Kenosis and Hiddenness. A Paradox for the Christian
Hector Scerri
It must have been a happy moment for his mother and her husband. Two-score days after his birth, an event already full of awe and mystery, and acknowledged and adored by those whom today we have come to call ‘those from the peripheries,’ he was brought to the Holy City. One of the anawim, the poor of the Almighty – those who were full of expectant hope – decidedly called the infant “a sign of contradiction.” He had been waiting for that moment, that kairos, all his life. From his birth, the child was embraced with paradox. Paradox would also be the “portion and cup” of his followers. They, too, would indeed be women and men embraced by paradox. The second-century apologetic patristic text which goes by the name of the Epistle to Diognetus affirms in very clear terms their way of life. If they were to be authentic followers of his, they too would be stamped with the indelible seal which bears the words “a sign of contradiction.” This is what the Epistle states:
The difference between Christians and the rest of men is neither in country, nor in language, nor in customs … They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as temporary inhabitants. They take part in all things as citizens, while enduring the hardships of foreigners. Every foreign place is their fatherland, and every fatherland is to them a foreign place … Their lot is cast in the flesh; but they do not live for the flesh. They pass their time on earth; but their citizenship is in heaven … They love all men; and by all they are persecuted. They are
unknown, and they are condemned. They are put to death, and they gain life. They are poor, but make many rich; they are destitute, but have an abundance of everything. They are dishonoured, and in their dishonour they are made glorious. They are defamed, but they are vindicated. They are reviled, and they bless; they are insulted, and they pay homage. When they do good, they are punished as evil-doers; and when they are punished they rejoice as if brought to life.1
This is the “portion and cup” which the followers of that infant, addressed as “a sign of contradiction,” are to drink. To some it may sound as sadistic, to others masochistic. Sequela Christi leads – or should lead – to imitatio Christi, die nachfolge Christi. It is the same Master who, in crystal clear terms, stated: “In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:24-25).
The life of Jesus Christ is marked by paradox from beginning to end. His teaching is peppered with striking affirmations which caused untold reactions from his listeners. He who endured the greatest possible self-abasement or kenosis or self-emptying is the one who was exalted, literally super-exalted. Indeed, Paul of Tarsus mirrors the Christological hymns undoubtedly sung by the earliest communities in Asia Minor and Greece, and inserted its unique poetry in his Letter to the Philippians:
“He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.
And for this God raised him high, and gave him the name which is above all other names” (Phil 2:7-9).
Paradox is the hallmark of the Christian, as it is of Christ. Furthermore, kenosis and hiddenness are part and parcel of the life of the Christian. But, isn’t it paradoxical to underline hiddenness and the hidden path, while trumpeting the call to evangelize? “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19a), and “Go out to the whole world; proclaim the gospel to all creation” (Mk 16:15).
1 Epistle to Diognetus, 5:1-16, in William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, I (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1970), 40-41.
Evangelisation remains at the forefront. It is the central mission of the Church. Having embraced the Good News, it is the intrinsic to the DNA of the baptised to share this inspiring message of life and love. So, how do kenosis and hiddenness come into the equation? The two dimensions are both central to the existential and the pro-existential dimensions of the life of the Christian. I am convinced that they are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are inextricably bound together. This is the bottom line in one of the sections of the renowned work by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge (1937), known to English readers as The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer devotes four chapters to “the Hidden Character of the Christian Life,” as for example, ‘The Hiddenness of Prayer,’ and ‘The Hiddenness of the Devout Life.’
Christians are called to be evangelised and to be agents of evangelisation. At the same time, hiddenness is meant to be part of their (our) curriculum vitae. This reminds us of the salt-and-leavenspirituality proclaimed by Jesus Christ in the programmatic Sermon on the Mount, conveyed to us by Matthew.
In their kenosis and in their hiddenness, both salt and leaven bring about wonderful changes – either ‘taste-able’ or visible or both – to the surrounding material. Hiddenness is not only the wont of fugitives or of Victor Hugo’s Edmond Dantès in the Chateau d’If or of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, off Cape Town, or of the Argentine desaparecidos during the rule of the Generals in the late 70s and early 80s. The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, offers us plenty of striking and challenging thoughts on hiddenness. Let us pause for a few moments to let his words sink in:
My monastery is not a home. It is not a place where I am rooted and established on the earth. It is not an environment in which I become aware of myself as an individual, but rather a place in which I disappear from the world as an object of interest in order to be everywhere in it by hiddenness and compassion. To exist everywhere I have to be a No-one.2
In one of his books, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton dwells upon this and other existential struggles. He contrasts what he calls the “worldly life” and the life of the Christian who embraces authentic discipleship. On the extreme borders of the spectrum, he places the
2 Thomas Merton, “A Poor Pilgrim,” in The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton’s Transforming Journey, ed. Elena Malits (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2014), 113.
