OUR CULTURAL CAVES , OUR HELLS, OUR CHRIST LIBERATOR
CAVE VIRUS, HELL PANDEMIC, CHRIST LIBERATOR
Two Caves: Solitude with God, Withdrawal from God and People
There are two interior “places” into which we withdraw in times of our various needs – needs of desire to pray to our God, to speak to Jesus Christ; needs born of frustration, of anger, of desire to just “run away from it all”. The first place can be seen as a kind of interior “cave” into which we withdraw, by our freely informed choice, to be in solitude with God, to desire to be in one Spirit with Him. Sometimes, great saints, such as Saint Benedict, have literally withdrawn into physical caves to be in utter solitude with God and separated from the world out of a desire to be strengthened and enlightened as to their mission. The other “cave” is the cave of withdrawing from God, from people, from the life in which we find ourselves – a withdrawal that is, in a real sense, not of our choice but a consequence of a “virus” which has been transmitted to us. It is this second cave of withdrawal, of separation from God and people that I speak of here.
The Cave of Withdrawal from God and People
I have become increasingly aware during these times, of an ever present, ever ancient set of symptoms, of manifestations of a human illness which can be called the “cave virus”. This cave virus is experienced in a desire to withdraw from people, from spouse, family, friends, from everyone, from God. Indeed, a strong symptom of this cave virus is that God becomes especially distasteful and most disagreeable to look at or speak about. At times, this urge to withdraw is so intense that it is like a call from the deepest recesses of one’s soul to slink into the depths of one’s own cave. Here one feels secure. No one can touch me. Here I can curl and shrink and look out from my entrance at the world and see the pain and suffering, hear the screams and vow that I will never leave the fortress of my inner chamber.
The Virus of “It’s All the Same!”
This cave virus is made real in deep a frustration of “Why do people not see that I am right?” An itching, rashy weariness erupts with a world that seems to be overcome with one’s personal perception of evil, always in the other. A desire grabs the throat to escape from the continual repetition of daily domestic battles, of elaborate dinners that do not satisfy, of unchanging “News”, of evils unconquered, of life. The cycle of the seasons continues, the feasts come and go, the weddings, the deaths, the co-habitations, the loveless fornications, the abandonment of God all appear to pass by in ever-increasing intensity.
The cave virus is evident in the students walking home from school, hunched over their phones, already withdrawn into their caves, their underground galleries. The couples lying next to each other facing into their own pads, having entered their own tunnels; the old man, the old woman leaning forward trying to hear the spoken word and see the technicolor image on the now wall size screens are all symptomatic of the cave virus. The quarantines, lock-downs, calls to isolate, further encourage the deep inner desire to withdraw.
This virus, this desire to retreat into oneself, to “Please just leave me alone!”, is a particularly insidious creature that speaks a deceptive word of a freedom that can be gained in aloneness. Such aloneness, such a retreat from our relationships is a choice to slide into the dugout of listening to a self-contained word, a word coming from within oneself, which is always a word that is contaminated by egoism, self-centeredness, a vision of being the hub at the center of the wheel. This creature that speaks this word lives in the corners of my cave, this viral cave that so attracts me, that whispers to me, that invites me to escape my world.
The Hell of Aloneness
This is, in reality, to enter into hell, a hell of aloneness, of a radical shutting off of oneself from God, from Love and entering into the cave of one’s own making. Hell was not created by God. This image of a fiery place, a place of torment is realized in this cave of hiddenness. It need not be a withdrawal physically; indeed, one may be among a large crowd, with spouse, with family and yet still deep within their viral cave of a fiery hell of inner separateness. Balthasar calls this hell, “the self-enclosed ‘I’”[i] and Ratzinger: “denotes (this hell) a loneliness that the word love can no longer penetrate.”[ii] C.S. Lewis writes of this hell as enclosed by a door, locked from the inside.[iii]
There is a key that I am led to believe I hold alone. My door is a door that I have constructed from my rejections, humiliations, frustrations, angers, failures to love, of my multiple woundings of souls, called sin. All leading to a pressing into a door of death that I have erected at the entrance of my cave, an entrance to the mortality of death, a consequence of what was once called and should still be named mortal sin, bu which is now a language that is largely alien to our culture. And is there really a key to open this door? If there is, I have lost it! Or maybe it is a “smart” key, a pad to sense my touch, an eye that needs to see my face to open this prison door. Deceived I am from the original promise that in my freedom to be whomever I wish, I will gain my happiness. Instead, I crawl around in my cave, sniffing like a pig. I moan like a sick and delirious dove, confused and disoriented. Indeed, this is a hell. Voices call from outside. Angelic voices, operatic voices, gentle knocks are heard and felt but a response is not possible. A key is lost, does a key even exist?
Cave Virus- Not Reproducible but Tramissible
Is this cave, this hell of separation from Love, uniquely my own? Yes, no other human being knows my cave; its’ shadows, its’ sliminess, its’ whispers, shouts, and hopes of understandings, of despairing of loving myself in the midst of my outer world of relationships. This, my self-dug cave virus, is not reproducible, yet it is transmissible.
