Pase lo que pase, Immanu’el
Pase lo que pase is a Spanish phrase that means, “whatever happens” or “no matter what happens.” Literally, it translates to, “pass that which pass.” The syntactical and subjunctive simplicity seem to communicate the easygoing lack of care of the speaker. Or maybe, in some cases, it is not that they do not care, but that they trust that something (or Someone) greater is ultimately in control of their lives. In the Christian sense, that Someone is the Immanu’el (from Hebrew, meaning “God with us” or “God with our people”). In the Christmas season, we celebrate this God becoming man in Jesus, who entered into humanity to restore us from our fallen state, which is a consequence of us turning away from Him in our free will.
God had to do this because He could not force Himself upon us or erase all of our sins instantaneously. For, that would supersede our free will and contradict His love for us. Rather, God prepared a vessel, the blessed Virgin Mary, through whom He would be able to be incarnated into humanity. Through Mary’s fiat of cooperating with God’s will, Jesus was able to be born into and to redeem the human race. And, He still desires to enter into the world and to heal our brokenness today. However, it can be hard to see how, at times, when our lives can be so difficult, confusing, and unfulfilling.
Living in a broken world, it is inevitable that somethings or some people will fail us or not live up to our expectations. The most helpful reminder is that this phenomena is normal. Thankfully, there are things (e.g. God, securely attached relationships, wholesome activities, etc.) that can makes us feel comfortable and complete. The conclusion that proceeds from these realizations is that it is then our live’s goal to discover those things that do give us fulfillment and peace (as I describe in “Taking Control of Your Suffering: Finding Meaning in Versus Giving Meaning to Your Crosses”), as we prepare ourselves for the ultimate fulfillment, which is eternal life in heaven. In this process, we can come to find that even the painful, difficult, and unsatisfying areas of our lives can paradoxically be a source of hope for this eternal fulfillment, when we allow others and God and others to enter into them with us (as highlighted in “At War with God”).
One thing that we might have to learn through experience, rather than just by hearing it told to us, is that not everything (e.g. work, relationships, situations, activities, etc.) is going to fill us up in this life. For myself, I have had to remind myself of this as I have started new educational or occupational opportunities. As we begin another chapter in our journeys, we may expect that the new aspects of our lives will finally make us whole. Coming into an exciting opportunity, we may have high hopes that whatever is approaching will at last make us feel at ease, happy, and content. However, that is rarely the case.
Additionally, when we are in worldly, chaotic, and difficult scenarios, it is understandable that it will be challenging to find fulfillment. For, God is not in these wind, storm, earthquake, or fire, but in the “light silent sound” (1 Kings 19:12). When our life courses are disrupted or destabilized, it is reasonable that we will have trouble discovering peace. However, it is not by taking further control of the reins or by trying harder that we will finally find it. Rather, we are reminded that we must “cast all [our] worries upon him because he cares for [us]” (1 Peter 5:7). By allowing God into our experiences of discomfort, stress, doubt, fear, anxiety, etc., He can command the waters and calm the storm. For, “apart from [Him] [we] can do nothing” (John 15:5) and “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). It takes this childlike faith and trust in His providence, reminding ourselves that we are dependent and fallible and that therefore we must rely on Him, that we are able to let Christ work in our lives (as mentioned in “Kindlichkeit: An Explanation and Antidote for Suffering” and “Omnia Cooperantur in Bonum: On Faith, Hope, and Trust”).
All of this comes to show us that we are not ultimately meant to be fulfilled by the world. C.S. Lewis agrees that, “if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Because a situation or good does not satisfy us does not necessarily mean that we are doing anything wrong (although there are inherent evils); it simply indicates that our worldly pursuits and possessions are not meant to completely fill us up in the first place. Only God and His will can do that. Instead, in all that we do, we ought to echo John the Baptist by saying, “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30). Only when we allow God to work through us can we come to live our life stories to their fullest.
However, adopting this mentality of openness toward God can be difficult, as it can make us feel very out of control of our life circumstances. As such, we may become tight-fisted as we grip the steering wheel of our lives and make sharp turns whenever we believe that another fleeting opportunity (be it a job, a relationship, an activity, a possession, etc.) will give us a better chance at finding fulfillment. Nonetheless, we may also have had the repeated experience that, more often than not, these opportunities ultimately do not end up meeting our exaggerated expectations. A type of buyer’s remorse may set in as we realize that our pursued goals do not always live up to our desires; and, we may even wish that we were back in our old situation (which, although it may have been just as unfulfilling, at least seem nostalgically familiar).