alienation and confusion of men and women, saying that these states are “bearable,” while being narcissistic and illusory, and – at the other end – a “genuine Christian self-forgetfulness.” He talks of an “existential dread”3 and a “monastic dread” which lead us to “break with the familiar, established and secure norms and go off into the unknown.”4 Wholeheartedly participating in the life and in the saving death and resurrection of Christ, one is surprised to experience the passage from one bleak state to its opposite. Merton writes:
The monk faces the worst, and discovers in it the hope of the best. From the darkness comes light. From death, life. From the abyss there comes, unaccountably, the mysterious gift of the Spirit sent by God to make all things new, to transform the created and redeemed world, and to re-establish all things in Christ. This is the creative and healing work of the monk, accomplished in silence, in nakedness of spirit, in emptiness, in humility.5
What is true for the monk is also true for any other Christian. In fact, at one point, Merton affirms that “what is said here for monks applies also, with certain adjustments, to all the faithful.”6 What I quoted earlier from Merton sounds paradoxical from the point of view of the world. Yet, it is this radical vision, already part and parcel of the life of the Desert Abbas and Ammas, and portrayed by Merton in the twentieth century, that has not only withstood the test of time, but has also been proved true, rewarding and indeed prophetic. This Christian way of life is indeed possible after a long and arduous process whereby one acquires interior freedom. This attitude enables Christians to embrace the tricky balance between hiddenness and witness.
Quoting the Pauline text from the second Letter to the Corinthians (6:6-10), “They call us deceivers and we tell the truth; unknown and we are freely acknowledged; dying men, and see we live; punished, yes, but not doomed to die; sad men that rejoice continually …,” Merton strongly affirms
that the life of Christian asceticism leads us into a realm of paradox and apparent contradiction. The life of meditation is nourished by this paradoxical condition in which we are suspended between earth and heaven, due to our desire of renunciation … Asceticism delivers us over to paradox, and meditation struggles with paradox … But we cannot survive in this
3 An object of fear and awe.
4 Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 26.
5 Ibid., 28.
6 Ibid., 81.
paradoxical state without special help from grace and without ever-renewed self-discipline.7
This means that striking the balance between the apparently opposing Christian calls to hiddenness and witness is more of an integration of complementary attitudes. Merton refers to several of the mediaeval Rhineland mystics, like Tauler and Ruysbroeck who both dwell upon vanishing in God, self-renunciation, nakedness and nothingness.8 These fundamental attitudes pave the way to unity with God. Again and again, Merton reiterates that contemplative prayer consists in the preference for the desert, for emptiness and for poverty.9 Once more, the paradox is at the forefront of the Trappist monk’s thoughts when he writes that
the contemplative is one who would rather not know than know. Rather not enjoy than enjoy. Rather not have proof that God loves him. He accepts the love of God on faith, in defiance of all apparent evidence. This is the necessary condition, and a very paradoxical condition, for the mystical experience of the reality of God’s presence and of his love for us.10
The dialectic pervades Merton’s thought: listening to the Word and experiencing silence, experiencing darkness and light, emptiness and the fullness of God’s message, being alone with God and alone with oneself, nada and todo. Again, are we being immersed in paradox? Or, should we rather speak of integration? This reminds me of John the Baptist’s desire to grow smaller and smaller, while contemporaneously continuing to be the voice in the wilderness announcing the promised Messiah. It entails a life and witness ‘in the shadows,’ the vita umbratilis, embraced by certain Christians called to be hermits.
But, my provocative question, this morning, is this: Is the vita umbratilis only reserved to a small, select and specific group of women and men? Or is this way of life possible to others? It has been said that those who disappear from the public squares are either the bandits or those who are in love, because they shun prying eyes and inquisitive mouths. In actual fact, authentic Christians, too, are in love with the Lord, and they, too, have chosen to be in the shadows, leading a hidden
7 Ibid., 91.
8 See ibid., 102.
9 See ibid., 111.
10 Ibid.
life with Christ in God. This seems paradoxical by worldly standards.11 At the same time, we are reminded of Christ’s words: “What you have whispered in hidden places will be proclaimed from the housetops” (Lk 12:3b). Christians of all times and places, and in varying numbers, have been led to experience this peculiar type of existence: an interplay between witnessing to Christ in the shadows and witnessing to Christ in the limelight or the public square. Both states are possible, and they are not mutually exclusive. They may indeed both be present at the same time. Bonhoeffer states that “we have to ask how the visible and the invisible aspects of discipleship can be combined, and how the same life can be both visible and hidden.”12 He also affirms: “Hiddenness has its own counterpart in manifestation. For there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.”13
I have encountered this kenotic hiddenness – ‘public square’ witness dialectic in a book on the virtues by Romano Guardini. The ItaloGerman author and thinker reflects on the silence – speech dialectic, which we have already been able to appreciate in Thomas Merton. Guardini, whose works combine an insatiable thirst for God with a profound depth of thought and a delightful finesse of expression, affirms that speech and silence belong together. He writes:
The word is one basic form of human life; silence is the other, and it is as great a mystery. Silence does not mean only that no word is spoken and no sound is uttered. This alone does not signify silence; the animal is capable of this, and the rock even more so. Rather, silence is that which takes place when man, after speaking, returns to himself and grows still; or when he who could speak remains still. Silence means that he who could ‘go forth’ by speaking remains in inner reserve; it is a knowing, a feeling, a living stillness, a vibrating within itself. The two things belong together. Only he who is able to be silent can speak meaningfully; otherwise he talks nonsense. Only he who can also speak can properly keep silence; otherwise he is dumb. Man lives in these two mysteries; their unity expresses his nature.14
It is not difficult to connect what we have been saying about hiddenness to silence, and public witness to word and speech. Again, it has to be highlighted that we are not talking about opposites, but
11 See Louis-Albert Lassus, Elogio del nascondimento (Bose – Magnano: Qiqajon, 2003), 87.
12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 159.
