A Mandorlic Life

Homily for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

“‘The light shines in the darkness,’ [and] according to the verse in Matthew, ‘When the wheat sprang up… then the weeds appeared too’ (Mt. 13:26). Thus the darkness glorifies God, and the light shines in it, not so much as opposites placed next to each other, but rather as opposites placed within each other.”

I would offer that this quote from Meister Eckhart contains perhaps one of his greatest, practical, spiritual insights. Darkness/Light, Death/Life, Weeds/Wheat, Brokenness/Healing, they are not opposites placed side by side in our own lives; where one must be banished for the other to thrive, but they are opposites placed within each other… within each one of us. And the tension they cause in us is a creative tension through which God (not you and I, but God) brings about reconciliation and new life.

As one Jungian psychologist puts it: “Whenever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other, you can be certain that God is present… conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience of God.”

St. Bernard of Clairvaux once famously wrote: “If you are not alternating in your spiritual life between opposites, I would be suspicious as to whether or not you actually have a spiritual life.”

The Good News here is that tension and struggle are necessary for the spiritual life. They do not indicated failure on our part or a reason to feel guilty. In God’s design darkness gives clarity to light, death gives depth to life, the weeds push the wheat to be more robust and nourishing, and brokenness roots healing in compassion. And overall, it reminds us that the work is not ours; it is the Lord’s!

By our nature, we Christians, live what I call a mandorlic life. The mandorla can be found in medieval Christian art and architecture, it is in the mystical language of paradox, and it is enfleshed definitively by Christ himself.

The mandorla is the almond-shaped space created when two complete circles overlap (the Venn diagram is the same idea). Jesus is the fullest expression of this: One complete circle of humanity overlapping with One complete circle of Divinity and creating a completely new reality.

We continually participate in this mandorlic life as the opposites in us collide, conflict, and cause in us creative tension. Our task is to learn how to rest in the tension rather than rush to resolve it. When darkness pushes against the light in us, when death pushes against life, when the weeds threaten to overwhelm the wheat, when brokenness appears unhealable. The human response is to rush to resolution to find quick relief. Which is at the heart of most addictive behavior. The mandorlic life teaches us to do the very opposite; learn to rest in the tension as the two complete circle of opposites continue to collide, elide, and overlap in our own lives teaching us how to engage in reconciliation and give birth to new life.

I would say this is the primary task of Christians who believe in the Word made Flesh who dwells not only among us, but within us: Christ our Mandorla. What else are we receiving when we receive him in the Eucharist? And we do this in community not as individuals. It is hard work so we need to attend to it in ourselves so we can walk with our brothers and sisters when the struggle gets to hard for them or us. No one walks the Incarnational path alone. Alone it is impossible.

So how do we learn to rest in the tension rather than rush to resolution? It can be as simple as taking a breath, or uttering a brief prayer of trust, but overall, it’s about relearning that the struggle is not punishment or failure but the necessary growth needed so we too might become sources of reconciliation and new birth in our world.