Of Word and Silence

Only those who do not understand silence believe that all kinds of silence are the same. Not limited to the mere absence of noise, there are different kinds of silence on earth, in the heavens and in hell - though a deeper silence informs them all. We are made to listen to this quiet stillness that lives even in the midst of noise and is never disturbed by its ambiguity.

Many fear an emptiness that silence sometimes sustains. There is, however, a silence that is not empty. A vulnerable silence is shared in the glancing recognition of hearts that love one another. Something too great for mere words lives in the reassuring hand offered to the broken soul. More than any word can convey is quiet solidarity that one offers a friend in death.

Because our hearts ache for a silence that we do not have, some seek pathways that would still the unquenchable gnaw of unfulfilled desire. Some strive to be mindful of the present moment in an effort to find relief from their tormenting thoughts and memories. Others strive for a psychic state to set themselves above the turmoil of the day to day grind. Others pursue the next evolutionary step for human consciousness with the hopes of charting a new spiritual course. Yet all of these kinds of silence, no matter how effective in consoling and surmounting painful exigencies, cannot avoid the finality of death and its disintegrating power. These natural modes of interior serenity cannot overcome sin or forgive it -- and are, therefore, as subject to its futility as is every other unaided human activity.

There is, however, a silence that heals, uplifts, and ignites a desire for something greater.  This majestic calm can live in the soul even the the midst of racing thoughts and oppressing anxieties. Such serenity is hidden from human industry and calculation though it can permeate bone and marrow, highest thoughts and deepest instincts. No technique or method discovers the secret fountain that floods human existence in this way. Yet, its call haunts us in our pride and provides the boundary for our despair.  The humble cry of faith invites its mystery.

When approached in humility and faith, this merciful silence is ready to run and embrace us while we are still far away.  Unearned, unmerited, unexpected, for the price of our tears, this quiet stillness pays us in full, no matter how little we have labored. This silent plethora binds our wounds and restores our dignity, no matter how beat up we are on the path of life. A mere mustard seed of this tender lull fulfills every desire and surpasses all our hopes. In the form of a pure gift, the wisest have sacrificed all they have to acquire this buried treasure, while only the most childlike fully possess this precious pearl. Each human heart and the whole human adventure were born out of the hope that this silence holds for us.

We bear the image and likeness of this great mystery, and we live to make known its glory.  Never imposing itself, the secret of this immense solitude provides the space for self gift and self possession, of relation and communion, of action and contemplation. A hidden and humble quietude, if we deny it, it will deny us. It never abandons us, however, no matter how often we abandon it, because this eternal silence is faithful to itself. This mysterious speechlessness beckons between the beats of one's own heart, in the space between the inhale and exhale of a single breath, at the end of one thought and before the beginning of the next.

That we might know this ever-flowing Spring, the Truth who has always proceeded from the silent stillness of the Father's heart was conceived when this same Stillness overshadowed the woman's womb. Born in poverty and nurtured in exile, the Father's Son established the still point around which all of human history and each human heart revolve. Living among us, with every heartbeat, every breath, every thought, every word, every work until, climaxed in wordless cry and final breath, the silenced Word fully disclosed the great secret that the Father yearned to entrust to us in crucified glory.

When the Word humbled Himself in rejection, betrayal, humiliation, denial, injustice, and death, all this evil was at once implicated in the Father's silent love. Because the secret of the Father is more powerful than the rancor of sin and death, He raised His Crucified Word. In raising Mary's Son, He gave Christ's obedient love the power to raise all of creation, making all things new.

Having implicated Himself in our plight, the crucified Word can give us life even as we die in dissonant restlessness. Each of us can claim this Truth and cling to it even as our last life breath leaves us.  In all the noise and confusion that threaten to reduce us to mere cogs in the wheel of human industry, our union in faith to the Word of the Father makes us vulnerable to that tender silence that heaven knows.

Beyond the power of death, the hidden eloquence of God's immense love defines human existence.  So full, so rich, so beautiful -- all words fail, speechless adoration overcomes the soul - the same speechlessness that the Divine Persons share imprints itself in us. New meaning floods over our existences even now, in this difficult hour and in this grace filled moment. A saving silence rises above the silence of death and cacophony of sin.

On the Ocean of Christ's Love

The power of Christ is immense and at the same time hidden.  It is as if we were in the hull of a ship unaware of the great ocean on which we rest or even that we are in a ship at all.  We feel tossed and turned, and upset that this has disturbed our rest, completely oblivious that great currents are directing our ship homeward.  We are irritated with fellow passengers who are as ignorant as we are – and don’t you know that there are some rats on board as well, disgusting and frustrating us – even to the point that we think their stench is ours.

It’s time to wake up, shake off your slumber and to remember who you are.  You are a baptized son of the Most High and you are sailing forth on the great Bark of Peter, sailing across the ocean of Christ’s love to our Fatherland, to the place prepared for us – for the Father has made us for greatness.  You are not made for the filth of wrath or self-pity or scrupulosity – but to stand like a man on the shores of salvation and cry out to the Living God and be heard by Him, to His great delight! 

Remember who you are and do not let the rats distract you.  The rats are but demonic vermin who frighten, steal food and make a mess. Ignore them unless you can throw one overboard into immensity of the blood of Christ.  

To remember who you are, simply climb out of the hull of the daily grind and step out into the starlight of prayer. Walk across the deck of silence and do not fear the plank of solitude. Shake off the squalor of scrupulosity – and bath yourself in the love that holds up the whole Church.  

As you plunge into Christ, search for the Star of the Sea – her light reassures you that you have found your way.  Let her maternal presence comfort you as a mother her son – for she understands your agony and stands with you through it all – just as she did her own Son.  Then refreshed, cloth yourself anew with Christ and climb back down to the hull and give your fellow travelers a word of hope.  This is your great mission and purpose. 

To Know the Father - To Behold the Cross

On this Good Friday, we celebrate the definitive revelation of the Father's love for the world. God the Father reveals Himself through His Eternal Word - the Word whose last wordless cry resounds through all space an time. In this last wordless cry, everything that Jesus came to reveal about the Father, everything that the Father wished us to know about Him, is laid bear and entrusted to us with great tenderness and patience.

To know this truth is to know at once the Father's great mercy for us and who we are in His sight. He does not use His power to force our behavior. He patiently accepts our hostility and rejection - even permitting what is most precious to Him to suffer death for our sakes.  His love is deeper and more powerful than our hatred and His patience is able to bear with our infirmities - to heal and raise up what is good, beautiful and true about who we are in His sight.

