Fr. Richard, it is the custom of the John Main Seminar that a member of our community offers thanks on behalf of all—and attempts to capture the key points of the Seminar leader’s teaching.
So here I stand at
And indeed we haven’t just been to a lecture series. We’ve been soaked in the living waters of the Gospel. The Gospel of the one who didn’t hate back, who told and showed us the one thing necessary: Fear Not.
You showed us what’s possible if we’re not afraid—the new view from the new point. Of course, you didn’t say that the new view was an elevator ride to the top of the Basilica. It was more like “Welcome back to the catacombs,” to the “edge of the inside.” The place where we have an honest encounter with the “inner river of fear” that runs in all of us, but that, in wisdom, we are not fated to disguise or project or moralize; that, in love, we have the courage to bear.
It’s the inward, downward journey that sets us free
Free from explaining or defending or justifying;
Free from criticizing or denying or destroying; and
Free from the equally toxic tyrannies of me and we, that turn the other into an object of hate, where fear moves like a bullet toward violence.
The price of this freedom, you taught us, is not cheap. The path of dispossession is so narrow that we have to die to belonging; die to rebelling; die to self. We can’t hold on to anything except our poverty---and our lever, our contemplation and our action.
So we ask, what’s the upside of being one of the mystics and sinners? Of being, as Merton describes, at the far end of solitude? You answered: only love---and a world to move. And that is a good Gospel.
So we thank you, Fr. Richard, for the bountiful truth of your teaching—and for the radiant example of your life. We hope you hear and feel our love and gratitude.
Carla M. Cooper