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The Glory of God and the Deep Waters of Life

Deep waters tell the glory of God.  That is, just as when we approach these waters recklessly and face peril, so too those who approach the glory of God are in peril if they do not respect His Word. Deep waters are a reflection of this truth.  This is true of the visible waters of the world but also the invisible, spiritual waters of our lives. Water that can be the source of life can also kill. The glory of God is meant to be the life of man, but without the reverence and awe that is its due, this same glory can become one’s eternal peril. 

The glory of God is the living man. This means, that before the glory of God there is space for the sphere of one’s integrity. Obedience to the Lord in love creates this space so that the unrepeatable uniqueness that God has willed into the world through this specific creature might thrive. Disobedience makes one’s uniqueness subject to the deep waters of life, and puts at risk a great good meant to be a blessing for the world.  

Water is integral to a garden paradise. As it is in a garden, so it is in all of creation, and, thus, for every soul.  Each life requires an ordered space to protect the sphere of its integrity. Too much or too little water is destructive. What physical water is for the visible world, the presence of God is for the spiritual world. That is why God both gives and hides his life giving mystery – He gives us life and wills us into existence out of love, and he also makes space for each of us to exist with our own freedom by keeping the immensity of His presence secret. This divine secrecy allows our own freedom to unfold until we learn to seek God. 

Part of this divine secret is not only God’s presence but also the painful exigencies in which He allows Himself to be hidden. Such exigencies are also “deep water.” Just as is true with all else in human existence, these difficult ambiguities of life are part of the divine plan but as we are swept away by these waters, we also confront the seeming absence of God, His hidden presence. 

His hidden presence is revealed to us by His Word and His Word speaks into the dangerous waters of life from the Cross.  God desires we sanctify these waters by discerning how to obey His Word in midst of them. As we discern the most appropriate way to respond to God in the ambiguities of life, God acts to protect our integrity and hold together our dignity. By the frail obedience of faith, God makes something un-repeatably beautiful within the human person. The interiority or heart becomes a garden where God walks, where He rests. 

The Biblical Man respects the glory of the deep waters of life by obedience and dedication to the Word so that the Lord can cultivate the garden of his heart. Water first appears in Genesis as part of a primordial chaos in which there is no room or order for life. Some would see this analogous to the power of sin and darkness. Indeed, the waters of the Great Deluge would seem to unveil this truth. It is true that every sin has the quality of disorder, an effort against the act of creation.  Sin is a movement against order and the integrity that life needs. Sin is a movement of disobedience against the harmony of love into chaos. Such disharmony destroys the noble and good things God would will grow in the heart. 

There is a difference between the chaos of sin and the primordial chaos described in Genesis, however. The Water over which the Spirit of the Lord whispered was not disobedient but had itself been summoned into existence by the Word of the Father.  When God commanded, this primordial water obeyed. Out of this obedience, God was able to freely order a world in which life might thrive and His glory be revealed.

Deep waters also reveal God’s glory in the face of sin. Every act of sin may be an attempt, conscious or not, to return to primal disorder. That attempt goes against the very fabric of God’s handiwork — for in the beginning, the world came into existence under the power of the Holy Spirit in obedience to the Word.  Those who act against the primordial obedience of the waters of creation plunge themselves into forces that destroy their efforts.  The plight of humanity is that we have made ourselves subject to these waters by our sins and therefore have brought doom upon ourselves. God, however, was not satisfied with leaving us to our fate. He who made the deep waters of life, all those tragic failures, evils and injustices that overwhelm us, has entered into them to rescue us from death. 

There is a love that deep waters cannot quench and that death cannot overcome. Why would the Almighty create something outside of Himself, beyond His own eternal thoughts? Why would He communicate an existence apart from His own to that which He ponders when He ponders us? There is a truth, a secret that we do not know, but He knows it, even as He plunged into the flood waters to find us.  He generously willed it so. Creation exists because from the beginning God respected its integrity and, out of pure love, gave space for it to be outside His eternal, limitless being. Out of an unfathomable love, the Trinity hid His Glory so that the world might exist to magnify and reflect His Glory in its own wonderful way. Now, He enters into this world that is totally other than Himself. He even enters its hostility towards Him and accepts being despised and rejected, if only to find us.  It is this unvanquished love that is revealed on the Cross.

