The Pharisee, we remember was condemned for being an hupocrites, a word that means play-actor, pretender, dissembler. Humility means setting aside the mask…. We present ourselves to others transparently, in all our imperfection and vulnerability. We depend on their goodwill for acceptance and love, not on the success of our efforts at self-promotion.
MICHAEL CASEY, OCSO A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility
Vatican II tells us that man is a being in dialogue, someone who does not know who he is until another reveals it to him. For man is that being to whom God speaks. By speaking, God reveals not only his own being to man; in a real way, he also reveals man to himself.
SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II
Begin by knowing yourself, for it would be futile for you to consider others while neglecting yourself. Even if you are wise, your wisdom is lacking something, if it does not enlighten you about yourself. What does it lack, then? In my view, everything. You could know all the mysteries, have explored the surface of the world, the heights of the heavens and the depths of the sea, if you do not know yourself you are like someone who builds without a foundation; it is a ruin that you build, not an edifice. Everything that you do not construct on yourself as a basis is like a heap of dust that the wind will scatter. The person, therefore, whose wisdom does not extend to himself is not wise. The wise man will be wise about himself, and he will be the first to drink the water of his own well.
SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
The main aim of all rational creatures, defined by many philosophers as the greatest good, is to become like God. Actually this is not so much a discovery of the philosophers as something derived from Holy Scripture. The book of Genesis illustrates it when it describes the original creation of the human race in the words: ‘God said, “Let us make human beings in our image and likeness.” So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’
Notice that it says: ‘God created human beings in his image’ and says nothing about likeness.
This means that the human race received the dignity of God's image at the beginning of its creation, whereas the perfection of God's likeness is reserved for the end. Human beings must achieve it by imitating God in his works. The possibility of perfection is there right at the beginning by virtue of the image. In the end, human beings will reach perfect likeness by means of their works.
This idea has been put forward in a clearer form by the Apostle John. ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, we shall see him as he is.’ (1 John 3:2) He refers to the end of all things and, while simply admitting that the end is as yet unknown, he expresses the hope that we shall be made like God by virtue of our good deeds. Thanks to his intercession for us, we shall proceed from likeness to unity, since in the end ‘God will be all in all’. (1 Cor. 15:28)
ORIGEN Principles, 3, 6
The human being, who conforms to the model of the Son, gives glory to God because of having been made by the Father by means of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the whole person is like God and not just a part: the whole person, soul and body, receives the Spirit of the Father. This is the perfect human being. When the Spirit is united with the soul and with the body, then we have the spiritual person, the perfect person, the human being in the image and likeness of God. If, on the contrary, the soul does not have the Spirit, we would have a carnal and imperfect being. Such a person in having been created would be in the image of God, but would have no likeness to him. Likeness to God comes only from the Spirit.
IRENAEUS Against Heresies, 5, 6
In every worthy human endeavor there is an ideal that calls us forth. And there is the reality of the here and now: our very real human weaknesses and struggles. The danger is that we cling to the ideal, not accepting the real, and never settle, or we let go of the ideal and settle for the present “real,” going nowhere—a very stagnant and disheartening way to live. The exciting challenge is to cling to the ideal, letting it ever call us fourth, even as we embrace the real and bring it lovingly and gently toward the ideal.
M. BASIL PENNINGTON The Monastic Way
Have patience in persevering in the holy exercise of meditation, and be content to progress in slow steps until you have legs to run and wings with which to fly. Be content to obey; which is never a small thing for the soul who has chosen God as his portion, and resign yourself to be for now a small hive bee able to make honey. Be always humble and loving in front of God and men, because God talks to those whose heart is humble in front of Him, and enriches them with His gifts.
SAINT PADRE PIO
In this morning’s Gospel, we find Jesus and his disciples “on the way”. “One the way” is Mark’s term for the journey of Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem. Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, which we heard last week, had marked a turning point, the beginning of Jesus’ journey toward his passion. Jesus continues along “the way” with his disciples, in which we find an image of our own call to follow Christ.