In a world that does not have the strength to restrain itself, we behold on the Cross the gentleness of the Father who tenderly restrains His power to heal us. Our heartache and anxiety, our guilt and our fears are all remedied before this mystery - if only we will humbly surrender and let what the Father has revealed enter into our hearts. If we will silence ourselves and remain with Him, the love of the Father flows through the Cross into the deepest wounds to heal, to restore and to set free.  On this day, our misery is immersed in His Mercy so that we might be saved.

Through Christ's great prayer for us we know that the Father longs for us to dwell with Him. If we approach the foot of the Cross with reverence, the deep things of God and His divine dream for each one of us is manifest and realized in faith.  If today we follow in the footsteps of the One who was Crucified by love and for love, we will find the courage and strength to life by love and for love. If we adore the Wood on which our Savior offered Himself for us, we will find that the kiss we offer the Lord is returned in the most profound and beautiful way.

The Face of Christ

In the Face of Christ is the truth about God and the truth about the human heart. To say that we are a mystery to ourselves is to acknowledge that the heart has depths that only God's mercy knows.  In deep movements that we do not understand or even notice, He is there gazing on us with tender love.  Through a glance that unveils the immensity of his mercy, the Almighty discloses Himself to our frail nature: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity does this through the Face of Christ. Though sovereign to gaze or not gaze on us at all, The Three-in-One and One-in-Three has chosen to see us through the Risen Eyes of His Son, our Crucified Lord.

The gaze of the Face of Christ opens our whole existence to a circumcession of love and life, of truth and goodness, of grace and mysterious glory. As the Word of the Father, the Son's compassionate contemplation of our existence creates a kind of harmony within us. He sees into its very depths of who we are and nothing will avert His gaze - for He loves us and thirsts for us.

This harmonizing gaze of Divine Mercy is not over and against our lack of love and bitter sorrows.  He does not overlook or ignore the disappointments and frustrations, or failures and inadequacies that haunt us. He is not a stranger to the rejection and abandonment against which we struggle. He knows we are weary from the contention and rancor that relentlessly pull at us. Before His Face, we do not suffer alone - for He shares our heartaches with us and is moved to sew His un-vanquished love into the very fabric of all this pain. In this, the gaze of Christ makes all things new.

In the Face of Christ Risen from the Dead, the Father's love is disclosed to us anew. Behold in His Eyes a love that is stronger than death - a love no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth can overcome. To gaze into the Eyes of Christ who gazes on us with love is to see the Father who awaits us in love. In the face that suffered unto death, He shares with us the secret of the Father's heart.

To humbly meet His gaze is to be pierced by how the Father broods over us at each moment and will not rest from searching for us until we are safe at home in His love. To win us over is why He sends His Spirit of Love into our hearts - convicting us about our sin and inviting us to the freedom of His sons and daughters. To help us find our way, He speaks His Word of Truth into our hostile silence and empty alienation-- even to the point that He gave Himself up and was crucified for love of us.

How do we find this Face of Christ crucified by love? The most simple turn of the heart finds Him, and the Holy Spirit very delicately works that this tender moment of recognition might be ours.  A humble cry of faith offered with perseverance and trust knows this gentle surrender of God and the human heart together.

To find the face of Christ is to strive to surrender to a Divine kiss.  He has not repented of bowing down to enter into our lives that we might receive this great gift.  He has suffered such betrayal that we might knows this grace. But to look into His eyes is to see that no betrayal could ever overcome His devotion to us.

To find the face of Christ is to return this His kiss through the bowing down of our being in contrite repentance before Him. These can be moments of prayer where we kiss the Cross of Christ. They can be moments of mercy in our dealings with others where we render Christ hidden in our neighbor the tender affection for which He longs. They are rarely convenient moments, but they are always deep moments of the heart. Our tradition calls this adoration - and there is nothing more healing for the heart than to allow itself to be kissed by God and then to offer God the kiss for which He longs.

To be captivated by the love that fills those Risen Eyes is the vision to which our faith avails us. No more than a surrender to the deep currents of the Holy Spirit running through the heart, to lift our eyes to the loving gaze of the Lord silences the chaos within. It establishes us in peace. It envelops us in love. To allow ourselves to be astonished by the love of the Father living in His humble glance, this is what it means to have the Holy Spirit reveal the Face of Christ. 

Marriage and the Word of the Father

When it comes to marriage, as to the rest of life, the Word of the Father does not offer us a fairytale, but a reason for our hope. He does not offer a happy ending in this life, but suffering, and the promise of glory in the life to come- for He commands us to deny ourselves and follow in His footsteps.  Whatever becomes of our marriages and our families, there is no room for anxiety or despair - for the Bridegroom calls. His voice resounds in both sorrow and joy, hope and anxiety. He is waiting for our response. To accept Him, come what come may, is to journey forward, even if in complete humiliation, towards a fullness of joy too great for this life to contain.

This journey progresses by means of the Cross - this means believing in God's love in all manner of hardships and trials, even when all human love seems to fail.  Only those who dare to make this journey, however, discover that love that no power or abyss of misery can overcome.  The love that awaits us ahead is stronger than death - and even if we die, death in the face of this love is not the last word.  For in this love and by this love we live.

This Love is a gift. He comes to us in the form of "the Word" spoken by the Father into our flesh. He comes full of confidence into our difficult life history - that common story in which each of us shares, and those particular sorrows that no one else can share with us, but Him.  In the midst of this life's storm, the silent majesty of this Divine Word is filled with a longing for our humanity that is deeper and more ancient than our resistance to Him. The soul's Deepest Center, He draws a response from places so deep in our being that we do not even know they exist. Even in the most bitter catastrophe, a hidden hope gestates because of the salvation that He has come to bring.

The One who aches for faithfulness is never indifferent to tears shed over married love.This Light walks into the darkness of failed or struggling marriages undaunted. He is confident even when we have completely lost our confidence. He walks on top of the waves of despair and reaches to pull us above the flood if we will turn our eyes to Him and cry for help.  In the face of an angry and hostile world, in our weaknesses and voids, He indissolubly fashions marriage and sanctifies it by His blood -- changing our limited efforts to give ourselves in service to one another into a wellspring of grace.

The Word by which all things were made, including marriage itself, waits for couples to seek Him in the silence of Eucharistic Adoration. He is present to those husbands and wives who in their humiliation and feelings of abandonment trust in Him. Through a family's icons He beholds the candlelight shining on the faces of both the betrayed and the betrayer, and He hears the faith that cries out to Him from pain. Before the barren wall that bears His Cross, He weeps with those who weep. His silent fullness fills every emptiness. His last wordless cry establishes meaning even when a marriage's crushing circumstances seem to render everything meaningless.