O Love who is not loved! Love who knows no limit desires out of sheer limitless goodness that we who are other than Him (and therefore limited) should exist. That is why, even as you read this, we exist in our own limited way – for Love delights that we should be so. Thus, though other than Him, we exist in the image and likeness of Love Himself. At the same time, Love wants so much more for us. We love Him when we allow Him to bring to completion the love that He desires for us. Love Himself knows something about us that we do not know – the truth about the Love in whose image and likeness we are made. This mystery that we are meant to become thrills His heart and for it, Love has given everything in order that it might come to pass.

God suffers the deep waters of life to exist out of great love and for the sake of love. Love does not need the these waters but is glad that the world with its deep waters should be. Sheer gratuitous goodness is behind these waters.  This same loving gratuitousness is behind humanity, even sinful humanity. Though we sin, we would not have the freedom to rebel against Love if Love, on a more fundamental level, did not contemplate that it is better for us to be than not to be. So He enters the garden of our hearts and offers His life on the barren tree that we erect for Him. Love knows the truth about us and has died for that truth that we might live. Thus, though we rebel against Him who is Goodness itself, He has chosen to love us all the more, and tenderly implicating Himself in our plight. 

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Priesthood, Contemplative Prayer and Real Presence

Contemplatives need holy priests and holy priests need contemplatives.  The priest helps the contemplative behold the mystery given by Christ and the contemplative helps the priest humble himself in prayer.  In this mutual relation, we confront beautiful dimensions of the mystery of the Real Presence.

Some contemplatives believe that it is possible to reach a state of consciousness that surpasses the whole sacramental economy.  The corollary is that the ministerial priesthood is superfluous once a certain level of spiritual maturity or degree of prayer is attained.  The Sacrament of Holy Orders, however, is uniquely implicated in the mediation of the Great High Priest.  At the Last Supper, the Lord instituted its mystery as a necessary means of grace in His Mystical Body.  Priests, who act in the person of Christ, serve as the very head of His Body with power and authority to make Christ’s presence Real. Contemplation that leaves the Body of Christ behind is no longer really Christian and the spiritual life that rejects the gift of the priesthood has lost its head.

On the other hand, there are also some who believe that priesthood does not need to be rooted in contemplative prayer. It does not need to be lived out so radically they presume. It would seem to be enough to manage through the business of religious and make sure all institutional obligations are efficiently dealt with. Such an attitude believes that contemplatives themselves are of little value for the priestly business of the Church. This is pure folly. Such hubris cuts off those who most need the love of God from the only kind of prayer that will help them find it. When the priesthood is deprived of contemplative prayer, it is cut off from its life’s blood and proceeds in its activity with lifeless closed eyes.

Though it is never an easy thing, the priest thrives the more intimate his relation with the Lord, and contemplative prayer is nothing other than that commitment to spend time in still silence before Him, waiting on Him, searching for Him, and allowing oneself to be found by Him. Christian contemplation gazes on pure love — Divine Love dwelling in humble humanity making all things new — and it takes diligence and fasting to recognize the delicate, subtle and hidden work that He is about.  For the Body of Christ not only has a Head, but also a Heart. Christ the Head laid down His life that we might have His Heart and behold the undying life that flows from it.  Contemplatives draw close to this Sacred Heart and through them, Eternal Life flows into the rest of the Mystical Body.  A priest who contemplates the merciful love that this Heart contains is vulnerable to this Divine Inflow.  A minister who allows himself to be formed by contemplatives who know this wisdom becomes a source of spiritual refreshment to all those to whom he ministers.

