross is no longer indicative of the resurrection.    

Overwhelmed by insecurity, we shelter in a self-created ghettoisation signed by fear of what lies beyond: the significance of the empty tomb, and thus, we fail to embrace the proclaimed newness, and by the time we do, we no longer understand it. 

In our prayer and our familiarity, we are called to fulfil ordinary life by letting the significance of the resurrection enrich our familiarity to enhance the presence of the Magister – “The Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14,6).

Martin


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