The conqueror of death, the Risen One has opened the gates even to the hell that we make of our lives and families. Where no other connection seems left, He is all the connection that we really need. For couples who need integrity restored, He is ready to become their integrity.  For couples whose purity is compromised, He is ready to purify anew.  He liberates from cycles of shame and disgrace. He establishes trust and peace. For couples that need a new beginning, He is the Word that is from the Beginning.

When we struggle against running away from heartache and are loathed to face the truth, the One who is True finds His rest in bearing even the most bitter struggles with us in love. He provides courage for those difficult conversations. He makes it possible to humble oneself, to forgive, to be forgiven. The Man of Sorrows is ever ready to teach how to intercede for the one who has betrayed, denied and abandoned his friend. He is ready to baptize a couple in His compassion when they have deeply saddened one another.

The humble presence of the Truth Himself causes pride to fall, and raises up from bitter humiliation. Because He is righteous and true, this Mighty Warrior does not fail to fight for faithfulness. Because He has overcome, not even addictions or depression or long painful illnesses can prevent His love from prevailing. Even when one's own life's companion will not hear His voice, He is enough to fill even the most difficult life with joy.  Against every obstinacy, He evokes conversion of heart and puts the whole of one's life into dialogue with the love of the Father.

The radiance of the Bridegroom purifies and transforms all our loves the more we make space for Him in our lives. The more a couple will allow Him to captivate their hearts, the easier it is to surrender everything to Him.  He treasures those fleeting moments of unexpected victory when husband and wife stand together in faith. He is amazed and gives thanks to the Father when together with Him they lift up their hearts in thanksgiving -- because of all of these mysterious blessings that they do not understand and struggle to receive.

The Arms of Christ Outstretched this Christmas

Mary sees in the face of her child the tears of God and the joy of humanity. Hungrily having clung with unquenchable thirst to her breast in our cold darkness, in every challenge she sees Him ready to teach us how to cling to Him in faith. He at once envelops us in the abyss of his love when we see how He allowed her to wrap Him in swaddling clothes. At home with the poor and all those for whom there is no room in society, she ponders how He leads us to our true home in the bosom of the Trinity.  She has always welcomed these unfamiliar gifts with awe, adoration, and selfless acts of mercy. Her example lights the way for us to discover how to rejoice in these troubled times. 

When we consider the arms of the Virgin Mother carefully holding the Savior, we behold how our own hospitality to Him must include complete acceptance of His power to deliver us from sin and death. As she rejoiced to be redeemed by His blood in a singular way, each of us must learn to humbly lay before Him the burden of guilt that He has come to take away so that we might rejoice as well. Confessing our sins with holy sorrow and rendering to Him an act of thanksgiving, we too hold Him in our own arms. Lifting up our hearts with prayers that are right and just, we too learn to listen to his vulnerable cry. 

If we will look into his eyes, we will see that, with great joy and eagerness, He has come in poverty, like a beggar. He hopes that we might let go of our pain and trust Him with it. He wants us to be completely free to love -- and He does not want us to torment ourselves over failure and inadequacy. He yearns to be welcomed and held with confidence in love and for love. His arms remain as outstretched to us this Christmas as they were to Mary that first Christmas, and the joy she knew through her devotion to Him could be ours - by this simple movement of trust, the choice to respond to His tender presence.

In Mary we know that the God who weeps as a baby is discovered by the heart who says "yes" to this gift of divine joy.  This peculiar paradox is an encounter of suffering humanity against divine humility, the doom of death against the surprise of life ever-lasting, the limits of human evil against limitlessness of God's goodness, of earthly poverty against heavenly riches, of ignorance of men against the foolishness of God, of deserved condemnation against incalculable forgiveness, of darkness against the Light, of the Word against silence, of human emptiness against divine fullness. Because Mary pondered all these things, we know that the conflict of these extremes is only resolved by an adoration of the heart, a loving acceptance the mystery of the Word become flesh dwelling among us.This simple movement, this humble contemplation, this willingness to be inconvenienced by God who smiles at us in our neighbor, makes us like her vulnerable to angels' voices, and heavenly signs, and shepherds' wonder, and the homage of wisemen.

What satisfies – by Father Raymond Gawronski, S.J., Professor of Theology, Saint Patrick's Seminary

“Our hearts are made for Thee O Lord, and they will not rest until they rest in Thee.”

St. Augustine’s famous words say it all: for we are made to know – and experience – God, and we will be restless until we come to that rest. Son of St. Ignatius, Balthasar would add: that “rest” is the acceptance of the mission God has for us, and that is a most active “rest.” But it is the “peace that the world cannot give,” and so not a philosophical repose, but rather an active “rightness” which comes from being in the will of God, however that may look.

Put differently, “what satisfies the soul?” What satisfies the deepest part of me? It is clear from all the “restless wanderings” of the people of the world that they are not finding that which satisfies. Half the people are terribly overweight – food does not satisfy. Many, maybe most, are engaged in some sort of driven sexual search – if only on the Internet. But the satisfaction there is momentary, leading to a period of exhaustion, and then a renewed hunt, more restless – more desperate – than before.

There are simpler satisfactions. The contemplation of nature, the immersion of our starved senses in the world God created, satisfies for awhile, and that in a healthy way. But nature is less than we, and so can only give a bit of respite, a bit of memory of Paradise. There are more sophisticated satisfactions. The world of the mind opens up. The satisfactions of intellectual sustenance, the pleasures of art – all these lift and feed the soul. For awhile. But in the end, they are only invitations, beautiful portals – to a reality beyond any of them.

And this reality can only be found in silence and darkness, for it is so totally different from all that is less than God, who is infinitely beyond us, that we must enter into the negation of all that we know, all our ways of knowing, in order to “know” in the “divine darkness.”

And so, calming all the senses, stilling our beings, we sit in the quiet – and await the working of the Holy Spirit of God. The very being there, the receiving of the invitation, the saying “yes” is itself a step into that “otherness” that begins to satisfy our souls, as nothing in this world can. We can – we must – bathe in these deep, dark waters, immerse ourselves, let ourselves drown in fact, that we may be lifted out of them.

We emerge to the greater satisfaction: that of love. No longer needy, no longer demanding. Rooted in that death which alone gives life,  in that silence from which alone satisfying sound emerges, we have found satisfaction, by renouncing all lesser satisfactions.  And we no longer demand that humans give us that which they cannot give: eternal life, perfect understanding, total acceptance and forgiveness.

