The poem for today may not strike you immediately as a poem for Advent, but as you read it, I think you’ll see why I chose it. It’s a poem I just came across by one of my favorite writers, Anthony Esolen, who just this past week posted it to Touchstone’s blog. Here’s the link, and I do hope that you savor and relish it as much as I did upon reading it. Let’s never go back to Egypt . . .
Found by God
Continuing on from yesterday’s post . . . Our journey to God is so much like that of the prodigal son’s. We start to turn home-ward, only to find that God is already there, coming to us. The sheep gets lost, and the Shepherd goes out to find it–sometimes even before the sheep realizes that it is lost.
As we are searching for God, the good news is that God is searching for us. Better yet, he has found us. The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God. God is not lost. We were, or, as the case may be, we are. . . . Here is what St. Paul says: “It is full time now for you to wake from sleep.” He is telling us to wake up the gift already given. This season of the Church’s calendar is called Advent, which means “coming”. Christ came, Christ comes, Christ will come again. There is no time–past, present, or future–in which Jesus the Christ is not God with us. He was with you yesterday, is with you today, and will be with you tomorrow. So we are invited to give up our searching and let ourselves be found by the One who wants to be with us, and to have us with him, forever. (Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, God With Us, pp. 18-19)
The search for God
One of the books I’m reading, actually re-reading, this Advent, is a book of a nondescript name with an unattractive cover: The Roots of Christian Mysticism, by Olivier Clement, one of the foremost Orthodox theologians of our day. What I love about the book is the way Clement brings together quote after quote from ancient authors with his brilliant commentary interspersed. This past week I have been re-reading the first three chapters. The second is entitled “God, Hidden and Universal”. Clement is trying to communicate how utterly inaccessible God in His essence is to us. Of course, this concept–which, of course, we cannot fully grasp–is essential to understanding the inexpressible love of God for us in becoming man. However, instead of quoting from his book :-), I am going to quote the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (from First Things) from another book, God With Us, an Advent-Christmas book put out by Paraclete Press.
We are all searching, and ultimately–whether we know it or not–we are searching for God. Ultimately, we are searching for the Ultimate, and the Ultimate is God. It is not easy, searching for God . . . The fact is that we do not really know what we’re looking for or who we’re looking for. Almost a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury said, “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.”
Think about it. We can stretch our minds as high and deep and far as our minds can stretch, and at the point of the highest, deepest, farthest stretch of our minds, we have not “thought” God. There is always a thought beyond which we cannot think. “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.
God is, literally, inconceivable. And that is why God was conceived as a human being in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because we cannot, even in thought, rise up to God, God stooped down to us in Jesus, who is “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”
I will continue with this tomorrow.
Waiting
This Advent morning I have been pondering the idea, the posture of “waiting.” What does it mean to wait for the Lord’s coming? To wait in hope? I haven’t formulated all my thoughts yet, but one thing that rings true to me about waiting is something that Pope Benedict talked about in his general audience yesterday. In the context of speaking about St. William of Saint-Thierry (a good friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux), he wrote: “Human nature, in its most profound essence, consists in loving. In a word, only one task is entrusted to every human being: to learn to will the good, to love, sincerely, authentically, freely. However, only at the school of God can this task be accomplished and man can attain the end for which he was created.”
What struck me was that there is a link between loving and waiting. If I put all my energy into loving–loving God, receiving His love, loving others as I am loved–then I will indeed be “actively” waiting, actively preparing for His coming. What better thing could I do than that to prepare for Him who is Love itself?
“An interior diary”
Perhaps many of you have already read Pope Benedict’s homily from First Vespers this past Sunday, but I wanted to draw your attention particularly to this part and encourage you to try to do what he suggests for Advent:
Advent, this intense liturgical time that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to grasp a presence. It is an invitation to understand that every event of the day is a gesture that God directs to us, sign of the care he has for each one of us. How many times God makes us perceive something of his love! To have, so to speak, an “interior diary” of this love would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life! Advent invites and stimulates us to contemplate the Lord who is present. Should not the certainty of his presence help us to see the world with different eyes? Should it not help us to see our whole existence as a “visit,” as a way in which he can come to us and be close to us, in each situation?
You can read the entire address here. (It is worth reading.) Do try to take some time daily to take note in your “interior diary” of how God has loved you. (This will remind some of you of Fr. Gallagher’s talks on the examen.) And know that we all wouldn’t mind your sharing an entry or two here as a comment.