This joining of Head and Heart, of truth and holy desire, of wisdom and joy, of contemplation and action has the quality of music. The interplay of these relations evokes moments of elation and heartache so intense that time and space can no longer limit it.  This music moves us into great silence, an openness, a receptivity. The mysterious harmony of these sacred relations reconstitutes those who will join its strain. Complementary differences in the Body of Christ not only protect us from hubris before the Lord, they implicate us in a beautiful mystery of interpersonal relations that reflect eternal splendors otherwise hidden from this world.  What results is a great hymn, a song of praise and thanksgiving, a canticle of love that reverberates in every Mass and echoes in the silence of Eucharistic adoration — a Eucharistic canticle.

When a priest holds the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, it is in order that this supreme gift might be seen, recognized, contemplated, treasured, adored and partaken.  His ministry evokes contemplation, adoration, and transformation through the Real Presence his ministry makes manifest. In the Mystical Body, the Head and the Heart are bound to each other, each building up and blessing the other, each depending on the other.  Thus, the priestly ministry and contemplative prayer are bound to one another, in the Eucharistic canticle of heaven.

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The Holy Family and Contemplative Prayer

The Holy Family is the first school of contemplative prayer.  One way to know the truth of this is to visit the Holy Family in prayer. St. Francis brought the manger scene into the churches that he rebuilt precisely to build up such prayer. St. Ignatius also invites us to use our imagination to ponder this same mystery. Christmas carols also take us to this same contemplation if we let them.

This spiritual exercise best begins by visiting a manger scene, making the sign of the Cross and calling to mind the presence of God. Sometimes we can be too mechanical about this, taking too much for granted, and this is a mistake. His presence is remarkable. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves, holding us in existence, and at the same time, waiting for us to hold Him. Calling to mind His presence then is always in the form of a person encounter, a heart to heart, a mystery that deserves the complete attention of all the powers of our being. The Lord who relied on Joseph and Mary in His infancy also relies on us, entrusts Himself to us.

As we allow this truth to sanctify our minds, if we prayerfully turn to the Gospels, our imagination can begin to probe the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. The power of our imagination can search for Mary and Joseph on their flight to Egypt. Or else, we can imagine them on their frantic search for Jesus in Jerusalem. The revealed drama that they endured puts Jesus at the center – everything is always in relation to Him, bringing them into a deeper relation to one another. We might take in the surroundings, sounds and smells that live in the silences of the Gospels; and then the search the faces of Mary and Joseph to discern the paradoxes of tension and peace, prayer and practicality, anxious concern and mutual confidence. When we carefully search the devotion of their hearts revealed in the Scriptures, without realizing how, our own heart can suddenly be revealed.

In the Biblical images, each verse invites us more deeply into the vast horizons of empathy born in contemplative prayer. Here, with the Holy Family, we discover and can even feel that this empathy has a poignantly familial tenderness to it and a fierce dedication driving it. Yet the Bible allows us to share this tenderness with them – their own fierce solicitude for Jesus and familial devotion is passed on to us through the Church.

Ripples on the surface of a deep mystery follow from this. If the concern that Joseph and Mary shared for the Christ-child can rouse our hearts to deeper devotion, then the drama of other hearts in relation to Jesus also belong to us in prayer in some way. And, the anxious concerns and peace that we ourselves know in prayer are also not meant to be carried by ourselves alone, but through the ministry of the Church, by the whole Family of God together in communion. This mystery of communion is why we must never forget the heart of the Church – that place were tenderness and dedication spring just as it sprung in the heart of Mary and Joseph as they drew ever closer to Emmanuel. The familial empathy that impacts contemplation of the Holy Family is ultimately ecclesial. What we behold in the Holy Family is what should live in our own domestic churches, our families, our parishes.

Beautiful silences in mental prayer and the mystery of communion in the Church coincide in the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph shared a devotion that was not individualistic but always in relation and bringing all things into relation in them and between them. The silences they knew were filled with this very fullness of encounter and recognition. If we consider their shared devotion to the Christ-child, they teach us how to protect the gentle awareness of God’s presence that has begun in each other too. The concern-in-common that we ponder in the stillness of their hearts is meant to become the concern that lives in our hearts as we strive for a deeper communion in the Church. Such love implicates us in each other’s life of faith with all the tension and concern that flows from this — a mystery that defined the very life of the Holy Family.