This satisfaction has a name, for “it” is a person: His Name is Jesus, the “human face of God.” The Word that emerges from the Silence and invites us to that silence from which the only satisfying speech – the only real music – will emerge. From the heart of the Trinity.  May we be blessed to enter into this life-giving silence that alone stills our restless hearts, that alone satisfies. 

Father Raymond Gawronski, S.J. is a spiritual theologian and the author of Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter between East and West, Second Spring Books: 3rd Edition (2015). He helped launch the Spirituality Year at the founding of Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver where he served as professor, director of spiritual formation and retreat master, and most recently he started a similar program for Saint Patrick's Seminary where he also teaches and serves as a spiritual director.

The Risen Lord Waits for Us to Call on Him

Jesus, the Risen Lord, is truly present in this moment. In the midst of difficulty or rest, sorrow or joy, He is with us, fully alive, more real than all the rest of reality combined.  He is present with great humility and respect: asking as if He were a starving beggar, seeking as if He were the one who had lost something and knocking as if He had no right to enter.  He is here, in this moment and in every moment, above all space and time, over all circumstance and trial, waiting for us to open the door.

The Victor once and for all, He has been raised and set apart to judge the living and the dead, not in the distant future, but now in the present moment. Only those who are pierced to the heart by love can accept the judgment of His justice and truth, and how I long for my own heart to be pierced so that at last I might know that freedom of love that He alone can give.

Spiritual freedom flows from His touch and even now He holds out His hands towards us.  Those who believe in Him find forgiveness. Even as we confess our sins and repent of our rash judgments, He silences the voice of condemnation that cries against us.

He has suffered death and passed through hell to restore peace to our troubled consciences because He did not create us for self torment.  He has come Himself because He alone has the power and authority to liberate us from such a hellish burden.  In Him, we discover that the power of misery is not absolute and that evil does not have the last word.  Darkness vanishes before His light.  He reigns unconquered and invites us to join Him.

Who will separate us from His love?  Who can prevent us from living the life that He has come to give?  Worldly powers could not silence Him. Suffering could not diminish Him.  Death could not contain Him.  Every knee is bent before Him and every head is bowed in His presence.  He rules forever at the right hand of the Father.

Against all falsehood, he shines forth forever true. Though winds of false teachings and all kinds of myths seem to hold sway, He is a sure anchor, a safe-harbor in the storm.  In the midst of a changing sea of confusion, He stands as the sure reference point of life and every decision.  In the midst of rancor and contention, whether within our hearts or in our communities, He is the only true source of peace.

The Word of the Father is the Love that is stronger than death.  He is Truth unvanquiahed.  He is the living waters of the deep dug well of salvation. He calls in whispers that thunder in our hearts. He gazes on us with love though we have done nothing to deserve it. He hopes in us and rejoices when we raise our eyes to Him if only for a moment.  The Lord of Life longs for us to share our hearts with Him freely and to share His heart with us completely in that moment which will have no end. 

The Mystery of Christ's Baptism

To celebrate the Baptism of Christ is to participate in a salvific theophany. It is a surprising manifestation of hidden power.  The heavens are torn in a display of divine gentleness and piety. The Word that creates and sustains creation, enters into baptism to save. The mystery that brought forth the world is revealed as the mystery that the baptized existence of faith leads. Christ's baptism is the archetype of all Christian baptism, a saving mystery in which the mystery of Christian life is revealed.

The Eternal Word who transcends all time and space, and who as Alpha and Omega constantly fills every height and depth with eternal meaning, humbly embraces the limitations of our flesh in time and space, and desires to be plunged into the ambiguities of our existence.  He has entered into a world of relationships that He does not surmount but makes perfect by accepting and submitting Himself, leaving space for imperfect recognition and misunderstanding, but only to protect human dignity and freedom.  Into these earthly waters He obediently descends through the ministry of a reluctant prophet, not to be changed by them, but to purify and order them to heavenly things.

When He raises up from those waters that He sanctified, the Spirit of heaven descends, not in a display of overwhelming and sensational power, but with the surprising gentleness of a dove. The Love of Heaven is descending on earth through every baptism ever after, not only onto the fortunate soul that has said yes to this unfathomable grace, but through that soul onto the whole world.  All the such a soul needs to do for this to happen is to follow in the obedient footsteps of his crucified Master.  Every baptism is this beginning of creation, the birth of a new heaven and new earth in which the dignity and freedom of human existence is re-established in the God who is Love.

The voice of the Almighty echoes over this magnificence with exquisite tenderness. Not the voice of an angry deity impatient with a fallen world and not threatening to violently crush treacherous mankind in a display of hostility. It is not a voice of overbearing cultural and political power that is eager to put humanity under foot.  Instead, in a moment that is pregnant with hushed adoration, the Father voice rejoices in this revelation of His Son: the Word who sews obedience into the difficult uncertainties of life to make them holy, the only Begotten into whose eternal sonship we are plunged when we enter these same waters with faith, the promised One whose appearance surpasses the hopes and dreams of every prophet who has ever dared foretell and prepare for His coming. Up from these waters into which Divinity plunges itself, Humanity is implicated in the joy of the Father.

Saint John Beloved Disciple and Witness to the Light

The Apostle John fills Christmas with a wisdom that knows what it means to be "beloved" of God.  This is an intimate kind of understanding born in friendship for the sake of love alone.  His Teacher passed on the discipline of love to him.  What he received was no incoherent doctrine or conflicting myth.  Rather, he was fed the truth and he ate from the Bread of Life and found it has the consistency of truth, a consistency on which one can stand with his entire existence.  Thus, he roots his whole witness to divine love on the Word.

The Word dwelling with us, not in mere appearance but in our flesh, this is the context of the Beloved Disciple's message.  Gazing on all of sacred doctrine with the analogy of faith, his own writings reach out to the vast horizons of what the Word of the Father has revealed about the love of God that abides with us.  Indeed, he teaches as one who has heard, touched and contemplated this Word.  From the very first line of his Gospel, the Evangelist draws an intrinsic connection between the saving mystery of the Incarnation,"the Word became flesh" and the work of Creation itself, "In the beginning the Word:" It is this Word who personally and intimately "abides."

