4th Sunday

Abbot Raymond, Chapter Talk

NOTHINGNESS

(I Corinthians I: 26-31)

“God has chosen those who are nothing at all to show up those who are everything.”

Notice that St Paul doesn’t say “…those who think they are everything” but those who actually “are everything” By this I think that he indicates that they are exactly, and only, what they claim to be, and no more. They glory in their gifts and talents without realising that they are truly Gifts indeed, and therefore they are destined never to become anything greater than what they are. They repel, rather than attract, the gifts of God.

But Paul assures us that “God has chosen those who are nothing at all to show up those who are everything.” And who professed this nothingness more sincerely than the Blessed Virgin Mary? “He looked upon his servant in her nothingness” she proclaimed.

But there is, in human terms, a problem here. Nothingness has no attractiveness; it doesn’t call for love. Here we might consider that Grace itself , like Nature, abhors a vacuum. Where nature finds a vacuum it rushes to fill it in and so, where Grace finds a vacuum, it too rushes to fill it in. Love and nothingness are, of themselves, incompatible. Love considers the one it loves as anything but nothing. Love considers the one it loves as wonderful, as beautiful, as desireable.

But here the comparison between Divine Love and Human love breaks down. Divine Love actually creates the beauty within the one it loves. It enriches the one it loves; it raises up the one it loves to its own level. So, the difference is between the creature’s created love of that which is and the Creator’s Creative Love of what it wants to bring into being.

“It is God who first loved us”, as St John tells us,
and it is in that creative and enriching love that all our worth lies. ____