Sometimes "I" means "I"

What I wanted to say about parrhesia wasn't that it's essential to the Christian mission and to the Christian's prayer life. Those posts were just the introductory paragraph of this post getting away from me.

I recently noticed one particularly gracious aspect of our gift of parrhesia, the freedom to speak freely to God: We are free to pray the words of Scripture, in particular the Psalms and especially the Canticles of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon.

Yes, I know, not exactly a news flash. But take a look at this:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior,
For He has looked with favor on His lowly servant.

When we pray these words of the Magnificat, as the Church invites us to do every day as part of Evening Prayer, we aren't just praying the same words Mary happened to pray once. We are praying along with Mary, in the sense that we are joining in her proclamation of the greatness of the Lord and recollecting His look of favor upon her. We are also, so to speak, praying in Mary's footsteps. I am not only saying, "God looked with favor on Mary," I am saying, "As He did with Mary, God my Savior has looked with favor on me."

Even more: "As Mary said about herself, so I can say about myself: all generations will call me blessed."

Now that is some bold talk.

But it's true, isn't it? At least, it can be and is meant to be true; I personally, am supposed to be among the blessed in heaven. If (God forbid) it turns out I'm not, it won't be for want of God looking with favor on me, but because I didn't live up to my lowly servant (or friend, or child) side of the covenant.

All of the first person pronouns that we pray from the Scriptures can bind us to the original "I" who prayed it, as well as the Christ Who fulfills it. It's not just Zechariah's son who shall be called a prophet of the Most High; it's our own children -- and our parents' children, too -- as long as they go before the Lord to prepare His way. If the Lord lets me go now, then I ought to go in peace, because my own eyes have seen the salvation He has prepared in the sight of every people; I see it on the altar at every Mass. I do cry out of the depths, my sin is always before me, I do hear it said all the day long, "Where is your God?"

Our freedom to join in the prayers of David, Zechariah, Simeon, and especially our Mother Mary manifests our freedom to join in the hymn of glory they offer the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit for all eternity. We aren't duplicates or copies; there is, after all, only one Mother of God. But then, there is only one of you, too. Freely claim your inheritance alongside your Mother, and the others who have spoken the revealed word of God.

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Risk free speech

It's been a long time since I read The New Man, but as I recall Thomas Merton's exploration of parrhesia in that book wasn't so much about speaking boldly to the world despite the attendant risks. He was more interested in God's gift to man of being able to speak freely to God. This essay reminds me that Merton wrote how, before the Fall, Adam and Eve were "in constant and unimpeded contact with the Spirit of God." Their speech was free, not because they were unafraid of the consequences (they no more considered whether they should be afraid than they considered whether they were naked), but because it manifested their direct, unfettered, and total communion with their Creator.

You and I don't have that paradisaical constant and unimpeded contact with the Spirit of God. We sin, then we run and hide. We go to Confession (we do go to Confession, right?), and even if we don't sin again right away, we still have imperfections and distractions and possibly attachment to at least venial sin, all of which get between us and God.

But we do still have the gift of parrhesia. We can speak freely to God, about everything in our lives and our hearts. The more we make use of this gift, the more obvious will be those things in our lives and our hearts that get between us and God (like father, like son, humans are still trying to hide things from God).

There are some evils in our lives through no fault of our own, and we should speak of them to God just as freely as we speak of the good things in our lives through no merit of our own. Whatever is brought into God's presence becomes blessed. It may be consumed or transformed, but even if it is simply returned it has changed under the act of the Divine gaze -- or better, perhaps, to say that we have changed by holding it up while under the Divine gaze.

Anti-sentimentalist that I am, I roll my eyes when I hear people (even saints) say things like, "Tell God about everything that happens during your day! He wants to hear all about it! Nothing is unimportant to Him!," as though God were your chatty grandmother who likes to sit down with you for half an hour when you get home from school and sympathize with you about the shortage of grape JELL-O cups in the cafeteria.

But my eye rolls don't make it any less true that you should talk to God about everything. The Divine gaze transforms the trivial along with the momentous. The grass that withers and fades by evening is part of His creation, as are the two sparrows sold for a coin. Something minor may be a way for you to give God glory in some small but still meaningful measure, or it may be the first step to something great. It may turn to ash, and you'll learn to give it up for something better.

What about our sins? We usually think of bringing our sins to God in the manner of the Prodigal Son -- whose rehearsed speech, come to think of it, was pretty bold given the circumstances of his last conversation with his father. It was a boldness born of... you know what, I was going to write despair, but I think it may have been born of hope. You can only hope for something that is both possible and difficult to attain; if it's impossible you can at most wish for it, and if it's easy to attain you can at most expect it. In all the world, his father was that rotten son's only hope. When you have exactly one hope, you go all in. The son didn't hesitate to ask to become his father's servant, he didn't finish with, "Or I can just go away again." He said his piece freely and boldly, and waited for his father's response.

[Note to self: Try confessing in hope rather than expectation next time.]

After the father responded boldly to his younger son's bold speech, the older son was moved to bold speech himself. Finally. If he had boldly asked his father for a kid goat years earlier, he would have been sure of his father's love for him and less jealous when his brother returned. Instead, he kept silent, feeling neither son enough nor hopeful/otherwise-desperate enough to speak freely.

At the end of the parable, though, he does speak freely. At long last he speaks, of his anger and resentment and pride and confusion and pain and alienation. He speaks, as it were, within and from his sinful attitude toward his father and brother.

The father responds with mercy and healing words. We aren't told how what happens next, but the opportunity is very much there for the elder son to go in and party as joyfully as his brother.

We don't really have a reason not to make full use of the gift of parrhesia God has given us. Not humility, not shame, not scruples. We can't purify our speech first, and not speaking of it doesn't make what's in our heart any less known to Him. Speak openly to God, and He will make your words into a hymn worthy of an immortal creature to sing to its eternal Creator.

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Permission to speak freely

I first came across the word "parrhesia" when reading Thomas Merton's The New Man. Parrhesia (pah-ray-SEE-ah) means speech that is free, candid, even bold.

Strong's Greek dictionary tells me variations on "parrhesia" appear throughout the New Testament. In Acts 9:27-28, for example, the newly-converted Saul came to Jerusalem "and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord." There are also examples that aren't as obvious in English, such as Acts 4:13's "the boldness of Peter and John." It may even be subtler in 1 John 2:28:

And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming.

Here "confidence" isn't just an inward disposition, it's "free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness, assurance" that takes the initiative to express itself in word and in deed.

St. Mark's Gospel uses the word once, when Jesus "spoke... openly" about His coming passion and death. Peter rebuked him, which might be the least consequential blowback from parrhesia on record, and some sort of blowback is par for the course. To speak openly, freely, boldly -- especially about the things of God -- is to invite attack and persecution. St. John writes that "no one spoke openly about [Jesus] because they were afraid of the Jews." St. Paul's parrhesia got him violently ejected from every respectable synagogue on the Mediterranean.

Sometimes, as in John 7:26 and John 18:20, Jesus' open speech confounded His opponents; rather than answer Him directly, with words or rocks, they went off and plotted against Him in secret -- the opposite of speaking openly, and no less deadly a response for being delayed.

We're a week away from celebrating Pentecost, commemorating the Holy Spirit lighting the hearts of Jesus' disciples on fire and sending them out into Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth, to speak freely, candidly, and even boldly about the good news of salvation. While the words we need to speak to a world that thinks it's heard the Gospel aren't identical to the words of those first evangelists, we still need to speak with the freedom, candor, boldness, and confidence of those whose hearts are on fire with the Holy Spirit.

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