In time of need
Yesterday was the funeral for my aunt and the reason for my not posting. Today, of course, I am a bit weary. The funeral went well, but now, in addition to what I call the “mother-wound” I carry in my heart because of the loss of my own mother, I now have an “aunt-wound” because of the loss of my “other mother”. This morning when I prayed, I picked up a collection of Amy Carmichael’s writings called Thou Givest . . . They Gather and read this:
“I cannot get the way of Christ’s love. Had I known what He was keeping for me, I should never have been so faint-hearted”, Samuel Rutherford wrote long ago. Have we not often had cause to say so too? But if for a season we are in heaviness, if the morning after a night of pain, or prayer, or fierce fight of temptation, or any other weariness, finds us arid as a burnt-up bit of land, there is a perfect word waiting to hearten us: Grace to help in time of need–in time of need–that is the word. Often and often I have drunk of that living water very thirstily. Blessed be God for this brook in the way. “For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but One that has been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4.15-16)
Now, I must honestly confess that I sometimes have mixed reactions to reading something like this. This is what I begin to think: “But will I really feel refreshed after I pray? Many a time I have continued on arid after coming to Him.” (I call to mind that time I spoke of earlier when I cried out, “Lord, have you forgotten me?”) But even as I thought that this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me: “But can you not trust that if that is the case, that the Father, in His love, has a greater purpose in allowing it?” And, you know, I cannot but answer yes to that because I know “in my knower”–as they say–that all that the Father does, He does in love. If I continue on in weariness and grief and aridity, He must have a greater purpose in it all. And I thank Him for reminding me of that.
“Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place”
This Sunday’s poem is one by Jessica Powers, written in 1948:
Advent
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free
from its high mooring and walks down the sky
to be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
someone is hidden in this dark with me.
~Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 81.
A pure transparent pool
I’ve been thinking about how I would answer my own query at the end of yesterday’s post, and one thing that immediately came to mind that brings beauty into my own life is a little photo album of art prints and such that I have collected. For many of them I have an accompanying quote on the facing page. Often I use it as an accompaniment in prayer, a source of meditation. One example of this can be found here. And here is another example:
I find this image of Mary quite beautiful. Its title is Mary, the Mother and Consolation of the Grieving. The following is the poem I have placed opposite it:
THE POOL OF GOD
There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul
that belonged to the Virgin–
no word, no thought, no image, no intent.
She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting
God, only God.
She held His burnished day; she held His night
of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.
God was her sky and she who mirrored Him
became His firmament.
When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her
my spirit is enisled in her repose.
And when I gaze into her selfless depths
an anguish in me grows
to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.
I pray to hollow out my earth and be
filled with these waters of transparency.
I think that one could die of this desire,
seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.
Oh, to become a pure soul like the Virgin,
water that lost the semblances of water
and was a sky like God.
~Jessica Powers
“You are the Custodians of Beauty”
A couple of months ago, I began a series of posts on beauty. Pope Benedict XVI just last week addressed a group of some 250 artists gathered in the Sistine chapel on this very theme. What particularly struck me in his address was the link he made between beauty and hope.
Unfortunately, the present time is marked, not only by negative elements in the social and economic sphere, but also by a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair. . . . What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream a life worthy of its vocation–if not beauty? . . . the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it form darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful. [You can read the rest of the address here.]
Though this was addressed particularly to artists, I am convinced of the importance of all of us having this mind in the living of our daily lives. We can all be “custodians of beauty” (Paul VI) wherever we are. Even if all we do–and by no means of little importance–if all we do is constantly invite the Holy Spirit to make of our souls a thing of beauty, we will be a worthy custodian of beauty. We each need contact with beauty ourselves, true beauty, that is–art, music, poetry, literature, nature, people–and we each need to be purveyors of beauty to those around us. And, as we do this, I think we will discover that link that Pope Benedict spoke of between beauty and hope.
Need I say that most of all we need to long for the beauty of God, a longing that will not be fulfilled until we see Him face to face. “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . .to find the place where all the beauty came from.” (C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces)And isn’t that what Advent is all about?
I would be interested in where you find beauty: what books you’ve read, how you bring beauty into your homes, etc. Please feel free to comment.
Bless the Lord, O my soul
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good as long as you live . . . (Ps 103.2-5a)
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever! (Ps 106.1b)
Bless the Lord, all our souls! A blessed Thanksgiving to each of you.
Witnesses to Hope 