The Word of the Father remains with us not as an impersonal force imposing the Father's will as if humanity needs to be coerced or overpowered.  He is not an ideal extrinsically imposed on our existence from without.  He is not a system: the clever invention of the powerful in the heavens above or on earth below to manage our pain, our individuality, our guilt, our dis-ease over death, our yearning for something beyond ourselves.  The Author of human freedom has no need to deprive us of liberty or violently rob us of our dignity even as He grieves over its loss.

Saint John knows that the Lamb that was slain rules by attraction and invitation.  The Risen Lord proposes and offers friendship.  The One whose eyes blaze like fire appeals to all that is good, noble and true.  The Lord evokes faith so that those who believe in Him know life to the full.  This is why he does not need to annihilate evil or surmount our frail humanity.  He leads humanity like a shepherd through the valley of death to victory by remaining with us, abiding with us even in the face of all that threatens our lives.

The Word is the Son of the Father from the Father and for us.  In Eternity, the Son is the Word from and for the Father: conceived by the Father and proceeding from Him in goodness and truth, He communicates all that is good and true to the Father in the Spirit and to the Spirit for the Father.  In time, the Word become flesh is sent from the Father and for us: conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary and baptized by John that we might know the Father's goodness and truth for our own life through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  To abide with us as He abides with the Father is the reason He suffered death on the Cross - the Incarnation culminates in the Paschal Mystery.

By abiding with us in this way, the Word fills our brokenness with ineffable fullness like light shining in the darkness.  To believe in Him is to stake our lives on the proposal that our existence is not an empty accident or meaningless void.  Instead, to hold fast to this Word is to believe that everything, even when suffering reduces us to silence, resounds with His fullness.

He is the One who loves us and is with us through it all.   This is why He does not make our problems magically go away as if they were purely incidental to our lives.  Instead, He loves us in these trials, redeeming them, even as our whole world falls apart around us.  In this solidarity, He reveals God's decision to suffer the necessary ambiguity our freedom and dignity require.  He wills that we might with contrite and astonished heart find our dignity in returning again to Him, He who abides with us.

This Disciple who in the shadow of the Cross took the Lord's Mother into his home wants us to know this wisdom, the wisdom of being the beloved of God.  He knows that the disciple who surrenders to Christ's particular and unrepeatable love for him, becomes, not God's slave, but his friend.  He knows that this kind of faith suffers the abiding presence of God in the Word made flesh even in the face of the Cross.  This wisdom, baptized in Blood and Water, beholds the loving goodness of the Father who raises up from death.  This wisdom feeds on all that is good, holy and true about consecrated humanity, "My flesh is real food."

This Seer of Patmos is a reliable witness.  He testifies to the light from above, a light that shines in darkness.   In the midst of all the confusion and ambiguities of this world, he proposes that the Lord has entered into the world of our misery, not to annihilate or coerce, but to remain with us in our freedom, awaiting us with love.  He enters into our world and into our hearts with tender mercy to be our life.  He invites us to say "yes" to the Blood and the Water, to the Spirit and the Bride, to the abiding presence of a love the world does not know.  

Pope Francis: To follow, To Edify and To Confess

On March 14, following the conclave, Pope Francis gathered with the Cardinals to pray for the Church.   He exhorted his brothers with words that encourage me to pray, "After these days of grace I would like us all to have the courage, simply the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord, to build up the Church in the Blood of the Lord, the blood shed on the Cross, and to confess the glory of Christ crucified."  (Click here to for his very first words as Pope to those gathered at St. Peter's square - via Sr. Lisa at Nunspeak.)

The tender but challenging truth suggested in these three simple ideas fills my soul: to prayerfully walk in Christ's presence whereever it leads, to build up the Church with the Blood of Christ no matter the price, to confess the glory of Christ crucified with every fiber of strength God has given us - this is life to the full!  There is so much more to say, but for now, this close to Easter, it is good to think about the essence of His message, his invitation to have courage together before the mystery of the Cross by the blood of Jesus.  This is the way forward for the Church and for each one of us personally.

The blood of Jesus - fountain of our salvation!  My heart goes here because it helps me realize how much the Lord has loved us and the power of the life He gives us.  Because Christ has loved us with a love that is stronger than death - we have hope even in the face of our failures.

But there is an implied challenge in these words - to the degree that our hearts remain hard, that we will not repent, that our lives are unconverted by the love revealed by Christ Jesus, we have not fully welcomed the gift of our redemption - and only those who welcome this gift can enter deep into its saving mystery.  As the Holy Father preached today, God is so merciful that the problem is not that He will ever stop extending His forgiveness to us - but we might stop asking if we allow our hearts to be hard to his Word.

 If we want to be disciples of the Son of God, those who hear the word and keep it, we must deny ourselves and pick up our cross and follow our Crucified master. In order to be the disciple of the Lord, in order to listen to the Word in our heart, we must make space - a movement of self-denial, not only a denial of sin but a denial also of those things that dispose us to sin.

We can only be filled with the riches of Christ if we are empty of ourselves.  Filled with ourselves, drunk on materialism, caught up our cleverness, tied down to our need for control or riches or security or reputation - there is no space for God to give us His Word or freedom to welcome this gift of love.  And His Word laid open on the Cross is the true life of our hearts and only hope of this dying world. 

With the Word of the Father, the Word made flesh, we have everything. Without this Word of Hope living in our hearts and in our actions, we live without the meaning or purpose the Father created us to know.  Indeed, without the Word who was from the beginning, all else is loss and can only end poorly.

Our lives must begin and end in the Word entrusted to us by the Father, the Word who proceeds from His Heart, the Word who knows the way into our hearts, the Word who knows the only pathway into the Heart of the Trinity.  To live by the Word of the Father, to live by the Truth Himself, means, in addition to self-denial, the acceptance of suffering for the sake of love - this is a life covered and filled with the blood of Christ.  Love suffers the hardships of others - our spouse, our children, our parents, our neighbors, even our enemies - because love cannot stand for the beloved to suffer alone.   Love raised up by the blood of Christ suffers rejection and being misunderstood because it is more powerful than persecution.

Love never gives up hope because the blood of Christ is its strength.  But for a Christian to try to love without Christ, for a Christian to try to live without the Cross- love unsurrendered to God leads to disaster. As Pope Francis explained in his first mass with the Cardinals who elected Him:  "When we walk without the Cross, when one builds without the Cross, and when we confess Christ without the Cross, we are not the disciples of the Lord by the servants of the world."

