Pastor John Wright

Tonight, of course, is Tuesday -- which means Bread of Life downtown. I've been a little nervous about the evening -- the first Padres game; the winter shelter is closed; and the new "camp" around the post-office. The camp, set up and taken down every evening, is on a migratory path of those wealthier who are going to Padres games. I was afraid that the city might intervene. I am very thankful to say that they did not. All was very come on 8th Avenue.

After preaching and the meal, I went out to the street with some sandwiches with Maddie Flag. I talked with Jay and two others -- a woman who was spending her first night on the streets and a woman who had one time been a business owner but had suffered spousal abuse, head injury, amnesia, and subsequent homelessness. I didn't count exactly how many tents were there, but it was at least nine in fine, good order, symetric, well-formed. It seems that Jay has become a leader in the area in the upkeep, construction, protection, and care of the neighborhood that emerges every evening and dissolves every morning. They spoke that the police now smile in the morning at them as they see them clean the area in the care for their neighborhood.

As I sat on a blanket, rolled up as a seating cushion to protect from the hardness of the concrete -- a mobile chair cushion -- I couldn't help feel like I was back in Winamac on a porch in an evening talking with parishioners and their neighbors. I have wonderful neighbors here where I live, but none treated me with the kindness and care in providing seating for a conversation as I stayed there. There was an orderliness, a beauty, a form in which I participated. On the streets, in the doorway to a tent, I found neighbors.

The idea of "form" is central to von Balthasar's theology of Beauty. He draws upon a long philosophical heritage here, but retrieves it from a "pure philosophy" to a philosophical concept that finds its end as it is taken up and transformed by the form of divine revelation in Jesus Christ. The Christian life is to become "in-formed" by Jesus Christ. He writes,

"to be a Christian is precisely a form. How could it be otherwise, since being a Christian is a grace, a possibility of existence opened up to us by God's act of justification, by the God-Man's act of redemption? This is not the formless, general possibility of alleged freedom, but the exact possibility, appointed by God for every individual in his existence as a member of Christ's body, in his task within the body, in his mission, his charism, his Christian service to the Church and to the world. Considered in all its dimensions, what could be more holistic, indissoluable, and at the same time more clearly contoured than this form of being a Christian? This form transcends the questionableness of men's own choices and self-evaluation. It transcends, too, the uncertainty and melancholy that are, at bottom, inherent in most life-forms for the simple reason that something entirely different would have been chosen and that was intended and striven after was never actually attained. But the Christian form is structurally a part of the miracle of the forgiveness of sins, of justification, of holiness, the miracle that transfigures and ennobles the whole sphere of being and which in itself guarantees that a spiritual form will thrive as the greatest of beauties. The image of existence is here illuminated by the archetype of Christ, and set to work by the free might of the Creator Spirit with all the sovereignty of one who need not destroy the natural in order to achieve his supernatural goal. For this reason, however, it is clear that in any age -- and most especially in our own -- the Christian will realise his mission only if he truly becomes this form which has been willed and instituted by Christ. The exterior of this form must express and reflect its interior to the world in a credible manner, and the interior must be confirmed, justified, and made love-worthy in its radiant beauty through the truth of the exterior that manifests it. When it is achieved, Christian form is the most beautiful thing that may be found in the human realm. The simple Christian knows this as he loves his saints among other reasons because the resplendent image of their life is so love-worthy and engaging. But the spiritual force necessary to have an eye for a saint's life is by no means to be taken for granted" (p. 28).

To be invited into the form of hospitality on 8th Avenue today, and participate a little of God's hospitality of us revealed in Jesus Christ is very humbling. But God's Beauty surrounds us, with Christ as the archetype, if only we will have eyes to see.