Year A
September 30, 2020,
Memorial of St. Jerome
Job 9:1-12, 14-16
Psalm 88:10-15
Luke 9:57-62
God is Todo we must become Nada
Today we commemorate the memorial of St. Jerome, a Biblical
scholar who devoted his whole life to the Bible, translating the Bible from
Hebrew and Greek into Latin and also writing commentaries on the Bible. His
famous quote about the Bible is “Ignorance of Scriptures, Ignorance of Christ.”
Today’s readings have drawn my attention to St. John of the Cross’ darkness or night of faith, which is understood in a dialectical relationship to the deep mystery of God. God is beyond us, yet he is closer to us. The entire spiritual teaching of St. John of the Cross can be explained by two key Spanish words; Todo y Nada [All and Nothing]. Here is a quote from his work "Ascent of mount Carmel";
Book One, Chapter 13
"To reach satisfaction in everything, desire the satisfaction in nothing.
To come to the possession of everything, desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing.
To come to the knowledge of everything, desire the knowledge of nothing."
Here the understanding of God as nothing is because he transcends being. But interestingly St. John of the Cross also invites us to understand God as Todo [All]. The practical way to understand this is that God is Todo by his nature and Nada by his action. This understanding is from 1 Kings 18, where Elijah declared an end to the severe drought in the land of Israel, and as it does not rain, he begin praying and sends his servant up to Mount Carmel to look for a rain cloud and the servant reports back "There is Nothing." He sends the servant again and again for seven times and each time the report is "nothing." Then as all hope was lost, a tiny cloud, as small as a person's hand, which was insignificant was the cloud that brought the rain.
This offer us a powerful view of God and also Jesus. In the first reading, Job who in a difficult situation has sought for God and is experiencing nothing still acknowledges that God is God. What a faith he must have had to acknowledge this. When in difficulties and we see nothing, we see God. Nothing is his action, when he acted out of nothing everything came into being, when he emptied himself as nothing he took another nature.
So today in the gospel his invitation for us is to be like him. The Son of man has no place to lay his head, he has no dead to bury or people to inform them. In short he has nothing.
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