Thankfully, we can find consolation in the fact that this is a common human experience. Additionally, we can take heart in the fact that there are goods that can fulfill us (e.g. God, securely attached relationships, wholesome activities, etc.). Ultimately, as Caryll Houselander reveals in her book, The Reed of God, it is by becoming hollowed out, as Mary did, that we are able to find Christ and to bear Him into our lives and into the world, not only in the Christmas season, but everyday of our lives. When we try our best and surrender our situations to Christ, we can come to find peace by saying, “pase lo que pase, Immanu’el.”
It is first necessary to be emptied to be able to bear Christ to the world. Houselander tells us that, “at the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in his life” (The Reed of God). However, we can often fill ourselves with many fleeting things. We put our hope in that these objects or plans will be able to complete us. Still, whenever they ultimately do not, and we realize that we can never be fully fulfilled by earthy things, we can fall into a depressed state regarding this hopeless sense of emptiness. Unfortunately, “those who complain in these circumstances of the emptiness of their lives are usually afraid to allow space or silence or pause in their lives” (The Reed of God). However, “there is only one cure for fear — trust in God . . . a handing over of everything to God” (The Reed of God). This trust “will not set us free from suffering but will set us free from anxiety, hesitation, and above all from the fear of suffering . . . [making] us willing to be what God wants us to be, however great or however little that may prove” (The Reed of God). When we model Mary’s fiat to be made empty, we allow Christ to be born in us as He sees fit. Too, “Christ’s ‘not my will but thine be done’ brings Our Lady’s ‘be it done unto me according to thy word’ to a culminating surrender” (The Reed of God). Through her trustful surrender to God, Mary points us to her Son, who fully reveals how we ought to surrender ourselves to God in our emptiness.
Additionally, God may permit periods of emptiness for our greater growth. At times, God “goes away from us because it is expedient for us. He goes away that we may seek Him. The sense of loss, the awareness of insufficiency, makes us long for Him as He is; it makes us willing to go out from ourselves and find Him where He is” (The Reed of God). It is through this ongoing process of emptying that, “we know Him only by continually learning Him anew; we get away from false gods only by continually seeking Him; we hold Him only by losing Him” (The Reed of God). We must often return to this space of emptiness if Christ is to completely fill us and overflow into the world.
Ultimately, we are always seeking for Him to fill our emptiness. Our lack of complete fulfillment with the things of the world and our constant searching for contentment reveal that there must be something greater that can fill us up. Houselander explains that our desires “[make] every man search, [make] everyone (whether he knows it or not) seek, seek, seek all his life, for the lost Child, whether he knows Him directly as Christ or as the goodness of his human love; as the peace of his home, the joy in his work, or just as the indefinable lightness of heart which descends upon him like Pentecost” (The Reed of God). In a similar way to how Aristotle teaches that all rational actions are pointed toward some perceived good, too all of our seeking is directed toward filling that emptiness inside of us which only Christ can fill. However, “He wants us to seek, because He wants to give Himself to us. It is an experience like the experience of emptiness: the emptiness must be there that He may fill it; and we must be aware of it in order that we may want Him to fill it” (The Reed of God). When we start to recognize it is Him for whom we are searching, we can begin to see Him everywhere. For, “those who seek are more aware than any others . . . in this seeking, searching and finding are one thing: everywhere and in everyone they find what they seek” (The Reed of God). Simply by properly seeking, we foster an openness to find God in ourselves and in others.
Trusting in God allows Christ to then fill our emptiness. True emptiness “is not a formless emptiness, a void without meaning; on the contrary it has a shape, a form given to it by the purpose for which it is intended” (The Reed of God). When we are emptied, we make a space into which Christ can enter. Houselander describes it as a “reed,” a “chalice,” or a “nest.” All of these objects have qualities of emptiness; yet, it is that space that is then allowed to be filled with music, drink, and new life. The emptiness is necessary for the object to become that which it was made to be.
