Category: Matthew, Iain

“Our wound is the place where God dwells”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I did a series of posts on Fr. Iain Matthew’s writing back in July.  I have been re-reading him again.  He’s one of the people I go back to regularly–especially if I’m experiencing some kind of pain.  Because pain is precisely where, Fr. Iain says, Christ is waiting to meet us.  “The place of poverty within us is the threshold where Christ stands.”  He advises us strongly not to avoid our woundedness.  Each wound in our lives is the place where Christ wants to meet us.  The best thing to do is to make that place of pain a place of prayer,

the place within us where not everything is all right, where the wound that is in you aches. John [of the Cross] says: go there.  Go to that place of need, because that is a threshold at which Christ stands; our need is an evidence of God.

It is natural to flee from the place where that hunger throbs. Still, John encourages us to go there. It is what beckons the divine. It is the threshold at which Christ stands. We hunger for him because he has touched us; we want him because he wants us. The wound is the print of the pledge upon us, the pledge of the Spirit who holds us from the abyss. John comments on his poem: we “have our feeling of longing, the sense of God’s absence” precisely there, “within our heart, where we have the pledge.”

And so, we simply stand before God in our pain, with our pain, making our need a prayer.  God loves to hear and answer the cry of the poor.

God will make the space

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

So . . . back to Fr. Matthew’s book, Impact of God.   (Sorry about the delay . . . lots going on the past few days.)  So how do we make the space for God to come fully into us.  We all know how we are attached to so many things, and we also know all too well how often our efforts to detach ourselves fail miserably.  Fr. Matthew shares with us the good news that John of the Cross makes so clear in his writings: God will make the space in us if we will let Him.  (You all know little words can be big words . . .)  If we will just keep saying yes to what He is doing–and many times that may manifest itself as dry, distracted prayer, untoward events in our lives, etc.–things we naturally shrink from, but ways God uses to clear out those detachments in our lives.  Our part is “simply” to keep saying yes, and God who is continually pursuing us will indeed bring us into full union with Him.

If God is a self-bestowing God, then his gift is liable to engage us.  If he is active, then, in prayer, provided we stay around, he is liable to act.

Night: if God is beyond us, his approach is also liable to leave us feeling out of our depth.  When the divine engages us more deeply, our minds and feelings will have less to take hold of, accustomed as they are to controlling the agenda, to meeting God on their terms and in portions they can handle.  A deeper gifts will feel like no gift at all.  His ‘loving inflow’ is ‘hidden’; it is night.

If anything is felt it will probably be our own selfishness and narrowness (wood crackling and twisting as the fire makes progress).  When God approaches as who he is, I am liable to feel myself for what I am.  As a physical sign of growth is growing pains, so a sign of God gift is the pain of being widened.  This is the blessedness of night, that God, who wants to give, undertakes to make space in us for his gift. (Fr. Iain Matthew, emphasis added)

Wherever He finds space

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Continuing on from yesterday: Fr. Matthew emphasizes over and over how much initiative God takes in His relationship with us.  God pours out His love like the sunlight, “wherever he finds space, like a ray of sunlight, and joyfully disclos[ing] himself to people on the footpaths and the highways.”  Our response is to be not so much “forging a way, but on our getting out of the way.  Progress will be measured, less by ground covered, more by the amount of room God is given to manoeuvre.”  That is where He will give Himself–where He finds space. So how do we make that space for Him?

To be continued.

God is all for you alone

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Earlier this week, a good friend of mine read out loud to me excerpts from one of my favorite books (and now hers), Impact of God, by Fr. Iain Matthew.  I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything from that book with all of you.  The book’s purpose is to introduce the reader to St. John of the Cross, but even more importantly, I think, to gain a deeper understanding of God’s desire for relationship with us, especially when prayer is dark and dry.  Here’s a little taste from one of the first chapters of the book:

[God] does not give in a general way only, like rays of sunlight shining above a mountain, but leaving me-in-particular shadowed in the valley.  John’s God enters to confront the other person as if there were no other.  It seems to her that God has no other concern, ‘but that he is all for her alone.’  God comes in strength, capable of reconciling opposites, ‘giving life for death’s distress.’  His embrace is as wide as Good Friday to Sunday, and nothing in the person is too much for him.  He finds in the soul, not a burden, or a disappointment, but a cause for ‘glad celebration.’  John dares to place on the lips of his God the words:

‘I am yours, and for you, and I am pleased to be as I am that I may be yours and give myself to you.’

Ponder that.

More to come . . .