The cave is a crucial motif in spiritual traditions the world over. We enter the cave burdened by who we think we are and how we believe ourselves to be limited; we leave the cave necessarily changed. The cave is a pressure cooker moment in our spiritual lives.
The story of St. Ignatius of Loyola, of course, provides an illustrative example. Ignatius finds himself in the cave near Manresa, grappling with who he thinks God has called him to be. I can鈥檛 do it, he says to himself. I can鈥檛 live the life of holiness to which God has beckoned me.
Of course, it鈥檚 not God he鈥檚 wrestling with; it鈥檚 the false spirit. Ignatius is confronted by a mischievous voice that insists on the inevitability of failure. It is the false spirit 鈥� the enemy of our human nature 鈥� that claims that Ignatius will fall short. It is the false spirit that insists that Ignatius鈥� life is not worth living, that his experience of God has been a lie.
Ignatius enters the cave thinking God wants nothing short of perfection; he leaves the cave knowing God simply wants him 鈥� as he is, and yet irrevocably transformed by his acceptance of that simple truth.
The cave, we see, is not about discovering something new; the cave is about recognizing what has been there all along 鈥� and then acting for the good from this newfound understanding.
God delights in us 鈥� that鈥檚 the simple, constant truth 鈥� but embracing that truth takes work, takes time, takes trust.
The story of Easter gives us a cave 鈥� and an empty one at that! But who goes into that cave? And with what are they burdened?
In the Easter story we heard this past Sunday, it was the disciples who entered the cave. The stone has been rolled away, and things are not as they seem.
What did Peter expect to see in that cave? The body of his friend Jesus, dead for three days now. Peter expected to see in that still and silent body the death of his own hopes and dreams, the death of who he thought God was calling him to be.
But the body was gone; Jesus was not there. And Peter leaves the cave with hope that seemed all but impossible 鈥� even foolish 鈥� mere moments before.
We are all invited to pray with this scene, to put ourselves in the sandals of those early disciples. When we come to the cave, what do we expect? Do we beleaguer ourselves with assumptions about who we are and who we must ultimately be? When we see the cave empty and the burial clothes pushed to the side, what happens within us? Does the risen Christ transform us in that moment? Do we step out of the cave with a gaze set upon a new horizon?
I鈥檓 struck in the story by the focus on the simple, ordinary accoutrements of burial: 鈥渉e went into the tomb and saw the burial clothes there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.鈥� (Jn 20:6-7) The disturbance of these items is somehow important to the story.
I鈥檒l offer this: Throughout Lent and our , we reflected on the ordinary items, tasks and experiences that populate our days. We saw profound beauty in these places, both mundane and miraculous. I can鈥檛 help but wonder: How would 鈥淚n Praise Of Burial Clothes and an Empty Tomb鈥� play out? Would we see in the disturbance of the wrappings the hand of God gently at work? In these necessary and obvious components of any burial, do we suddenly see the Spirit inviting us to look beyond, to look deeper, to look with new eyes at an event we think we so readily understand?
Perhaps. And perhaps as you go through your day today, tomorrow, next week, you鈥檒l think of the caves into which you necessarily step, the transformative impact they have on the person that eventually emerges. Perhaps, too, you鈥檒l consider those simple wrappings, the details that seems arbitrary and yet aren鈥檛, the ones that say, Yes, even here, even in the specificity of burial wrappings that are not where they belong, God鈥檚 Spirit beckons. 聽
Happy Easter!