Advent is a particular liminal space in which we can be emptied to welcome the Christ child into our lives. There are multiple other phases of our lives that may seem like times of expectant waiting too (as described in “Crossing the Liminal Space”). In these times, “we shall not see Christ’s radiance in our lives yet; it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that He is growing in our lives; we must believe it so firmly that we cannot help relating everything, literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.” (The Reed of God). When we aim to see the hope of Christ’s coming in every situation, we can allow Him to grow in us and to be born into those life circumstances, when He sees it fitting to be revealed.
Even into our weaknesses and imperfections Christ can be born. Clearly, He shows this through being born to young, traveling parents, in a simple, messy manger. Too, “we can accept and seize upon the fact that what we are at this moment, young or old, strong or weak, mild or passionate, beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid, is planned to be like that” (The Reed of God). God designed us to be as we are and, if we follow Him, He leads us to where He desires. However, it is not that He “has caused all these evils, or that He wills them, but that He has hallowed them” (The Reed of God). As such, when we feel lost or are in uncomfortable circumstances, we can remember that, “whatever we are gives form to the emptiness in us which can only be filled by God and which God is even now waiting to fill” (The Reed of God). It is precisely our imperfections into which Christ wants to enter and through which He wants to redeem us.
When we lean into and embrace our weaknesses, we can open a space for Christ to be born into the world (as alluded to in “You Are Who You Are: Fostering Authenticity and Wholeheartedness”). From his birth to his death, through his mundane growing up years to his time of public ministry, Christ showed that, “He can will to live in lives of suffering and darkness we cannot conceive of; He can choose what seems to us the most unlikely material in the world to use for a positive miracle of His love” (The Reed of God). Additionally, He accomplishes this “not by doing away with it, but by transforming it; and to overcome death itself by dying,” revealing that, “it is actually in what we do that He wants to act and to suffer” (The Reed of God). By entering into the human experience, Jesus shows us that He desires to enter into all of the aspects of our lives, so that He may be continually born into the world that He created. Houselander describes that, “when we were young, or when Faith was young in us, we were aware of the call within us, of the Holy Spirit inspiring us to lead the austere life of sacrifice and uncompromising charity . . . [but] we have gradually frittered away the vocation to be free” (The Reed of God). We lose this freedom of emptiness as we continually try to futile fill out lives. However, by returning to true emptiness, the form of who we are can be filled with Christ.
By striving to allow God to enter our selves and our situations, we can open a space for Him to born in us. The first step in this process are “acts of faith in the presence of Christ” (The Reed of God). When we turn our gaze from our brokenness and emptiness and instead direct our attention toward faith in God’s strength and providence, we allow Him to enter into our lives. It is this “awareness of the presence of the Divine Child in us [that] draws us off from every distracting and destructive preoccupation, such as self-pity, anxiety, irritability with other people, the morbidity which leads us to dwell more upon our own sinfulness than upon the beauty of God” (The Reed of God). Additionally, “because He is in the little house of our being, we will learn to control our minds, to gather our thoughts to silence, and to crown them with peace” (The Reed of God). When we let Him, Christ readily comes to be born into our human weaknesses and to redeem them with His grace. Awareness of His presence further encourages us to live according to His calling and to seek Him more deeply. His being born in us carries “the power to be made new . . . a new will, new heart, new vision, new love — indeed, new life” (The Reed of God). This new life can overflow into our interactions with others.
As God enters into our situations, with His help, so can we enter into others’ realities. Houselander states that, “the next act of faith is in Christ in other people” (The Reed of God). Although it can be easy to just see others from the outside, we must remember that “just as we cannot depend upon feelings to know that Christ is in ourselves, we cannot depend upon appearances to know that He is in others” (The Reed of God). Once we experience how Christ enters into our emptiness, we can see how He wants to do so in others’ lives as well. This “search through faith and courage and love is a great going out into darkness, a reaching out to others in darkness, believing that Christ is there in each one” (The Reed of God). To illustrate this, Houselander tells an anecdote of how “an old man whose love for his fellow creatures endeared him to . . . whomsoever he met — before greeting him out loud — he greeted Christ within him in secret” (The Reed of God). Similarly, we can overcome our selfish, limited understanding of others’ situations, and by recognizing the image of God in them, we can help the Christ child to be born in them as well. As such, we become the Mystical Body of Christ in that, “through our oneness with one another because of His one life in us all, we make up what is wanting in one another and are whole; and in us all, as one Body, His whole life is lived” (The Reed of God). As Christ lives in us, so we can live in Him and in one another.