The Mysterious Prayer of Gethsemane

There are stories about great saints who struggled to pray in the face of great difficulty.   This can be baffling until we try to enter into the Passion of Christ and consider the movements of His Heart before the merciful love of the Father.  Until we contemplate the prayer of the Word of the Father, this struggle to pray is often deemed to be merely a stage through which we pass.   Yet, in the Garden of Gethsemane (see Luke 22:35ff), the bloody sweat of the Son of God reveals this struggle as a supreme moment of Christian contemplation, a terrifying standard against which the truth of all our other prayers can be discerned.

The hymn of praise learned with the Suffering Servant on the Mount of Olives is shrouded in a mystery.  It is against this mystery that therapeutic approaches to prayer should be discerned.  Psychological or physical tantrums are silenced before the authentic cry of heart offered by the Son of Man.  His love for his disciples and devotion to the Father challenges any consumerist attitude toward the things of God.   His sorrow and spiritual poverty helps us feel the appropriate shame we ought to have over any gluttonous expectation for mental relief or euphoric experience.  Against the dark terror Jesus confronts in prayer, spiritual consumerism can only be seen as limiting the freedom that our conversation with the Lord requires.   

The Word made flesh baptized every moment of his earthly life in this kind of prayer.   Every heart beat and every breath was so filled with zeal for the Father and those the Father gave Him, divine love ever exploded in His sacred humanity with resounding silence, astonishing signs, heart-aching wonders and words of wisdom which even after two thousand years still give the world pause.  Each verse of the Gospels attempts to show us His self-emptying divinity boldly hurling His prayerful humanity with the invincible force of love to the Cross.  

In Gethsemane we glimpse how the Son of Man availed Himself to these mysterious promptings of the Father's love, an unfathomable love that is not comfortable to our limited humanity.   Unaided human reason cannot penetrate the divine passion that compelled Him into the solitude hidden mountains and secret gardens.   His vigil on the Mount of Olives can only be understood as the culmination of the ongoing conversation to which He eagerly made His humanity vulnerable.   

If, in this culminating movement of heart, Christ sweat blood, we who have decided to follow in the footsteps of our Crucified Master should not be surprised by moments of great anguish in our own conversation with God.  In the face of this mystery, we must allow the Risen Lord to give us His courage.   What is revealed on the Mount of Olives helps us see why Christian prayer can mature into a beautiful surrender, a movement of love which gives glory to the Father and extends the redemptive work of the Redeemer in the world.   What Christian contemplation sees with the Son of God can involve very difficult struggle, through the strength that comes from the Savior even the terrifying moments of such prayer can resolve themselves in trustful surrender: "Not my will... Yours be done."  

A vision of prayer that contemplates in the midst of terror and anguish is probably not a popular subject, but I think a very important one today.   For further reflection on this I refer you to "Blessings that are Difficult to Receive" on Dan Burke's Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction blog.

Opening our Hearts to the Word

How does the mystery of the Risen Lord, the Word of the Father, become part of one's own life? This question reveals the beautiful paradox that lives in God's work in our humanity and in our humanity's grace filled effort in God. Such questions point us to the great mystery - the Word made flesh.

John of the Cross points to this answer in his work Ascent to Mt. Carmel, Book I, Chapter 13.  He teaches that if we  really want to encounter the Lord, if we really want to find Him, we must resolve first of all to imitate Him in all things.  Then, he explains, if we are to be successful in our imitation, we must also carefully study the life of Christ out of devotion to Him.

This is where his doctrine gets tough.  He observes that when we study the life of Christ we discover that the Lord renounced every satisfaction that was not purely for the honor and glory of God. Saint John of the Cross believes we can enter into deep intimacy with the Lord if we will resolve to do only that which gives God glory and honor - which means renunciation of any delight or comfort which does not give glory to God.  

Most everyone questions this logic. Many are frightened by it to some degree. Few understand it. Even fewer live it.  

To really understand what St. John of the Cross is saying, we must go beyond a pre-critical guess.  The deeper mystery in this teaching is only unveiled if we consider who Jesus is to him and what he means when he invites us to study Christ's life.  What does it mean to study the life of Christ Jesus for St. John of the Cross?

St. John of the Cross believed that study of the Scriptures and contemplation, sacred reading and meditation, silent attentiveness to the Word and wonder filled exploration of sacred doctrine; that all of this must be an integrated effort of the heart.  He believed in a theology carried out on his knees and in constantly rendering himself vulnerable to the demands of the Gospel of Christ.  Such is the power of the Gospel: the more we encounter Christ, the more He animates our innermost being and transforms us in his love.  

St. John of the Cross describes the kind of study we should take up as "gazing" at the Lord with eyes of faith - a search for the eyes of the Lord who looks at us in love.  It is with this living hope that he himself searched for Christ in prayer and study, contemplation and constant conversion. Conversely, any study that does not ultimately lead to the interior peace that God produces is be a waste of time and a distraction.

Christ for him is the Word of the Father who has come as the Bridegroom of Creation -- the perfection of which is the Church Herself. Each soul that participates as a unique endpoint in this ecclesial life reconstituted as the People God, the Body the Bride of Christ. To live for the Bridegroom like this is to begin to live a life that is not one's own. It is to be animated with the life of Christ within.

The Eternal Word communicates everlasting life - wounding, slaying and raising us up all at once. Whoever He touches, by word and sacrament, by inspiration and presence, He wounds. The Word who was wounded for the sake of love wounds us with love. A soul so wounded wants to live by love and to die by love, to make an offering of self in love.  This is because a heart wounded by the Word aches to have been loved so much, and aches over how wonderful the One who so loves.

The Bridegroom gives such souls his own Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity to sustain such souls in these noble desires.  Anyone who has met the Bridegroom yearns for the wedding feast and for the wonderful things that God has in store for those who believe.  For those who ache for love of the Lord, the work of renunciation, of dying to oneself--this is as nothing.   What is love if there is no sacrifice and how do we love but at our own expense?

The Prayer of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit

In Christ Jesus, humanity has been received into its heavenly homeland, the spiritual reality wherein it is finally free to thrive to the full.   This paradise is reserved for all those who persevere until the end in loving one another out of obedience to Christ.  In fact, loving God and one another here and now anticipates the life God has in store for those who believe.  Therese of Lisieux calls this living by love.  Such a life alone is commensurate with God's call to humanity.  For to love God with one's whole being and love one's neighbor as oneself - to be able to do this and never grow weary, to be constant with what is most noble in our humanity towards all that is good and holy - this is what it means to thrive as a human being, it is what we were made to be.  This is the divine image revealed in us - and in heaven that image shines in the perfect likeness of the One who has gone before us.

