That Great Silence in Storm's Midst

The beauty of these forty days of Lent is that every hardship and trial can be made into an offering of love if we keep our course. Whether anxiety or frustration, disappointment or heartbreak, hidden in the exigencies of the moment is a sacrament - a visible sign of grace - inviting the response of faith, opening to a deeper encounter with the one who longs for our freedom. The challenge is to focus on the Lord's presence in the midst of the wind and waves.

Turn off every screen and speaker. Silence the cellphone and all talking heads. Enough of canned music and arguments. Eyes open, attentive ears, ready heart. Abstain, fast, and be silent - this is the life-vest to put on. Seek an icons glow until heaven finds you. For it is not we who make our way to Him so much as He who has set out to rescue his pilgrims in the threatening storm.

Days of darkness, when nothing makes sense, when evil would seem to have the upper hand, these are taken into account in God's plan too. If this is chastisement, then it is long deserved - by me more than anyone else. Save the innocent Lord who my own silence
has left so vulnerable.

It is challenging to walk under the shadow of glory - for we must forsake those earthly lights on which we too long relied. Under that shadow, our lust for power and gluttonous appetite are unveiled and we feel the sorrow of not being in control or having the instant gratification to which we feel entitled.  And then, finally, we face that lonely alienation that has been driving us and a certain painful emptiness that we have too long sought to evade. It is good to be sobered and to face the truth.

Here, even social distancing can occasion compunction, and that piercing of the heart, unleashes a sudden torrent, and healing's faintest hint whispers truth. All that once appeared good no longer does so, and what really is good, we have not yet learned to see - so dark, alone, vulnerable and in need, we finally begin to pray.

A lighted candle on the kitchen table as night descends: such simple joys are filled with meaning.  As the beads of a rosary slip through the fingers and Bible passages echo out loud, what memories of grace and of friendship fill the silence.  All of this only directs the heart into even deeper places, towards depths that the memory cannot go or the intellect glimpse - but every word of the Word is drawn there. Meaningful silences resound when Heart speaks to heart. And an astonishing secret is shared between Creator and creature. For in that ardent furnace of love, what bright warmth welcomes the pilgrim soul and the pilgrim God.  

St. Patrick's Seminary and University Lenten Lectures

Anthony Lilles, Academic Dean of St. Patrick's Seminary and University, is lecturing on the Catholic Mystical Tradition at Nativity Parish in Menlo Park. The spiritual teachings of the Doctors of the Church provide insight into prayer and encouragement for our Lenten Observances. On Monday, March 2nd, Dr. Lilles presented the Mystical Life of the Church in St. Hildegard of Bingen. Other presentations include:

St. Catherine of Siena - Christ: Bridge to the Father 

Monday, March 9
7:00-8:15pm

St. Teresa of Avila - The Radiance of the Trinity 

Monday, March 16
7:00-8:15pm

St. Therese of Lisieux - Oblation to Merciful Love 

Monday March 23
7:00-8:15pm

The Mother of God and Holy Humanity

The Fathers of the Church believed that when the Word became flesh whatever of our humanity was not subsumed by His Divine Person and united to His Divinity was not redeemed. The Fathers of the Church argued vigorously that the whole human reality, apart from sin, was subsumed by Christ: when the Word became flesh, He joined Himself irrevocably to all that is good, noble and true about our existence as well as all our limits, inadequacies and weaknesses.

Part of our human reality is the personal particularity of each one of us - and this too is what He has joined to Himself. This means that we are never truly alone - He is with us in our innermost self, completely connected to our plight. In this way, He is present to every person who has ever lived and who will ever lived. There is no misery to which He is stranger - for He has chosen that no human person should ever suffer alone. He comes to us in this manner because He is on an active pursuit to save our dignity and restore our integrity.

That is because God loves the whole human reality and does not wish any of it to perish in self-contradiction and alienation. For this is what sin is. Jesus did not sin, but He suffers its consequences with us and for us to deliver us us from its power. There is no human evil or suffering that is greater than His presence. He has already suffered it all, even unto death. He has journeyed into the depths of hell to search for us so that no matter how far we have gone from Him, the Savior of humanity is still only a prayer away.  In your Savior's presence, all that would threaten holy humanity is subordinated to the love of the Father. To enter this presence, all one needs to do is believe. All one needs to do is humble himself and ask. We can do this confidently because of the immensity of His love: He has willingly sacrificed everything to free each of us from meaningless and death.

This means salvation is a very concrete and particular reality - and so is our prayer. Salvation is not a generalized reality that is true is some vague way against the backdrop of the history of human activity. It is at the concrete heart of it all -- and so is the prayer of faith. Very particular, very personal, this mystery that takes up our highest thoughts and deepest desires because each instance of our short lives are pregnant with the presence of the Word made flesh. No one's life is accidental, but a pure gift. When we pray, the gift is opened. The Father has entrusted His Son to us so that we might know the truth about who we are, how much we are loved and the greatness to which we are called.

