The Gift of Life and the Search for God

When life seems to be more of a drudgery than a blessing, it is well past time to search for God.  It is before His Face that we come to learn just what a beautiful gift life actually is. The wonder of this creature alive before me, given to my gaze, by Someone who, with no ulterior motive, simply wants my happiness. This is always the deepest truth - that we are beloved by a God who has taken our side, who is not indifferent to our personal plight, who humbly comes to us, desirous to be with us.

To see such immense goodness is to avail oneself of a banquet of manifold living gifts, each nourishing my own existence in ways that words cannot say - if only I allow the sheer splendor of these encounters with truth into my heart. Restitution becomes no more than repaying love for a debt already forgiven and before such Crucified love, there is no condemnation, only joy that the missing coin has been recovered, the pearl purchased, the lost lamb found, the son come home. In finding God and daring to stand before His face, we find what lays bare the heart - our very life.

The vision of God is the project of a lifetime, and thousands of battles are fought to win this prize. Shame beats us down even as our quest begins. We play the blame game at the expense of never entering the arena of life. Unwilling to bear with our own sin, we believe that we can finally set the world straight once we convince ourselves that it is all our neighbor's fault. In the midst of the chaos of this age, where shouts for "justice" stir social wrath, we are vulnerable to all kinds of false myths that distract us from this search. Feeding this frenzy, the news cycle rotates not to meaningful encounters, but to confrontations of spiraling fear, rage and self-loathing, such pursuits as exhaust themselves in what is truly damnable: alienating self-contradictions ever deepened by fruitless gratifications closed off to life.

When we do not seek God, we can only sow with rash judgment and reap the wind of righteous indignation. The voice of conscience goes unheeded when we consciously indulge calumny's self-justification. We sit on top of mountains of judgment as storms of destruction come bearing down.  Perched so high on pillars of pride, we are unable to shelter under the wings of God.

How do  I safely descend such a precipice and begin to climb the mountain of God? The Lord allows his disciples all kinds of humiliations, persecutions and overwhelming trials- for without these, I might never learn to live. He even sends his messengers as broken beggars crying for a word of hope. Each cry invites me to come down, to descend to where the Lord is waiting.

For my part, the mystery of Zacchaeus comes to mind. I must be on the lookout beyond the structures of sin in which I have enmeshed myself. As long as I am pulled to the periphery of perception, I can easily mistake a blessing for misfortune. With beams in my own eye, I can only see my neighbor according to his splintered sized faults. No, I must not be blind to the glory hidden in those distraught eyes who calls out, "I must stay at your house."

The stranger who invokes me can never be an encounter with Author of Life as long as I see only a character playing out his role in the latest social narrative and political conflict. I must stop stuffing my sickly imagination with pig's slop and remember the food of my Father's house. I must be open to what is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and inconvenient - for love is of these things and God is love. The wonder of life will never astonish me if I fail to welcome the friend in need with an open heart - for one treats the Giver just as he treats the gift.

It is time to seek the Lord. We risk losing the beautiful gift of life as long as we submit ourselves to any voice other than His.  He is never far away - the ears of the heart know the melody of his call even when only a whisper and the eyes of the soul recognize His mysterious radiance even when it's hidden in distress. Yet, even at one's last breath, to hear His Voice and to seek His Face is at last to have finally lived.  

Awakening of the Word

Deep in our hearts, the Father has sent his Word. He can enter into the abysses of our humanity and all its bodily existence because this Word became flesh in the womb of a woman. In those depths that the soul itself does not know it has, the Word rests, waiting for the right moment to awaken.

He may rest there even when a soul completely neglects and forgets His presence. He may rest there even when a soul is resentful toward Him and otherwise sinfully not hospitable.  With the slightest motion, His gentle voice can pierce the cacophony of one's thoughts and still all disordered affection. With the faintest whisper, he can help a man come back to his senses, get up and go back to the Father's House. Yet, there is so much more He yearns to share but cannot until the soul is ready ... so He patiently waits, in a resting earnestness, sleeping eager to awaken.