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Contemplation and the Final Judgment

Contemplative prayer is born in the silence that reverently adores the holiness of the Living God. No stranger to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, such prayer is marked by familiarity with the deep things of God.  In the glory of wisdom’s height and under the watch of holy fear, this tear drenched gaze of heart ceaselessly searches for the One who is Righteous and True. In the face of senseless horror and abuse of power, this song in the soul knows that the very mystery of human existence has a meaning that Divine Judgment stands ready to reveal.

With confidence in the goodness of the Father, such a sacrifice of praise mysteriously joins the hidden harmonies of the heavenly multitude. Established in this profound stillness, one’s body is no longer limited to earthly purposes or spent on worldly dreams. Renunciation of comfort and convenience clears the ground so that the garden of this prayer can be planted. Discipline and determination tills the soil that this devotion makes fertile. This renewal of the mind surrenders to the yearning of divine love to be enfleshed in one’s own existence. This panting for God breathes the air of humbled astonishment before the Almighty.

This tender ache knows both jubilation and blessed sorrow as the crucified Lamb of God definitively interprets all of human history and the meaning of each one’s life. Contemplation rallies under this banner of love. The spiritual worship it knows advances the cause of heaven. The mystical wisdom it begets makes the world vulnerable to the glory of the Lord.

A heart on fire with the Holy Spirit in this way is not terrorized by the thought of what His judgements make known. Instead, as He reveals arrogance and casts it down, this soul crawls like a starving beggar utterly confident in His Mercy. As He sends the self-satisfied and haughty away empty, the emptiness of this ravished soul draws the Bridegroom. As He releases the heart knelt in adoration from all manner of captivity and self-made prisons, such a soul glimpses the Vindicator of the oppressed and wonders over the ways that He lifts up the lowly. This saving mystery, even as it waits to be revealed, already feeds the hunger and thirst of a soul who seeks the face of God.

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The Invasion of the Word

Night’s Darkness
The Word invades
In the solemn mirth
Of this very moment,
Under a multitude of veils,
Rejected but undaunted,
Resounding with meaning.

Hear these silent
Magnitudes of majesty,
In hidden untold splendor,
Bursting forth the more
Betrayed, denied, abandoned,
Suffering to be suffered,
Soft on beatitude’s breathing.

A soul can ache with
Such sadness and joy
At once enkindled

By those harmonies
As still remain to be heard:
Hymns, anthems, canticles becoming
That heart, who raises whole creation into
Dawn’s brightness.

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The Personal Presence of God

God’s presence in the world is personal and intimate. He is vulnerable to every concern and attends with tender care to every request. He does not approach with programs or agendas. He approaches in true friendship – offering forgiveness, salvation, a new beginning and a bond of love. He longs that we might know peace with Him and with one another.

God’s personal presence in the world unveils a great mystery of love and truth that cannot be circumscribed. In His inexhaustible Fullness, He overflows the barriers of malice and contempt and shatters prisons of confusion and deception. The shrill cry that fears love and truth is silenced before His holiness. His Truth in silent majesty is always victorious when clamor of darkness would stand in His Way. Where there is no love, the Author of our Faith fills with love until love is found — and all our clever calculations are confounded when what seemed impossible is suddenly accomplished.

God’s intimate presence in love and truth is shared with us by the grace that comes from the Cross. We pull back and fear what this might mean. Yet the the King of Righteousness suffered our hostility to the end and marched into Hell so that death could not have the last word about our humanity. The power of His presence confronts our every sin and, in the face of our ignorance, makes known His justice — so that we might come to our senses, give up our rebellion, turn to Him and know His merciful kindness. For He awaits us with open arms.

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Battle of Contemplative Prayer

There much pre-occuaption with ecclesiastical authority. It is time to remember that the Church not only has a head, but a heart – and for the heart of the Church, the Head, the Bridegroom laid down His Life. No one can act in the person of Christ the Head and betray this self-gift of the Lord – to do so is to lose one’s own integrity and poses a threat to the integrity and dignity of others. The royal road to the heart, to the self-donation for the sake of the heart, this is the humble pathway and great battle of contemplative prayer.