In this stage of the journey, they reenter Galilee, which is familiar territory for them, but this time there are not the crowds about them as in the early days of his public ministry; rather, this time, Jesus has taken care that no one know of his presence. For he wants this to be a time set apart for him to teach his disciples in private, where he can have their full attention, free of the distractions of the crowds that had pressed upon him. He uses this occasion to once again speak to them of his death and resurrection. “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise.” When I hear the words “is to be delivered”, my own tendency is to think immediately of the betrayal by Judas, but according to most commentators, the primary one who does the handing over is God. The passion is first of all a Trinitarian event, in which each of the three Persons has their particular part to play in bringing about our redemption. That God does the handing over, shows that he oversees the whole action, and that, throughout the drama, his will is being fulfilled.
This time the words of Jesus are not met with a voice of protest from Peter and the other disciples, rather there is only silence. Mark tells us only that they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask him. Throughout the day, they remain in this fear, uncertain of the meaning of the Lord’s but not knowing how to process it and unable to find the courage to ask about it.
At the end of the day’s journey the come to Capernaum and enter the house where they usually stayed. The daytime was a period of being on the road, of action, of effort, of being taught by Jesus. In the evening, as night falls, in the familiar setting and routine of the house, the mood is more that of rest, quiet and repose, a time to refresh themselves with food and drink, and for simply sitting down and giving their weary bones a rest. The situation is now one which encourages a more reflective state of mind, in which memories from the time on the road can come to the fore and be savored, examined and judged.
In this setting, Jesus has more teaching in mind, but he opens the discussion with a question. The disciples on their end, are disposed to be wholly available to the Lord. The conditions are ripe for an examination of conscience. As in an examination of conscience, it is the Lord who leads, he is the one to establish the right proportion and value of the events of the day, and which ones are to be given primary importance and how. The Lord does not ask them about his teaching, he doesn’t ask them for a summary of what he had said on the way but, rather, what they were arguing about. This is what pricks their conscience. And again they are silent. The Lord has brought them to a level of self-awareness that they did not have before, now they are now beginning to see things in his light. Confronted with the purity of his person the inappropriateness of their thoughts and words begins to take shape; just as when the Spirit of the Lord prompts us with an unpleasant memory, and we are forced to come to terms with it. Perhaps we too had been caught in an argument such as the disciples are here. Perhaps, at the time, it seemed justified, because in our mind, we were in the right, or we thought that the matter at hand was such that it should not be let go. Or, perhaps, we recognized that we were headed down a wrong path, but we lacked the ability to steer the conversation in another direction or ease our way out of it somehow. In any case, when, at a later time, in retrospect, the word of the Lord comes to us with the question “What were you speaking about on the way”, in the light of Christ, greater clarity falls not only upon the argument but our motives, how they were not so pure as we thought, but like the disciples, were perhaps tinged by envy, jealousy and a competitive spirit, and we begin to feel shame and, like the disciples, find that, we, too, are reduced to silence. If we are honest with ourselves and do not retreat but stick with the examination, we let the details of the event appear before our mind’s eye, we remember what we said, about what, and how.
Some things may make us wince, but then we look for a way to soften our responsibility, perhaps pass the blame on the others, or on our state of mind at the time, or something else that our mind reaches out to grab hold of, as a kind of life preserver to allow us to continue to float on the surface of our self-justification. But when we find that this does not restore peace to our troubled hearts, we have to decide either to remain in a state of unrest or go back to the incident and allow the Lord to shed his light on it with greater clarity until, although we may never come to complete self-knowledge, we are least no longer throwing up walls of defense around our heart, but place ourselves humbly before the light of the Lord and acknowledge our failure.
We see here that Jesus does not dwell on the failure; their silence is evidence of their knowledge that there were in the wrong. Instead he shows them the way forward. He takes their dispute and turns it into an opportunity not only to teach them the way of true discipleship, but to begin to come to terms with what they find too disturbing and painful to talk about among themselves and to ask him about: the idea of a suffering Messiah. Seated before them, in the position of a teacher, he tells them: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
“If anyone wishes to be first”. The dispute over greatness shows just how far the disciples were from grasping Jesus’ solemn statement that he was to be delivered over, abandoned to the will of men. Jesus does not outright condemn the desire to be first, rather he redirects this natural desire for excellence according to his way, which is the way of God and not that of fallen human nature. In such a way that he reverses it, so that the wish to be first is fulfilled in being the last of all.
Jesus’ way, and the way of his Father, is the service of love, self-emptying, self-abandoning love, made visible in the Incarnation and culminating in the Cross.