When He awakens, St. John of the Cross speaks a stirring of breezes, a burst of pleasant scents, a shimmer of glory moving in everything that is, taking us up into its wake. He who is the source of all meaning opens our hearts to the beauty and goodness of the world around us. Everything is charged with the love of the Father, already breaking forth in praise, overflowing with a wonder that it cannot contain. Until the Word awakens in us, we do not hear, see, taste, smell or touch the true story that we are part of - but when He does, it is as if we hear, see, taste, smell and touch for the very first time. Our bodily existence with our earthly senses, fiery affections and exploding imagination is not diminished by the Word, but at long last finally realized (See Living Flame 4:4)

Missionary Discipleship

To form a missionary disciple, the first task is to accompany him as he journeys to the truth in his humanity. When the Word became flesh, he constituted all that is good, noble and true about humanity as the pathway to the Father. Coming into maturity is part of this pathway.  This means that a missionary disciple needs to be accompanied into facing difficult personal challenges inherent to natural maturation, or else his discipleship risks self-contradiction. 

One of the first obstacles a man faces is ignorance over who he is and why he is alive. When a man does not have a sense of firm purpose, he is going to lack motivation, initiative and self-control. Any lack of firm purpose involves three factors - lack of self-knowledge, blindness to the beautiful mystery at stake and a lack of courage before the challenges that must be confronted if he is to realize what he desires.  

Without a great purpose, a disciple will “go away sad.” That is he will constantly be haunted by feelings of inadequacy, depression, and anxiety. Resentment, aggression and self-indulgence are born in him because he is either refusing, resisting or trying to escape the void that only God and his sacred purpose could fill. 

The sadness and nostalgia that can overcome a disciple whose purpose is void can be disguised in self-reliant spiritual practices and harsh judgments. The heart lacking in self-knowledge is an aching vacuum vulnerable to all kinds of deception. For the religious person, even prayer and solitude can be used as an indulgent escape from this pain. Righteous indignation toward the failures of authority can become a cancer of the heart and self-justify forsaking responsibility and disciple out of devotion for Christ. Left unchecked this disease, which has both despair and pride at its root, will drive a man away from his community, out of the communion of the Church and trap him into an alienated childishness. 

The inability to see what is at stake requires both contemplation and instruction. Until a man sees the beauty of a woman, he has no affectivity that moves him to fight for her.  Internet pornography is singularly destructive because it blinds a man from the true beauty that alone can move him with firm purpose.  False beauty can only move a man with false purpose. This presumes that “being itself” constantly presents to the eye of the heart situations where something good and beautiful is at stake before which a man ought not be indifferent, that summon a response from the very depths of his being. 

The supernatural purpose unveiled to the disciple of Christ bespeaks a contemplation of the beauty unveiled by Christ and the Church.  It presumes instruction about the nature of this beauty and the specific demands it makes as to a way of life.  Holy conversation, filled with words of truth, bring out the implications of this glory before which no heart ought long be indifferent without betraying itself. 

If he is accompanied by a heart that he knows is listening to him, the disciple will receive a wholly new presence of Christ in his heart.  With this new presence, he gains an awareness of what the Lord sees is at stake and, with this, new inner fortitude that only the Holy Spirit can produce.   This kind of accompaniment is possible because through contemplative prayer, the Father can communicate the Sonship of the Word.

With the right instruction, contemplation confronts self-doubt. This silent prayer does not replace accompaniment, but requires it: what is received in the human heart in such prayer is subject to strong doubts and insecurities, and only the counsel of another can help a disciple discern how to respond.  The soul, with the help of another, needs to test what God is asking of him if he is to more deeply accept it. 

Not only does the Father confer identity and thus, self-knowledge, but with self-knowledge, He also communicates mission — a purpose in life that is worthy of His Son. The Father has chosen to communicate this by means both of mental prayer with the accompaniment of a fellow disciple - so what is received in silence is confirm in conversation. As a man firmly accepts this purpose and learns to sacrifice for it, His identity in Christ’s sonship deepens until he becomes who the Father intended him to be from all eternity. 

