Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Feb 9, 2025
Christian mystics have a term for when human thought and words are insufficient to describe God and God’s love for us: apophasis, Greek for “negation.” Because nothing we can say can fully express who God is, only who God is not, it would be better to say nothing at all and simply let God’s love speak through our lives. There is a related Greek word, kenosis, which means “emptying out.” The Scriptures describe Jesus who emptied himself of all but love to take on our own nothingness so that all might be filled with God.
There are moments when we stand on the brink of complete emptiness, devoured by our human despair or engulfed by overwhelming awe at Divine mystery. How fitting it is then that Jesus’s mission begins with empty boats and fishing nets filled with nothing.
Only when we allow God’s all-consuming love to burn away everything in us that is not God can we give a response that will be enough: “Here I am; send me!”
Annie Dillard describes well this sacred nothingness:
Seraphs are aflame with love for God. . . . Moving perpetually toward God they perpetually praise him, crying “Holy, Holy, Holy.” . . . But according to some rabbinic writings, they can sing only the first “Holy” before the intensity of their love ignites them and dissolves them again, perpetually, into flames.
– Holy the Firm
Only when we allow God’s all-consuming love to burn away everything in us that is not God can we give a response that will be enough: “Here I am; send me!”
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