Jesus illustrates his teaching by taking a child and putting him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms. The child has been suddenly taken away from whatever activity he had been engaged in and placed before the others. The Lord now uses him to teach others in the way that he wishes. In this way, the child represents the disciples, who in a similar way were called and chosen by the Lord, pulled out of their previous activity and placed before Israel to be wholly at his disposal and put to use as he wishes in order to be his messengers. The child is exposed, but he need not be afraid because the Lord has his arms around him. Likewise, the disciples are not to fear, because Jesus will always have his arms around them also. Whatever may come, he will never abandon them. He is the faithful and trustworthy Son of a faithful and trustworthy God.
The way they know that his arms remain around them is when they remain in the service of love, when they love as he loves. “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me…and the One who sent me.”
The child is also the neighbor, especially the marginalized, he, non-person, as the child was thought of in antiquity, he is to be loved by the disciple with the love that the disciple has received from the Lord. And the love that is the Lord is to be visible to the disciple in the child, for if the child is to be loved in himself, he is to be loved in the Lord, who will be present in the child just as concretely then as he is now with his arms around him. In this love they will truly be his disciples, and they will receive him, and his Father, and they will love them and they will know them.
The greatness of a soul is measured by the greatness of its love. The source of life is charity. I would not dare to call that soul living which had not striven to refresh itself at this source. But how can a soul draw upon it, if it is not present at the source which is charity, which is God? No, only he who loves God is present to God, and only to the same extent as he loves Him.
SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
The recollection of prayer is different from every other kind of attention or reflection. The man who reflects is cutting himself off and conversing with himself; the man who prays is entering into communication with a power and a love which are outside himself. Whether our prayer be addressed to Christ, the Blessed Virgin, or the Saints; whether we consider the Trinity reigning in our souls or in heaven, the recollection of prayer must necessarily introduce us to the divine presence. The mystery of God embraces our life; prayer is the confronting of the inner conscience of man with the majesty, the countenance, the love of this God. When Saint Benedict speaks to us of prayer it is on this coming into the divine presence that he insists: “Let us consider what should be our attitude of soul in the divine presence”. And again: “When we present our request to powerful men we do so with respect and humility; how much more necessary is it that we should make our supplications to the Lord God of the Universe with all humility and purity of devotion!” (Rule, chapters 20 & 19).
DOM IDESBALD RYELANDT, OSB Union With Christ
At fixed hours time should be given to certain definite reading. Haphazard reading, constantly varied and lighted on by chance does not edify but makes the mind unstable. Taken into the memory lightly, it leaves it even more lightly. You should concentrate on certain authors and let your mind grow used to them….
Some part of your daily reading should be committed to memory every day, taken as it were into the stomach, to be more carefully digested and brought up again for frequent rumination—something in keeping with your vocation and helpful to concentration, something that will take hold of the mind and save it from distraction.
The reading should also stir your affections and give rise to prayer, which should interrupt your reading—an interruption which should not so much impede the reading as to restore to it a mind evermore purified for understanding.
For reading serves the purpose of the intention with which it is done. If a reader truly seeks God in the reading, everything he reads tends to promote that end, making the mind surrender in the course of the reading and bring all that is understood into Christ’s service.
WILLIAM OF ST. THIERRY The Golden Epistle 1.120-124
When we consider how human beings are made, we are filled with wonder at the wisdom of the Creator that is revealed in us. Suffice it to observe the different functions of the senses which all stem from one center, the brain, and report back to it all sorts of perceptions: site, smell, taste, touch…, and also to observe the other organs of the body both internal and external; and the memory, that recalls numerous disparate elements without confusing or altering them; and the number of thoughts which do not cancel each other out but reappear at the right moment. We cannot refrain from exclaiming with the Psalmist: ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, O Lord; it is high, I cannot attain it.’ [Ps. 139:6]
In fact, no one will ever succeed and explaining completely the harmony that is displayed in our bodies or the subtlety that is apparent in our souls. Innumerable thinkers have written on this point. Even so, what has been said is but a small part of what remains to be said, for human reason cannot attain to divine wisdom. So this is the Psalmist’s attitude: he praises God for what he understands but confesses himself overwhelmed by it; it is not possible for him to encompass all the marvels which are to be seen in humanity. Such an admission is in itself an appropriate hymn of praise.
THEODORET The Cure of Pagan Diseases, 5,81
O Beloved, your way of knowing is amazing!
