‘Unidiverse’, embraced by

It amazes us how quickly Jesus sees across situations. ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand…’ Teaching, healing follows instantaneously, as if he had an immediate access to all aspects of human (and divine!) life. Indeed, he has this power. He understands and has power over all the diversities of human life.
Saint Francis de Sales invites us to trace behind this God’s own mastery over the diversity of Creation. This mastery over all the diversity and fragmentation will help us understand where Jesus’ power of healing (and teaching) comes from. The following quotes from his Treatise on the Love of God will show how Jesus as ‘the eternal Word’ is directly rooted in God’s one unique action which creates the universe and keeps it alive.
*
 ‘In Him there is only one most simple and infinite perfection, and in that perfection only one sole most unique and most pure act…In God there are not many actions, but only one sole act, which is the divinity itself, yet this act is so perfect’ that it comprehends and initiates all diversity in the world, including the diversity of human actions.
*
All comes from this one word, from this ‘one Jesus’. All enfold from this ‘supreme unity’ of the one creative act of God. ‘This supreme unity of the divine act is opposed to the confusion and disorder but not to distinction and variety. On the contrary, it employs these last to bring forth beauty by reducing all difference and diversity to proportion, proportion to order, and order to the unity of the world, which comprises all created things, both visible and invisible All these together are called the universe, perhaps because all their diversity is reduced to unity, as if one were to say “unidiverse”, that is, unique and diverse, unique along with diversity and diverse along with unity.
In sum, God’s supreme unity diversifies all things, and his permanent eternity gives change to all things, because the perfection of his unity is above all difference and variety and must therefore have both means to furnish all diverse created perfections with thief being and contain power to produce them.’ ‘This single eternal will of his divine majesty extends its force from age to age and into ages of ages to all that has been, that is, or that will be into eternity.’ (Saint Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Vol.I, Ch 2 ‘That in God There is But One Single Act, Which is His Own Divinity’)
*
So how can we see Jesus as our healer and teacher? In his person − as the above quote says − all the diversity of our life is already there. In Jesus, God’s single unique act of Creation ‘speaks to us’, ‘which is His own divinity’. All of our actions, good and bad, all of our situations are embraced by Jesus. In his presence, we are embraced by God, as part of his one single act of creation. It is this immediacy which heals and teaches us in today’s Gospel. Let us listen to it again (Mk 7:14-23)
 
12.02.2020