From whence has this cave virus escaped? From what diabolical laboratory has this desire to live for oneself been allowed to be created, to see the world as a place of constant battle against my superior ego, suspiciously to see others as the opponent, the other as the one whose mission is to make me grovel, to degrade me, to make me stumble, to crucify?
From an ancient cave of a hell of darkness, of total separation from God, there emerged the Serpent-creature that convinced a most beautiful woman that her divinely granted freedom would be surpassed by a recognition that her unique loveliness would be raised above her Author’s through assuming a role at the center, a point from which all would be seen as possible. The only simple condition was to confirm that her center point could only be achieved through her aloneness, her retreating to her primeval cave of self-centeredness. The prospect was so inviting, so sweetly presented, so affirming of what seemed to be true anyway, that the cave virus was first embedded.
Then, remarkably, with the persuasive and seductive power of the woman, with the beauty of the horizon of joyful aloneness, the cave deception was announced to the man walking beside her. With hardly a decade of hesitation, the invitation to be the lord of his own life was embraced and he began to dig his own cave. The word of transmission had begun, and it is that word which has created a hundred billion caves of utter loneliness, a hundred billion fiery hells of fiery doubts of tears, of divorces from life, of losses of meaning, of cries of despair and hopelessness.
The True Hell of Our Time
This is the true hell pandemic of our times, more far reaching, more insidious, more penetrating than any bodily virus in all its variants. We are a world of people who are now constantly retreating to our caves of loneliness, of aloneness, of fear of death in all its forms. It is in this presence, a highly technological reality that the hell pandemic has assumed its new form. It is in this reality that the cave syndrome has become virulent. Our chaotic culture announces a freedom that is obtained by a life of living for oneself, of occasional nods in the direction of others, of occasional loves that do not demand one’s life but in a freedom of self to be whomever is on the wall of the mind of our cave. The freedom comes with that promised happiness which proves itself today in the hell pandemic in its global deception. To live for oneself in the midst of our external relationships, of marriage, family, work and friends is to live in the viral cave of aloneness, of the pandemic hell of separateness.
Christ-My Liberator Enters!
Oh, misery, oh, where can I turn? Oh can my ear be opened? Can my eye see beyond the wall of my cave? Yes!
The sound of Love which was always present, even from the beginning continues to be sung, announced, written, cast into stone, proclaimed from the heights. This is the Word of Love who is God. Facing the darkened wall, in one moment, with no planned programmatic action, a word, barely a gasp, escapes from within the deepest recesses of this hell of mine:
“Help me.”
Remarkably, a most slender sliver of life, of Light, enters the cave on which a Word is carried: “You are loved.” In my turning then, in my returning, in my converting, I perceive the Presence! The Liberator! The bolted door of death I had built from my sins, the locked door for which a key had been lost, the steel veil of my separateness was passed through with the utmost silence, with the most incredible Beauty of movement. There stands the Christ, hands extended, wounds bared. “I hold the keys of death and of Hades”.[iv] All death fleeing from all corners and crevices. My cave is filled with a light, a blazing light, a gentle light, a light that sears the memory, a light that opens the vision to a new dimension. One Word was heard: “Love one another just as I have loved you.”[v]
I am escorted out on this light – to love as Christ loves is to live for the other, to live freed from death, to live in the truth that if I die for the other, give my life for my spouse, for my enemy, for my ego, I will live free. I am escorted and emerge from my cave on the mountain from which the Great Sermon proclaims the truth that releases our captured culture from the hell of aloneness. This Liberator provides in His personhood the very antidote to this pandemic of hell, this cave virus. The Sermon that is announced penetrates even the deepest caves of human selfishness, fears, anxieties with a love that gives life for the other and in doing so receives the Life of Heaven, experienced even here.
The Sweetnesss of Human Life
But what is announced upon this mysterious deliverance from the cave of my hellish aloneness? To be rescued, to be delivered from this destructive culture of self-centeredness is to be introduced or reintroduced to the Church, to community, to the joy, sufferings and resulting sweetness of the truth of human life. That truth in its utter simplicity and depth of complexity is Christ-the Liberator for our time, for this pandemic, the savior from our worldwide individual caves of aloneness. To then stand erect from my cave, to walk with a strength that is not my own, to lift eyes that have been dulled from a lifetime of downward gazing, to weep at the sight of the Man, not some digital creation but my personal Liberator hanging on the Cross and now standing in front of me is to discover the true meaning of my very life – cave, hell and all.
[i] Balthasar Von, Hans Urs. 1970. Mysterium Paschale. The Mystery of Easter. Ignatius Press. San Francisco. Pg. 77.
[ii] Ratzinger, J. 2006. Credo for Today. What Christians Believe. Ignatius Press. San Francisco. Pg. 90.
[iii] Lewis, C.S. 1940.The Problem of Pain. HarperCollins Pub., EPub Edition, 2009. Pg. 83.
[iv] Rev 1:18
[v] Jn 13:34