The way you recognize every creature even before it appears.
The way you gaze into the face of every human being
and see all your works gazing back at you.
O what a miracle to be awake inside your breathing.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
If one sets aside time for a business engagement, a trip to the hairdressers, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it, like a secret vice.
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH Gift From the Sea
The fact that our prayer is unsatisfactory or unsatisfying is no reason to discontinue the practice. But perseverance in what seems to be a fruitless exercise demands a good measure of patience and a strong faith in the power of even the most seemingly hopeless prayer. Here we may be encouraged by words put into the mouth of Christ by Julian of Norwich:
Pray with your whole being even though you think that it has no savor for you. For such prayer is very profitable even though you feel nothing. Pray with your whole being, though you feel nothing, though you see nothing, even though it seems impossible to you. It is in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in feebleness that your prayer is most pleasing to me, even though you think that it has little savor for you.
Anything that we can do—no matter how small—to give more scope to prayer in our lives is worthwhile and, supposing we persevere in it, will certainly yield dividends in due season.
MICHAEL CASEY, OCSO Coenobium: Reflections On Monastic Community
God is present even and especially in suffering, in failure, even in death. The clever and the robust experience weakness and vulnerability eventually when scientific and rational measures are no match in the struggle with the suffering of the body, the mind, and the spirit. It is often in experiences of powerlessness or raw suffering that we are able to lean into the God who is to be found there in the deepest movement of contemplation at the edge of mystical union.
MICHAEL DOWNEY The Vocation of the Lay Theologian as Baptismal Witness, Workshop Session 2.1, 6/23/15
According to [Thomas Aquinas] the root of despair is to be found in what has been termed acidie: for want of a better word, we usually translate this as sloth or inertia, by which very much more, and something deeper, is meant than mere idleness, than lacking the inclination to be active. According to Thomas this metaphysical inertia is identical with the “sorrow of the world,” the “worldly grief” of which Paul says that it produces death (2 Corinthians 7:10).
JOSEPH RATZINGER To Look on Christ
O my brother, the contemplative is not the man who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist. The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons.
THOMAS MERTON, OCSO A Letter on the Contemplative Life
The Cistercian Fathers provide a stupendous response to modern problems precisely at the level of anthropology. They all possess a coherent, shared understanding of human nature to which they continuously make reference. They consider man as the masterpiece of God's love, created for love through an overflowing of the love that is intrinsic to Trinitarian life, the very essence of Godhead. Man is the masterpiece of creation, destined to participate in the infinite fullness of divine life by following a path of freedom. This path constitutes a process of transformation that is sustained by man's conscience as well as by his deepest desire. His nature is sealed by a loving positivity, a seal impressed by the creative act of God. Nothing can cancel it out, not even the inconceivable negativity of rebellion and human sin. It is this origin in love that bestows sense on human existence. It clothes man in beauty and indelible dignity.
CRISTIANA PICCARDO Living Wisdom: The Mission and Transmission of Monasticism
When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.
SAINT ATHANASIUS On the Incarnation
Ordinary language fails us when we come to speak of the life and happiness of the divine Trinity, who share everything without dividing it. Each of the three is God, yet there is but one God. Their loving union is so intimate that they have but one nature, one existence, one life; everything except what pertains to their distinct personalities is common to each. In short, the life of God is an ecstatic union of knowledge and love—complete and infinite happiness. God has no need of anything more; His joy and happiness are such that nothing could increase them. Yet, in His infinite goodness, He decided to share them with somebody else. And so, out of the nothingness that was not God, He created us. It is true, that God could not without contradiction act for a motive less than Himself; being infinite Truth, He cannot deny His own supremacy. But, in planning all creation for His own glory, He decided to glorify Himself by making His creatures happy. And when His creatures revolted against His plan, He went further in beneficence and arranged to find His glory in His mercy. And that is a fundamental principle that must never be forgotten: God made the world for His own glory; but He glorifies Himself in this life by His mercy.