Thankfully, when Christ died and physically left the earth, He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us as our guide. Truthfully, “no one can generate spiritual life without first having union with the Spirit” and “we can give birth to Christ only by unity with the Holy Spirit” (The Reed of God). Therein, whenever we welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives, as Mary did, Christ is born into the world again. Ultimately, this takes giving “our flesh and blood, our daily life — our thoughts, our service to one another, our affections and loves, our words, our intellect, our waking, working, and sleeping, our ordinary human joys and sorrows — to God” (The Reed of God). Mary is the best example of this, as her life was a witness to the effect that saying “yes” to the Holy Spirit can not only have on oneself but on the entire world.
However, it is not something that we can strive for on our own. It takes “[giving] ourselves to that life, all that we are, to pray without ceasing, not by a continual effort to concentrate our minds but by a growing awareness that Christ is being formed in our lives from what we are” (The Reed of God). Further, “in office or home or hospital; prison, barracks, or church — anywhere at all where men and women are — the mystery of the Incarnation can bear fruit in bodies and souls all day and all night, too” (The Reed of God). When we say “yes” to God, in both small and large ways, through our emptiness, we open a pathway for the Holy Spirit to be poured out and for Christ to be born again into the world.
Once we begin to recognize God in ourselves and others, we ought to go out and share this good news with the world. This does not always mean that we have to be missionaries in a foreign land. Actually, it may mean that He wishes to come into the most unexpected, exhausting, and mundane areas of daily life. It is in the ordinary aspects of work, relationships, and activities into which God wishes to be born. For, “it may be that God has sent us there because but for us Christ would not be there” (The Reed of God). Through Christ’s own life, God revealed that, “it is His will that Christ shall be born in every human being’s life and not, as a rule, through extraordinary things, but through the ordinary daily life and the human love that people give to one another” (The Reed of God). Mission is not always about being sent out in a radical way. Too, its effect may not be visibly apparent to us or we may not see Christ fully alive while we are in a given situation. Nonetheless, we ought to open ourselves to how He wishes to act in our lives every moment of every day.
When we allow Christ to enter into our emptiness, we allow Him to be born into all the situations in which we find ourselves. We can trust that “one of the greatest motives of God’s love is to answer the needs of men. Thus, He is a child to the childless, a friend to the friendless, a father to the fatherless, a shepherd to the wanderer, a home to the homeless, a comforter to the mourner, a king to the valiant heart, light to the blind, bread to the hungry, and living water to the thirsty” (The Reed of God). Through our hands and feet, He wishes to accomplish this goal. The more that we “go with eager wills, ‘in haste,’ to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that He desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of His love” (The Reed of God). By the way we live and interact either others, like St. John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb, hopefully others may experience a “quickening of His own life in the heart, which is the response to His coming” (The Reed of God). Houselander emphasizes that as Christ was dependent upon Mary, so is He dependent upon us. The hymn “Christ Has No Body Now But Yours” displays this well. It is essentially by permitting Him to use us as His hands and feet that He may be continually born into the world.
At times, our lives can seem confusing and unfulfilling. However, we can take heart in remembering that no matter what happens, God is with us. By living this reality, we can allow Him to be born in ourselves and in the world. However, it is first necessary to be emptied to be able to bear Christ to the world. Additionally, God may permit periods of emptiness for our greater growth. Ultimately, we are always seeking for Him to fill our emptiness. Trusting in God allows Christ to then fill our emptiness. Advent is a particular liminal space in which we can be emptied to welcome the Christ child into our lives. Even into our weaknesses and imperfections Christ can be born. When we lean into and embrace our weaknesses, we can open a space for Christ to be born into the world.
By striving to allow God to enter our selves and our situations, we can open a space for Him to born in us. Further, as God enters into our situations, with His help, so can we enter into others’ realities. Once we begin to recognize God in ourselves and others, we ought to go out and share this good news with the world. When we allow Christ to enter into our emptiness, we allow Him to be born into all the situations in which we find ourselves. Thankfully, when Christ died and physically left the earth, He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us as our guide. However, it is not something that we can strive for on our own. Of this way of life, the blessed Virgin Mary is the best example. Through her fiat, she revealed the effect that living by the mantra — no matter what happens, God is with us — can have on ourselves and on the world.