13 Ibid., 160.
14 Romano Guardini, Learning the Virtues that Lead You to God (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1998), 176.
of complementary dimensions. Guardini depicts this by referring to two complementary involuntary – yet absolutely necessary – actions we all carry out: we all exhale and we all inhale. In the same book on the virtues, he also deals with a theme which, in my opinion, is rarely treated – or not treated at all – in contemporary writings, namely, disinterestedness or selflessness. Here again, we can see this as a facet of kenosis. Guardini writes:
One of the most profound paradoxes of life is the fact that a man becomes more fully himself the less he thinks of himself. To be more precise, within us there lives a false self and a true self. The false self is the constantly emphasised “I” and “me” and “mine,” and it refers everything to its own honour and prosperity, wishing to enjoy and achieve and dominate. This self hides the true self, the truth of the person. To the extent that the false self disappears, the true self is freed. To the extent that a man departs from himself in selflessness, he grows into the essential self … The way in which a man puts away the false self and grows into the real self is that which the masters of the interior life call “detachment.”15
Christian discipleship is a “work-in-progress.” It is a challenging mission with its ups and downs. With his customary wit and finesse, Gilbert K. Chesterton once wrote: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”16 This is the challenge of a kenotic existence on the example of Christ. Kenotic hiddenness is probably shunned by many a supposed-to-be disciple. It is the road less travelled (to use the same words as the title of the well-known 1978 book by Morgan Scott Peck). Yet this does not make it unrelated to bearing witness with parrhesia, namely, freely, fearlessly, frankly and with joyful courage, as mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (4:31). It is the challenge so masterfully spelled out by Fabrice Hadjadj, a fine contemporary Catholic author, when he affirms:
Apostles nowadays must not just work miracles; they must also restate the obvious, which makes them more ridiculous than ever. They proclaim that fire burns, that night is not day, that the grass does not grow better when you pull on it, that the cow is a herbivore, that a child is born of a man and a woman – in short, that there is an order in reality.
15 Ibid., 81.
16 Gilbert K. Chesterton, “The Unfinished Temple,” in What’s Wrong with the World (1910), part 1, as quoted in Elizabeth Knowles, The Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth Century Quotations (Oxford: OUP, 1999), 64.
Why the ridicule? Because what yesterday was human destiny – being born a girl or a boy of a father and a mother, working with your hands, … taking your turn at begetting, and then making way for the next generation by leaving this world – all this seems to have been made optional by technology. They already ask us whether we prefer to have a baby through sex or in a test tube (while making us feel that the test tube is more selective and high-performance). Tomorrow they will ask us whether we still want to die or whether we prefer to be immortal (so as to be euthanised delightfully after a few months) …
And while the engineer designs a superman, God creates man and woman. This is why the Church today is waging countless battles on unexpected fronts: inspired by the Spirit, she glorifies the flesh; as the depositary of the supernatural, she becomes the guardian of nature; calling people to be holy, she defends sex. And that is why it is no longer enough to say, as in the past: “God became man so that man might become God.” It must also be added that God was made man so that man might remain human, and so that in being divinised he might still be even more human.17
The ongoing quest to be more human entails the daily challenge to embrace kenosis and hiddenness as the privileged path to sequela Christi. Such a fundamental option will not, in any way, undermine bearing witness in the public square or dilute evangelisation. It would rather make witness more credible, and discipleship more authentic. This is part and parcel of Christian resilience: the will and the imagination turned ‘God-ward.’ It means having something and Someone to live for, to die for, to love and to serve.
17 Fabrice Hadjadj, The Resurrection. Experience Life in the Risen Christ (Paris: Magnificat, 2016), 184-186.
Bibliography
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Touchstone, 1995.
Chesterton, Gilbert K. What’s Wrong with the World. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910.
Guardini, Romano. Learning the Virtues that Lead You to God. Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1998.
Hadjadj, Fabrice. The Resurrection. Experience Life in the Risen Christ. Paris: Magnificat, 2016.
Jurgens, William A. The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. I. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1970.
Knowles, Elizabeth. The Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth Century Quotations. Oxford: OUP, 1999.
Lassus, Louis-Albert. Elogio del nascondimento. Bose – Magnano: Qiqajon, 2003.
Merton, Thomas. Contemplative Prayer. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973.
Merton, Thomas. The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton’s Transforming Journey, edited by Elena Malits. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2014.
