How Subtile! (Not a typo)

Lithe & Lengthening, Thrifty & Thickening, and Soft & Slowing: Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson had their theories of human development; I have mine.  And as I look at the three generations of the Kathy and John family, it is clear that we move toward the next life whether we think about it or not.  Tomorrow’s readings are about that next life, occasioning this look of mine, this final day of it focusing on agility and subtility. 

I shared at the outset of this reflection on the next life that I’ve never felt bound by the Catholic Church Teaching on things.  If the root word of religion is, as in our word ligament something that holds us together, it is the example and words of Jesus, including the love of his Father and the constancy of their Spirit that hold me from coming apart.  But those Catholic Church Teachings gave me a great gift in sharing the four qualities of the body that it claims will rise after death and ascent to the heavenly realm.  I’ve shared about impassibility and brightness.  It is my family and the development of our generations that provide me with a way of looking at agility and subtility.

A week ago Kathy and I joined our granddaughters and their parents at a swimming pool.  Nadia has, over the past year, developed a swimmer’s body.  Almost as tall as her Nana and fresh from the summer’s swimming lessons, I watched in disbelief as she sliced smoothly through the water; backstroke and breaststroke were  equally graceful and natural. Her sister Sonja is growing quickly too, and so our grandkids together personify the lithe and lengthening stage

of life.  Our kids are healthy and active, but they find themselves considering how they spend their energy, which is not as limitless as the grandkids’.  As they run around less showing thrift in their activity, their bodies begin to thicken just a bit.  And Kathy and I both have bodies that are becoming soft, and frankly, we’re slowing down.

So when I read this promise of risen bodies that are agile, I thought COOL!  No more arthritic pain, no more wondering why my toes are so far from my fingertips when I stretch, no more need to take naps in the middle of projects.  Subtility is a word I’d never seen.  It’s like utility but beginning with sub; it means being of use in service to something.  In this case, it’s the soul.  The risen body will do what it is called to do by its spirit; it will do it easily and without reluctance.  Weakness of body or will are dead, and we live the way we most deeply want to live.

This is a heaven worth hoping for . . . in the present, I propose.  Heaven after we die is a theory, and a Teaching of the Catholic Church.  But I think Jesus called us to heaven now.  On my wall is a cross that I made for one of the most precious people in my life, a Jesuit, Fr. Norman McKendrick.  When he was given an office in the Jesuit community at the university, he asked me to make a big cross for his wall; he asked merely for a simple cross, two pieces of wood.  I made the joint badly, and so decided to carve the Ignatian crest and cover the joint.  Around the sides of that carving are the words Norm had framed in his room: Da, Domine, quod jubes; jube quod vis. These words of St. Augustine mean give me, Lord, what you wish, and wish what you will.  This is, it seems to me, a prayer for subtility. 

Perhaps it is that last, unfamiliar word in these four “qualities” of the “risen” body that is the key to the rest, and the key that opens the door to heaven now.  Perhaps we enter the next life, whether lengthening, thickening, or slowing, by being of use in service to whatever or whoever we’re given, right here and now.