DOM EUGENE BOYLAN This Tremendous Lover
INVADED BY THE LOGOS
23-B Sunday in OT
(Is 35:4-7a; Jas 2:1-5; Mk 7:31-37)
Witnessing Jesus’ magnificent healing activity in the regions of Tyre, Sidon, the Sea of Galilee and the territory of the Decapolis, the crowd in today’s gospel praises Jesus the Healer with this beautiful acclamation: He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak! The exultant acclamation echoes God’s own feeling of great satisfaction when, on the evening of the sixth day of the creation, the Lord contemplates all the works of his hands as a totality: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31). Thus, in a certain way, the Gospel text equates the transformative, life-giving presence and actions of Jesus of Nazareth with those of the Creator God of Genesis.
The particular focus of the gospel today is the healing by Jesus of a speech-and-hearing impaired person. (Please forgive me if at times I use the simpler expression “deaf-mute man”. To be precise, the Greek says that he stammers.) The minute details of the narrative tell us that this is not just any miracle. After all, Jesus could have simply said to the man, “Your faith has healed you”, instead of producing a series of puzzling gestures, and the man’s friends had requested only that Jesus lay his hand on him. But, in fact, what we have is a detailed dramatization that seeks to unveil the archetypal encounter between needy creature and loving Creator, man clamoring for redemption and God eager to redeem. So I invite you to read the episode with me as a paradigm of our life of intimacy with God, which we properly call our mystical life.
The encounter with the Savior initiates the man into to the joy of salvation through intimacy with God in Christ. And this initiation occurs in five steps, which strongly suggest the so-called mystagogical catechesis of the early Church—the process by which catechumens, first enlightened by grace, were then gradually instructed in the truths of the Christian faith and thus introduced in orderly fashion (usually during Lent) into participation in the “mysteries” (or sacraments) of Christ.
2. Second Step. Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears and after spitting touched his tongue: This is the most complex of the five steps. Jesus the Healer’s mysterious actions are more than oddly puzzling gestures. One commentator says, rather lamely, I think, that “these singular acts of Jesus” were probably meant “to rouse interest and aid faith in the dull soul of the sufferer”. To which I say: Is that all? Because I believe a lot is at stake here, really our whole understanding of salvation and how we view our relationship to Jesus as Savior! We can, in fact, unlock the meaning of “these singular acts” by reading them in the light of certain foundational moments and symbols elsewhere in Scripture, as any Jew of Jesus’ day would have done.
These “mysterial” (or, if you prefer, sacramental) gestures of the Redeemer seem to evoke, first of all, the creating movements of God in Genesis: Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Gen 2:7). Penetrating the man’s ears, Jesus’ fingers re-enact here-and-now God’s act of molding and quickening a new being as conceived by the divine wisdom and will. Jesus’ sacred gestures establish remarkable physical intimacy between his own holy body, from which divine power and love emanate, and the afflicted body of the deaf-mute.
Jesus’ action of graciously anointing the deaf-mute’s tongue with his own saliva may be seen to evoke the water that God made to flow in Eden to irrigate the garden and give all things life (cf Gen 2:10). For, is not the body of Jesus, in whom the Father is well-pleased, itself the personified Paradise of all the saints’ delight? The Letter of James today praises our Lord Jesus Christ as “the Lord of glory”, and John explicitly declares Jesus’ human body to be the definitive temple of God’s majesty (cf Jn 2:21). Consider, then, the convergence in this scene of 1. the temple of Jesus’ body, 2. the saliva flowing from his mouth, and 3. the river of life in Paradise. Together these references point to Ezekiel’s vision of the water issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east: Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live (Ez 47:1,9).
And remember the Samaritan woman, to whom Jesus likewise speaks of salvation and union with God in terms of water richly given from his own person: Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (Jn 4:14). Finally, at the cross, Jesus would drench the earth with water from his pierced Heart, mingled with his blood (Jn 19:34). From the Body of the enfleshed Word, then, there come not only words of teaching and symbolic gestures but also water, saliva, and blood, sacred liquids that are bearers of his divine DNA, intended to communicate divine life to humankind.
All these biblical instances converge on the present scene and transform it into a powerful Eucharistic event. The man’s ingestion of Jesus’ saliva puts an end to all the metaphors, promises and symbols of the Old Testament, prophecies to be fulfilled in a distant future. Jesus’ multi-tiered action of lavishing intimate care on this man enacts, existentially and historically, the full reality of God’s gift of himself to us, in a concrete time and place. The actual, earth-shaking miracle that occurs in this episode is not, in fact, so much the physical healing as the opening of a gateway to intimate participation by man in God’s very life, to which the physical healing points.
