We are made by
God for good things. One of the good things we are made for is to walk with
God. Everyone knows this, everyone longs for this, yet, and some think our walk
with God is by their rules.
Last week, I
participated in the funeral of lovely man. His wife of 61 years called him my
beautiful-beautiful husband. He was a beautiful-beautiful soul.
Bishop
Robert Barron says that we come to know God through the beautiful. Fr. Richard
Rohr shares this prayer of the Navajo or Diné people:
In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me I walk.
With beauty behind me I walk.
With beauty above me I walk.
With beauty around me I walk.
It has become beauty again.
It has become beauty again.
It has become beauty again.
It has become
beauty again.
Beauty is the
presence of God in creation and the world. This prayer realizes that God is
with us in creation, the sky, the earth, and all living things. Beauty leads us
to God.
King
David prayed a similar prayer:
Praise be to you LORD from
everlasting to everlasting.
Yours is the greatness
and the power and the glory
and the majesty
and the splendor
of everything in heaven and earth. (1Chr 29:10-12)
Many Navaho
people are Christian; but, the prayer In
Beauty I Walk is from their native religion and part of their ancient culture’s
knowledge of God.
I hope the fact
that I speak of this prayer doesn’t shock anyone. If it does then we misunderstand
the purpose of religion.
Religion’s purpose
is to help us understand God by taking away the self-created narrow human
concept of God. It moves us from the separate self-important individual we
think we are to a humble self-giving union with the beauty that is God.
Religion should radically
transform and liberate us from ourselves. Freeing us to seek the undefiled beauty
that is God; walking with God on God’s terms, not ours. That is the message of
salvation history. Religion found in the Church.
Moses said hear what I am teaching
you to observe so you can live and take possession of the land the LORD God is
giving you. You shall not add to nor subtract from it.
St.
James wrote: Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care
for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep one’s self unstained by
the world.
...pure and
undefiled before God, unstained by the world, staying in beauty.
In the beginning,
we were made in beauty. Humanity walked in the garden of the Lord God our
creator in beauty. We walked with beauty before us, beauty behind us, beauty
above us, and beauty all around us. And the beauty of God came again and again
and again and again.
Then humanity
sinned and hid from God.
We hid from God
not because we ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but humanity
realized that because of sin, we were no longer beautiful. We feared we could
no longer walk in the beauty of God.
It was not the
fruit but the ugliness of sin.
And people will
say, I am spiritual but not religious want God on their terms. That is what
Jesus warns us about.
Nothing
that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come
from within are what defile. "From within their hearts, come evil
thoughts, arrogance, unchastity, adultery, meanness, lies, immorality, folly, envy,
greed, theft, murder, blasphemy. All
these evils come from within and they defile.
These things
separate us from the greatness and the majesty and the splendor that is the
beauty of God.
Yet, the world
celebrates all these. We subtract from God’s word and add what suit us. We
defile the beautiful.
Not me Deacon, but,
if our eyes see sin and accept it as a way of things, we defile the beautiful. We honor the LORD with our lips, but our hearts are
far from God; worshipping in vain and teaching human precepts.
Christ brings us
back to beautiful. His cross and salvation forgives us the ugliness of our sins.
Jesus Christ, the word of God, came from God and is God, true beauty. We must
humbly welcome beauty into our hearts. He is one that saves our souls.
Jesus started this
Church and it is our earthly path to the beautiful. Sin has tried to hide it from
us. Jesus knew there would be betrayal and it has come forward in scandal and
deception of folly, meanness, lies, and blasphemy. It is not the fruit but the
ugliness of sin.
We are made by
God for good things. A good thing is to walk in the beauty of God.
The prayer In
Beauty I Walk truly praises Lord God. It gives thanks to the greatness and
the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor of heaven and earth.
We
can offer the prayer this way:
In God I walk.
With God before me I walk.
With God behind me I walk.
With God above me I walk.
With God around me I walk.
God the Holy Trinity has come again.
God the Father has come again.
God, the Holy Spirit comes again.
God, our Lord
Jesus Christ will come again.
I see
beautiful-beautiful souls in every one of you; beauty before me and behind me
and all around me. Friends, in our walk with God we become beauty again. Beauty
is seeing Christ in the face of others. It is beauty in you.
Be good, be holy
and walk in beauty to preach the gospel by way you live and love one another.
Amen.
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