This presence of the Word of the Father makes us part of the story of salvation. Eternal Son of God tells the story of God's merciful love in his very person uniting humanity's time and space, limitation and weakness, temptation and struggle to God's eternal life and divine immensity, superabundance and divine power, unchanging truth and perfect peace. The saving Love of God is the spotlight that definitively shines with the truth on all of human history and is the stage on which each one's life story is told. This Divine Love is the drama in which all humanity and each one of us has an un-repeatable role.

What made such a union between God and man possible? The Lord never imposes on human freedom. Having created freedom and seeing his divine image and likeness in it, He would not corrupt or oppress it. Instead, he came to us to evoke a free response, and the dynamism of His appeal was entirely in the order of love and truth.  He humbly proposed His plan and waited for us to respond. The Father spoke His Word and waited for a heart to fully welcome His wisdom. The end is commensurate with the means - God acts within the parameters of human freedom because He yearns to raise the freedom on high.

The Lord waits for our hearts to welcome His Word. Our existence is awaited by such an immensity of love, but this love will not force itself. The God who is Love waits to be invited, to be asked, to be desired, to be welcomed. He endures our rejection, our indifference, our denial and our betrayal. This love is patient and confident - for its very presence already begins to produce something in us. Its patience evokes a yearning that we did not know we had. He waits before our loneliness and self-contradiction ready to welcome us home and restore our integrity.  God has created us without our asking it, but He will not save us until we ask.  A petition always expresses a desire. If we do not desire to be saved, He will never force salvation upon us.

This is a hidden secret - and only those who enter the hiddenness of faith in the Son of God can find it. So it was that Mary heard the angel's greeting and by granting God permission to accomplish his plan in her, the Word gained a small, quiet foothold on humanity's shore. In Mary's humble "yes", the Word made flesh found solid rock from which to resound.

The Word unveiled the desire of the Father through the "yes" of a woman. Her humble prayer and quiet faith opened the pathway to salvation for the whole world. The Woman welcomed Word into her heart. Her spirit surrendered to God's plan and her body conceived a new Adam under the shadow of the Most High.

Whoever enters under this same shadow still finds this wonderful woman - for the Mother of God follows her Son and yearns that everyone might discover the freedom to "go and do whatever He tells you." Blessed are those who freely chose to share such holy desires, the desire of this Holy Mother who believed - for it gives the Word space to turn water into wine, to transform human limits with divine freedom.

What a beautiful work in all creation humanity is! When filled with grace, the human creature can say "yes" to God and in this "yes" what Christ has joined in his Divine Person is made fruitful anew. In this yes, all the glory and power of Christian prayer is unleashed. The Word of the Father asks to dwell in this particular heart, at this particular time and place, under what particular circumstances He has yearned to make part of his saving mystery.  All of this when anyone freely chooses to live in obedient love under the shadow of the most High.

Contemplative Theology and Highest Wisdom

Often when I propose the possibility of a contemplative or kneeling theology, someone normally asks about upholding academic rigor.  The presumption is that a theology that is not primarily concerned with the questions of the academy is not likely to be demanding. In this worldview, admittedly the dominant view in most theological faculties, prayer is for the realm of the affections and imagination while study is about rational arguments and systems of thought. Such perceived dichotomy between devout prayer and serious study would seem to undermine the further dialogue that I wish would take place.

 In the minds of many, contemplative theology evokes the possibility of no more than pious twaddle  - its supposedly not serious or disciplined enough. Limited to an exercise in obscure associations and metaphors, too much so-called spiritual literature would seem to confirm such a judgment. Too many retreat conferences are pitched at a level that appeals only to the imagination. Perhaps because we have such atrophied hearts some of this helps us get back in touch with our humanity. Perhaps because we live in an abstract world disconnected from our own bodies, beginning to pray involves getting back in touch with the fact that we are enfleshed souls. The imagination indeed can be part of such an effort for it is connected to our senses. Indeed, nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses - but if we do not plunge our senses into reality, if we do not discipline the flesh, the soul is left empty and the imagination rendered vulnerable to nihilism.

Yet it is a horrific mistake to believe that prayer is not about the truth or that it is mindless. It is rash to assume that contemplation in the Catholic tradition looks out on anywhere other than the very truth for which our whole being hungers.  Indeed, contemplative theology is more demanding, not less, than the theology proper to the contemporary academy. Such a kneeling theology is open to the painful silence that the contemporary academy would rather avoid -- and in this silence, it learns to listen.

When we kneel before the presence of God, we must not believe our relationship to Him is limited to some affective imaginative exercise. As we trace the Sign of the Cross, it is catastrophic to presume anything other than this truth: by that power and authority wrought by what He suffered, He makes a claim over our very being, a claim before which we are accountable.  Our Crucified God, present in faith, bears the standard before which is measured what we have done and failed to do, who we are and who we have become. Not to know Him and what He has revealed about who we are can only limit our freedom to fully live -- for there is no freedom without this saving truth -- oh yes, that truth for which the soul pants and all of creation suffers labor pains.