Accompanying a disciple whose purpose is not yet firm requires walking with them through all kinds of challenges.  This testing that every disciple endures will cause them to question everything that they thought and believed.  In the face of these difficult trial, a man will runaway and hide, just as did Adam when shame overtook him. As did Adam, he fears the burden of guilt would be unbearable. 

Though God would that no man suffer such pain alone, this shame, unaddressed, leads to death because as long as it drives the heart, the disciple is closed to what the Father would otherwise reveal. Only by helping a disciple connect his own trials with what is common to all men can we accompany a man from such fear into a new trust. This requires carefully listening to the burdens that he bears.  

A disciple left unaccompanied or who forsakes the accompaniment of another will not be able to assert himself into the situation at hand. The Father has chosen to give him confidence through the ministry of another. Until he humbles himself to receive this gift,  a disciple will not have the confidence required to make the painful sacrifices by which along the Father’s glory is manifest.  

Among the sacrifices needed is self-assertion, and on this point, a fellow disciple can speak of word of encouragement and even admonition. If we do not assert ourselves as sons of God, others powers will fill the vacuum — and the noble voice that might have humbly proposed a way forward will go unheard by those who most need a word of hope. This means encouraging a disciple to go beyond the comfortable and convenient.  Such self-assertion requires an obedience always ready to abandon what is familiar. For greatness and glory are not familiar to a disciple until he has come into maturity. 

The Weight of Heaven's Whisper

On Earth as it is in Heaven ... Heaven tolerates no social agendas but hears the blood of Abel again crying out from the earth.  It sees more than the loss of a pious voice who might make intercession for the world. The celestial choirs perceive rivers of rancor and strife that one act of vengeful anger unleashes, and their mighty canticle becomes a whisper - but the weight of this whisper raises earth to the mercy of God.

Hell's rancor raises its accusing voice. It's judgment is against man and the work of his hands- it hates man's culture, society and freedom, and like a prowling lion, it waits to seize its prey. Its scorching remedy would devour cities, nations and earth in a firestorm of calculated oppression disguised as spontaneous anarchy.  Such judgment gives birth to cacophonies of mindless voices all demanding that Cain should have no quarter in the world.  With righteous indignation, demons cry that he should be hunted down so that Cain never learns to grieve the brother envy incited him to kill.

And so the drama plays out again and again. Every culture, every society, every age -- even our own -- knows the heavy oppression that reigns whenever envy, wrath and righteous indignation are permitted to make an absolute claim over the human heart.  For all our technology, we have not progressed much beyond the primal ways of that original brotherhood - and brothers keep killing brothers. Subservient to accusation and condemnation, we lose our standing and find ourselves roaming from one social agenda to the next. Why anyone should believe that his lack of concern for his brother should lead anywhere else is mystifying, yet again we believe the satanic proposal that this time will be different, by this one act of evil (social and political, always personal!) we will no longer be reminded of our inadequacies, and we will be like gods.

The gravity of love, however, pulls in another direction.  Heaven's silences do not condone but convict the grumbling of our hearts.  The weight of its whisper comes down with the force a new day. Something immensely more than fear and anger, envy and righteous indignation is offered. The Living God is not indifferent to the plight of His sons and daughters, and He aches to relieve the misery that threatens their freedom and dignity.  Turn to Him and in place of murder, an answered prayer.  In place of judgment, the Heaven's tell the mercy of God. 

Love's Obedience

Toll
Ringing rolls in battles
Half-fought for love's obedience, echoing
Hidden resonances refined, forged in that very
Secret by which, into far aching
Horizons of heart, His Unfathomable Cry
Resounds in terrible tenderness,
Baptizing the restless in earthed
Soul.

Light
Glistens on grounds where tear trails pool -
Flashes fast from such sacred soil
Silences here reflected as only whisper
Those triumphant trumpets thunder
Deep down beyond the grasp
Of highest cherubic insight
Hope hymns amidst the darkest
Fight