Whoever has endeavored this, that is, whoever has endeavored to really love unto the end, such a person has in one way or another tasted something of heaven.  Such a person knows deep inside the greatness for which we are made.  At the same time, everyone who strives to live by love knows that it is impossible without help from above.

That we might realize our true calling, Jesus ascended into heaven and makes intercession for us - his love which has no end is poured out before the heavenly Father on our behalf.  Jesus constantly pours out his heart to the Father that we might receive this the Gift of the Holy Spirit. The Father never ceases to answer the prayer of His Son by sending the Holy Spirit always anew into the hearts of those who ask in faith.

True prayer, mature Christian prayer, the kind by which we can live by love, is produced in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Gift promised to us by Christ before He ascended into our heavenly homeland, the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of the Christian life, the Soul of the Christian soul.    The Divine Counselor is come upon us and envelops us with all the wisdom we need to love those entrusted to us, to be faithful in our love for the Lord.  In Him, possibilities present themselves in prayer we could have never imagined existed.  We may fail and fall short, accused in a thousand ways of our weakness: this Advocate testifies to the power of God at work in our frail humanity.  The Creator Spirit ushers us into our true homeland and establishes us into communion with the Holy Trinity - in this life we have Life itself, Life to live life to the full, to live by love.

You are a Temple of the Holy Spirit

Some points for prayer-

Since the Blessed Trinity is living in you, 

you are the temple of God.  

You are also a holocaust, a word of unending praise, 

a flower of great beauty offered up to God.   

Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, 

The Road to Hope: A Gospel from Prison

Here there is an interiority, 

a depth which lies beyond the merely natural, 

as far beyond the natural depth of soul 

as the "realm" where God is enthroned, 

and where our "glory to God in the highest" seeks Him, 

and is beyond all thoughts and feelings of natural sublimity.  

This interiority has been given to us by Baptism, 

and now Christian practice must lift it 

beyond the natural world of feeling and thinking.  

Romano Guardini, 

Learning the Virtues that Lead you to God

The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, 

and his Word he speaks always in eternal silence, 

and in silence must it be heard by the soul.  

St. John of the Cross, 

Sayings of Light and Love

In the heaven of her soul, the praise of glory 

has already begun her work of eternity.  

Her song is uninterrupted, 

for she is under the action of the Holy Spirit 

who effects everything in her; 

and although she is not always aware of it, 

for the weakness of nature does not allow her 

to be established in God without distractions, 

she always sings, she always adores, 

for she has, so to speak, 

wholly passed into praise and love 

in her passion for the glory of her God.

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity, 

Heaven in Faith

The Hidden Life of Christ and our Life

Yesterday, I was invited to lecture on the hidden life to the spiritual family of the Oblates of St. Joseph in Santa Cruz, California.  Many of those present for the lecture actually taught me the faith during my childhood and teenage years - not only by their words but even more by their wonderful examples: generous service to the poor, a disciplined humble life, and patient daily prayer.  It was a room filled with champions, some in wheel chairs!  We joined together as part of nine days of prayer leading up to the Solemnity of St. Joseph.

What is the hidden life? Part of the life of Christ was public - like when he preached and healed and was put to death.  But the larger part of his life was hidden - for almost thirty years he lived day to day in the silent mystery of family and work in an obscure village.  He lived in obedience to Mary and Joseph and grew in wisdom.  What characterized life at Nazareth?  Trust in God, renunciation of everything that did not serve love of God or love of one another, offering everything that happened in the household as worship of God, treating one another and all their guests with great kindness and loving mercy, and most of all - deep prayer.

Christians are bound to these hidden mysteries of his life - by faith, their wisdom is impressed in our hearts and meant to envelope our whole existence in day to day concrete ways.  Understanding this might help explain why after we initially encounter the Lord and his great love, He seems to disappear or become absent for awhile.  He is drawing us beyond sensible consolation - things that make us feel good - and into spiritual consolation - things that in fact make us good.  He is drawing us beyond good feelings and into the depths of his love itself.  If we want to thrive in our faith, we must follow Him into these depths.

The Lord lives in the secret of our faith - and He wants us to go by faith to find him:  this means we must, like He did, make hidden renunciations, dedicate ourselves to holiness in our humble daily tasks, be merciful and kind especially when no one notices, and make prayer the priority of our hearts.  St. Paul explains this in Colossians 3:1-3 - where he explains that Christ is in the heavens and that we are to think of him and not the things of earth.  Indeed, he explains, we are spiritually dead to the world - and our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  

"You Are the Christ"

In today's readings, Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah.  This episode in the Gospel of Mark happened in Caesarea Philippi.   Peter's profession indicates that he understood Jesus to be the one who would fulfill the promises associated with the restoration of Israel.  The same story, as related in the Gospel of Matthew relates that Peter also declared Jesus to be the Son of the Living God.  Jesus confirmed this declaration as a truth revealed by God.  

Does the context shed light on the significance of Peter's profession?  King Herod had built over the headwaters flowing out of Mt. Hermon a statue to Caesar which honored the emperor as a son of god.  The placement of this monument would have associated Caesar with Pan, a fertility deity to whom the abundance of life-giving water in that place was attributed.  In other words, Caesar was honored as a source of life.  And so he seemed to be.  All the political, financial and military honor and glory were undeniably his.  Those who were his friends flourished.  Those who opposed him seem to be opposing the very powers of heaven.   Indeed, all the kingdoms of the world were in one way or another bowed down before him.  

It would have been as difficult then as it is now not to be dazzled, not to look at this temple to Caesar as somehow iconic for the aspirations of mankind, worthy of submitting all of one's life energy to serve.  But political systems and ideologies promising salvation have always had this effect on us: they always make a claim for an absolute allegiance of our lives and resources that really ought only be given to God.  Ironically and revealingly, in this case, there is nothing left of this monument today except for niches cut into the cliff around the cave where these waters once flowed.  Who could ever have imagined that things would change, and that this site would be an almost forgotten footnote were it not for the discussion Christ had there with Peter and the Apostles?  Philip's declaration concerning Caesar, based on what he could observe and what seemed to make sense in the world as he imagined it to be, proved to be false over time.  But what of Peter's declaration?

Against the pageantry and glory of Rome, Peter declared instead Jesus and the Christ of Israel as the Son of the Living God.  When he did this, he placed in opposition to the overwhelming political power of his day a poor unknown barbarian teacher from an obscure province with no political, military or financial influence.  Following the way of this Christ was the source of true life.  The Lord confirmed that this profession of faith was not proposed by any mere man (as was the declarations concerning Caesar) but rather from God himself - whom Jesus reveals as the Heavenly Father. 

