When
is our life fulfilled?
When is our life fulfilled? At what point in our lives do we
say, “That’s it! That’s the climax! Nothing I can do from now on will outdo
this. I’ve given what I have to give”? When can we say this? After we’ve
reached the peak of our physical health and strength? After giving birth to a
child? After successfully raising our children? After we’ve published a
bestseller? Become famous? Won a major championship? Celebrated our 60th
wedding anniversary? Found a soul mate? After we’re finally at peace after a
long struggle with grief?
When is it finally done? When has our growth reached its
furthest place?
The medieval mystic John of the Cross says we reach this point
in our lives when we have grown to what he calls “our deepest centre”. But he
doesn’t conceive of this the way we commonly picture it, namely, as the deepest
centre inside our soul. Rather, for John, our deepest centre is the optimum
point of our human growth, that is, the deepest maturity we can grow to before
we begin to die. If this is true, then for a flower, its deepest centre, its
ultimate point of growth, would be not its bloom but the giving off of its seed
as it dies. That’s its furthest point of growth, its ultimate accomplishment.
What’s our ultimate point of growth? I suspect that we tend to
think of this in terms of some concrete, positive accomplishment, like a
successful career or some athletic, intellectual or artistic achievement that’s
brought us satisfaction, recognition and popularity. Or, looked at from the
point of view of depth of meaning, we might answer the question differently by
saying that our ultimate achievement was a life-giving marriage, or being a
good parent, or living a life that served others.
When, like a flower, do we give off our seed? Henri Nouwen
suggests that people will answer this very differently: “For some, it is when
they are enjoying the full light of popularity; for others, when they have been
totally forgotten; for some, when they have reached the peak of their strength;
for others, when they feel powerless and weak; for some, it is when their
creativity is in full bloom; for others, when they have lost all confidence in
their potential.”
When did Jesus give off his seed, the fullness of his spirit?
For Jesus, it wasn’t immediately after his miracles when the crowds stood in
awe, and it wasn’t after he had just walked on water, and it wasn’t when his
popularity reached the point where his contemporaries wanted to make him king,
that he felt he had accomplished his purpose in life and that people had begun
to be touched in their souls by his spirit.
None of these.
When did Jesus have nothing further to achieve? It’s worth
quoting Henri Nouwen again: “We know one thing, however, for the Son of Man the
wheel stopped when he had lost everything: his power to speak and to heal, his
sense of success and influence, his disciples and friends – even his God. When
he was nailed against a tree, robbed of all human dignity, he knew that he had
aged enough, and said: ‘It is fulfilled’ ” John 19:30).
“It is fulfilled!” The Greek word here is τετέλεσται
(tetelestai). This was an expression used by artists to signify that a work was
completely finished and that nothing more could be added to it. It was also
used generally to express that something was complete. For example, tetelestai
was stamped on a document of charges against a criminal after he had served his
full prison sentence. It was used by banks when a debt had been repaid.
It was used by a servant to inform his master that a work had
been completed. And it was used by athletes when, tired and exhausted, they
successfully crossed the finish line in a race.
“It is finished!” A flower dies to give off its seed so it’s
appropriate that these were Jesus’s last words. On the Cross, faithful to the
end, to his God, to his word, to the love he preached and to his own integrity,
he stopped living and began dying. That’s when he gave off his seed, and that’s
when his spirit began to permeate the world. He had reached his deepest centre.
His life was fulfilled.
When does our living stop and our dying begin? When do we move
from being in bloom to giving off our seed? Superficially, of course, it’s when
our health, strength, popularity and attractiveness begin to wane and we start
to fade, into the margins and eventually into the sunset.
But when this is seen in the light of Jesus’s life, we realise
that in our fading out, like a flower long past its bloom, we begin to give off
something of more value than the attractiveness of the bloom. That’s when we
can say: “It is fulfilled!”
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