Let us now look more briefly at the remaining three steps:
Brothers and sisters: When left to ourselves, all of us are spiritually deaf and tongue-tied, are we not? Let us too, then, allow ourselves to be brought daily by the Church and the prayer of our friends into the healing presence of the Redeemer. In this way, we will be courageously submitting ourselves to his transformative mystical action through word and sacrament, and this will splendidly rejuvenate and strengthen us, in keeping with the perpetual youthfulness and beauty of Christ, the New Adam.
I must remember that I am listening to the Word, to Christ. When I think about the voice of Christ I try to recall its various manifestations in his earthly life. I hear it sometimes encouraging and cajoling, at other times challenging and demanding. And then, since my reflections and prayers must inevitably be drawn to the paschal mystery, I think of the voice from the cross where, even at a time of almost unimaginable pain, Christ is calling for forgiveness, making excuses for those who do not realize what they are doing, speaking in what Saint Aelred of Rievaulx calls ‘that wondrous voice, full of gentleness and love’.
ESTHER DE WAAL Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict
Do not look around yourself into universal history; you must look into your own personal history. Always in your present lies the meaning in history, and you cannot see it as a spectator, but only in your responsible decisions. In every moment slumbers the possibility of being the eschatological moment. You must awaken it.
RUDOLF BULTMANN The Presence of Eternity: History and Eschatology
To wish to see or imagine the future is to make a fiction out of hope, and this seems to me to be doing violence to hope…. Obviously, since we do not have God’s imagination, when we think of the future, we think of it in terms of the past…. When we are in a tunnel, we see nothing, but it is absurd to want the landscape when we come out to be the same as when we went in…. Let us let the Holy Spirit do its work…. It is the Spirit’s business; this is what I call poverty.
CHRISTIAN DE CHERGÉ Retreat for March 8, 1996
Having created the universe with all its forces, and having made man master of his decisions and destined him to the life of the family and of society, God of necessity wills the interplay of cause and effect, he wills to permit good and evil according to the normal course of events. This evil can be either physical (such as sickness, suffering, death) or moral. Moral deficiencies are to be found everywhere, in us and outside of us. Even in the bosom of the Church of Christ there has been much wrong-doing, and wrong-doing there will be till the end of time. So great is the wretchedness of men that they deface the work of God by their mistakes, their illusions, their weaknesses, and their passions. If we want to sanctify ourselves we must adapt ourselves to the order of things permitted by Providence. We must accept from the hand of God the present, and all the effort required for our daily work, our responsibilities, the defects and wrong headedness of those near to us, the annoyance and suffering of ill-health.
DOM IDESBALD RYELANDT, OSB Union With Christ
I believe that every man is a hidden Christian. And in two senses. Man is saved by Christ, in that only through Christ can he attain the beatific vision. And furthermore, all yearnings for the divine, whatever form they take, are and must be attributed to the Holy Spirit. That is at one level but man is also a hidden Christian because, although he is not in a situation in which he is consciously responding to Christian values—there is nevertheless something of Christ in him, as in everyone. And there are many senses, I think, in which this is true. The most obvious, the most simple, is the fact that Christ became man. The fact that he shared our human condition gives significance to every human life wherever it is, whatever it is, and whatever religious belief is held.
CARDINAL BASIL HUME, OSB The Intentional Life: The Making of a Spiritual Vocation
According to the Catholic contemplative tradition, desire is only possible as the consequence of experience. We can only desire what we have already tasted in some way. And this is exactly how a monastic vocation starts. One day a child (often it begins as early as that), a teenager, or a young adult senses in the midst of ordinary activities that behind and beneath all things and all acts there is a mystery that continually upholds, enlivens, and renews all that exists. There is a fountain out of which everything arises, a fountain of life that irrigates all life. The surface of the world peels back, and the young person glimpses the center, the burning core—burning, but not destroying, like the burning bush.
This mystery, although it is indefinable, has characteristics proper to it. It is holy: in its presence, in the moment of experience, you feel compelled to make some gesture—bow down, take off your shoes, close your eyes, to sing. It is personal. You may not know its name, but you know that it has a name, and that in fact it is not something but someone. More than that: it is someone, par excellence. It is beautiful, and good, and true, and above all, it is love.
BERNARD BONOWITZ, OCSO Truly Seeking God