Then, irony points to paradox. After Jesus tries to explain to disciples what it means to be the source of life, Peter opposes Jesus.   Jesus declared that he would have to be rejected, suffer and die.   This would be the complete opposite of what Peter believed he was professing only moments before.   Titles that should indicate divine power, restoration of lost glory, and vindication against injustice; Jesus now interprets in terms of vulnerability, humiliation, and even ignoble suffering unto death.  Peter attempts to interceed with him, to get the Lord to change his mind.  On this point, Jesus is severe with his disciple, revealing the true meaning of Peter's opposition.  He admonishes Peter, the one to whom he had just attributed a revelation of the Heavenly Father, as Satan, an adversary.  

How paradoxical this mixture of good and evil in the human heart and what an important reminder for all those the Lord has chosen to follow Him, for all those who aspire to serve Him!  Encountering the Lord in our own prayer means exposing ourselves to his judgments and revisiting our true motives.  We often have that painful realization that there are parts of us that are not godly, that are severely limited by our own broken human perspective.  This poverty, this brokeness is why the real adversaries of the Church are not those from without who persecute or reject the faith, but those from within who fear where our faith leads: the glory of heaven is revealed in humiliations, rejection and all kinds of trials which pull the Christian beyond all the natural capacity for love - it is here where every human hope dies that a deeper hope, divine love triumphs.

Christian prayer ponders how Jesus not only fulfills the promises of the Scriptures, but also fulfills the needs and longings of every people.  How did the Romans know that humanity needs to be understood in relation to the divine?  That they saw the need to hold up for worship someone who connects the heavens and the earth suggests that in the hearts of men and women of every culture and historical period there lives some kind of awareness that human existence is meant to be governed by something more than human, something above nature, something divine.  Because it speaks to this awareness, Peter's profession is, in a certain sense, the beginning of the evangelization of not only Israel but the whole world.  To be fruitful, however, we must not oppose Jesus in prayer.  We must follow him by the way not earthly power and influence, but by way of the Cross, and the Cross alone.

The Way, the Truth and the Life

Christ Jesus is the threshold to the Father - this means we can only really know God through Him, through the humanity He took on for our sakes.  At the same time, He is the vital principle of all that is truly human precisely because He is also truly God.  His humanity, risen from the dead, informs our humanity with Divine Life, Eternal Love: healing us, raising us up, and restoring us to the way we were meant to be.

Humanity is meant to be glorious, it is meant to thrive - and when it thrives it reveals the reality of God himself.  But without love, the gravity of emptiness does not allow us to escape the black hole of our ego, we cannot get beyond ourselves, we cannot give ourselves.  Trapped like this, we will perish in the hell fires of our own selfishness and indifference.

Yet the Father who yearns for us to become what He created us to be cannot sit by and passively allow such disaster to unfold.   So He sent his Son in history to show us the way, to speak the truth about who we are and who the Father is, to give us new life.  Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, risen from the dead, comes to us now in mystery, in a beautiful presence which never tires of waiting for us.  This loving presence of the Lord is the source of true love when we turn to Him in faith - a faith that takes us to the flesh and blood reality of the Cross, the place where God's love and humanity's darkness kiss.

This is why Christian prayer never goes beyond Jesus.  No abstract absolute can fill us with new life - because abstract absolutes cannot die - and since they cannot die, they cannot be raised up.   We, frail human beings, who stand before the fire of hell - we need more than a cold truth to bring us home.  Only a man of flesh and blood can show us the way back - because there is no other way to go but with and in our own flesh and blood.   And, here in the broken poverty of our humanity, only God can hold back the powers of Hell, because only He has that love and life which Hell cannot overcome.  So Christian prayer goes to Jesus through the Cross - and finds the secret of new life in Him.

The Truth to which Christ Bears Witness

"For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." John 18:37

A Carthusian reflects on these words of the Lord addressed to Pontius Pilate.  He believes that these words reveal the most essential secret of Christ's life.  He explains:

"It is awesome to discover that he came to bear witness: that is, to confront each of us with a responsibility that he has to assume personally, in the depths of his own conscience What is my attitude going to be?  Jesus does not come to exercise any sort of exterior or interior compulsion.  No, the witness he bears calls for a response that comes from the heart, and a commitment, not to a system of ideas, but to a person: to Someone who, in his very being, is a witness to the Truth, the truth which every human heart should be ardently seeking.  In the presence of the Son of God, let us ask ourselves what our attitude really is towards this truth to which he is bearing witness before us."

What is striking about this passage is the awareness of what a personal encounter with the Lord is really all about.  For some people, spirituality is about what feels good.  For others, it is a system of ideas, an intellectual trip.  But genuine faith in Christ always involves a radical desire to encounter Him, a readiness to accept what He reveals, and an openness to generously respond, no matter the personal cost.  The monk goes on to describe the dynamism of the Lord:

"Jesus does not execise his kingship by force, nor by authority, nor by seduction; his sheep follow him freely, because he knows them personally and they know him.  It is the same type of knowledge as the mutual knowledge that the Father and the Son have of each other: a knowledge of love."  The Wound of Love: A Carthusian Miscellany, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications (1994), pp. 127-128.

This kind of knowledge is so rare in the world today, and so very needed.  It is a knowledge that only prayer and great personal suffering can yield.  Yet those who open themselves in faith to Jesus, to his kingship, they discover this knowledge to be more precious than life itself.  To know that Love is a person, that one is personally awaited by Him, that this Person has held nothing back but given all for your sake - this kind of knowledge changes everything, fills life with purpose and meaning, it is a knowledge that must be acted on and when we live in it, this knowledge transforms the soul into a living icon of hope.

Jesus - Our Access to God

Jesus is access to the Father, the bridge to heaven, the road to hope.  Faith in Him, this is to believe that He is fully God and fully man, that he died for our sins and is risen from the dead, that He is present to each one of us personally even when He seems completely absent, that He called us all to be one in Him even in the face of our divisions.  Most of all, faith in Jesus is to let his longing capture our hearts.  For He longs for us.  This is what is revealed on the Cross.  This is why the only way to Him is the Cross.  We go to the Cross by faith, faith which renounces sin, endures trial, and is tested: in prayer, in work, in service to God, in loving others, in suffering sickness, in rejection, in persecution, in the face of death.  Whenever we go to the Cross, his longing is produced in us by the purifying fire of his Holy Spirit - and when we surrender to this loving action, there is nothing He cannot achieve in our lives.  Bound to Him, our cross with His, He raises us to the Father.