What is at stake is the highest wisdom - that wisdom without which one's own life can only be diminished, without which the whole world be made less.  This wisdom requires a study of theology that is directed to union with God.  This wisdom also requires prayer informed and safe-guarded by sound doctrine, the truth that God has revealed and that the Holy Spirit makes known in the preaching of the Church.  Those who know this wisdom have access to the deep things of God - to a word of hope that their neighbors need now more than ever.

This wisdom requires the ongoing conversion of one's whole life, an intense struggle against sin and spiritual battle against principalities and powers. This highest wisdom demands deep down maturity - the capacity for renunciation, the capacity for a deeper surrender to God's love, the capacity to be humble and filled with wonder.  This wisdom requires the baptism of one's memory, imagination and affections in the Bible until the heart can speak the words of the Word, and at the same time, it demands deep understanding of the rich narratives, interlaced structures, and multivalent meanings of the Scriptures.  The bread chewed on in such study is the only food that can feed a mind intent on such a pursuit. All of this is so because this wisdom requires an encounter with the Lord that humbles the intellect and holds every thought captive.

Such encounters lay open through the wonders that God has revealed and entrusted to the Church - how we live and love, how we worship and adore, how we are tested and rise again - all of this informs, directs, deepens and lifts up the kind of contemplative study that the Church needs today. In such theological adoration, we are raised into the full stature of Christ - made wise by his eternal wisdom, the wisdom from above. Theology filled with adoration and praise roots every exploration of the truth in devotion to Christ.  It is this wisdom alone, this awareness of God's presence in the study of our faith, that renders a soul vulnerable to a glory and fullness of life too great for this present life to exhaust.

If Catholic education in general and seminary education specifically is ever to surrender itself to highest wisdom, contemplative prayer is an activity that must inform the classroom.  Contemplation of God and the things of God alone can direct these efforts above the latest concern of the academy. Only a kneeling theology can raise the gaze of students to behold what is above - a mystery so beautiful and filled with wonder that tears and joy, fiercest resolve and deepest freedom fill our being. We come to magnify something - no, Someone - not our own, but who is completely given us nonetheless.  Such truth filled prayer must ignite new scholarly efforts until virtuous life is born.

Renouncing Idols - Clinging to God

While there are many idols that might be worshipped, the contemporary person is prone to serve technology.  There is a tendency to see technological achievement as definitive of human achievement. Whether that achievement is economic power, social control or gratification, the only joy that it attains has the fragile brilliance of crystal, a joy far outweighed by the fear that it will be shattered in an instant.  Though some may be self-deluded enough to believe otherwise, self-definition through technological power offers only tenuous hope, even for the most powerful and adept. Indeed, the connection between what we know and what we make does not yield a destiny worthy of our nature and cannot long bear the weight of our existence.

Yet, technology offers such enchantment and seems to deliver on all its promises.  Indeed, the average person might even believe that technology is serving him. He might have sincerely convinced himself that he has mastered something over which he exerts control with no cost to himself. Technology, however, is not neutral. It is a mistake to believe that it is merely a potentiality just waiting for an extrinsic force to manipulate it for its own purposes.  

In so far as he sees his identity as tied to the work of his hands, a person's use of technology actually places his very being under its power. To the extent that anyone seeks the realization of his being from technology, that person is under the limited even if seemingly infinite potentialities of man made things. The alarming rate of self-harm and self-loathing testifies to the truth that knowing and making things is ordered to something that is not great enough to bear up human existence.  Indeed, to the extent that we give ourselves over to manipulating anything, we implicate ourselves in forces that manipulate us.

Worship is filled with the desire for something above ourselves.  If we serve what is above, it raises our existence. If something beneath us, it pulls us down to what is below our dignity.   This is a matter of spiritual principle - one is appropriated to that which one appropriates to himself.  St. Augustine expressed this in terms of desire and the weight of the soul. Desires for earthly things weigh the spirit down. Heavenly desires lift it up. No technology is heavenly. Technology cannot, by itself, raise us above ourselves. 

This does not mean that technology is to be completely avoided or that it is inherently evil. What our hands have made reflect a small part of the potential for good and evil that lives in the human heart.  Yet we should not allow this partial potential to make an absolute claim over our existence. We are mysteries unto ourselves, the truth of which is known only as we learn to give ourselves as gift to God and neighbor. Our lives have a higher purpose realized only through worshipping the One true God. We must be grateful to God that we can make anything good at all and we must be humble about the limits of technology when it comes to human thriving.  

No matter how enchanting or delightful, the work of our hands is not worthy of worship. The altars of the machine offer a hope that can only diminish human greatness and betray the freedom for which we were made. Our destiny rests beyond the things that we have made.  Thus, we must learn to place the things our hands of wrought into the hands of God.