There is a certain cynicism in ecclesiastical circles regarding contemplation and the mystical tradition of the Church. Too many mistake silent prayer for self-absorption and so cut themselves off from the source of the Church’s holiness. Others limit themselves to an outward show to garnish credibility, admiration and political capitol. This is a foolish mistake.

Whoever believes that contemplative prayer is an escape from the troubles of this world or else some other therapeutic occupation has never really prayed. This most vulnerable forms of prayer is not about religious feelings and safe ideas. This surrender of the heart peers into a dangerous abyss — if you are not careful, you will fall in.

Yes. This tearful abyss is dangerous for mediocrity and a half lived life. This spiritual death is perilous to a comfortable existence. In this prayer of self-abnegation, one slips down a slope of human misery and heartache.  One suffers the truth about one’s own life and the world. One faces off against all kinds of irrational and diabolic powers. It is a fight to the death — and it is one’s own life that is given up and sacrificed.

For this abyss and the battle fought there is circumscribed by an even deeper abyss. Human misery and evil are not deeper or more extensive than the mercy of God. They are limited — Divine Mercy limitless.  In this divine limitlessness is the ground of our existence – the place where all that is true about human is held up. Silent prayer is drawn by the gravity of this love no matter the misery it suffers or battles it fights on the way.

Here, in the immensity of Divine Love, we find the only hope for the holiness of the Church. Here we find the gravitational center that draws us is the very source of her life. Go here and find the power to tear down walls of corruption and secrecy that threaten her fruitfulness. Go into this great silence and receive that undying energy that builds up honesty, purity, and solidarity. For Love rebuilds what we have destroyed. This purifying Fire is the source of renewal and reform – its radiance unmasks deceit and its warmth melts the coldest heart. 

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The Power of Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative prayer has immense power against all kinds of evil. This silent movement of the heart unveils self-contradictions and rash judgments that threaten one’s own integrity and, at the same time, this vulnerability to God is healing balm for the integrity of others. This deep stillness of spirit allows God to establish one’s whole being in His very Presence so deeply that one cannot remotely guess how profoundly hidden one’s life has become. At the same time, in this hiddenness, life flows anew in this old, tired world.

This kind of prayer involves renunciation. One must renounce all forms of bitterness and resentment, even when these are evoked by seemingly just causes, to protect the delicate work that God’s love is bringing to perfection. One must renounce the frustrated anger that would lash out and assert itself when circumstances and events seem to be spiraling out of control.  This means humility — what Divine Presence is unfolding within can never be controlled by any created power. One must also renounce all self-pity and anxiety — indulging such self-occupation renders the heart too small for the Living God. All lesser loves must find their proper place before this one Love.
This adoration soaked in tears also involves sacrifice. Though a thousand schemes and opportunities for self-preservation flood the mind, this movement of the Holy Spirit requires us to be resolute not only in renouncing these, but also in picking up the Cross of self-abnegation out of an obedient love for God. Though other dreams and ambitions shine from every side, this surge of the heart to the Lord evokes a singleminded faithfulness that stays the course. Some have gladly sacrificed careers, worldly honors, and friends to attain this pearl of great price. Others have even left family, and language, and country because of where this humble pathway leads. Once one begins this difficult pilgrimage from the surface of life to the depths of God’s love, there can be no looking back.
Only this prayer can traverse the abyss of human misery. As it climbs the steep ravines of virtue, of insight, of integrity, it slides down further the slopes of inadequacy, of powerlessness, of painful voids. What draws it forward is not desire for victory or fear of failure, but the Hidden Presence of Love Crucified. What gives it confident assurance is not its own progress or industry, but the One who has Risen from the dead.  Rooted in His Presence by faith, this quiet stillness knows that deeper than the abyss of misery is the abyss of mercy – to fall into this abyss is to be raised to heights that this world cannot contain.
No wonder this kind of prayer allows us to pray in reparation for our own sins and the sins of the world. When one can no longer weep for one’s own sins, it is possible to begin to weep for the sins of the world. When one knows how much one needs the mercy of God, one self-identifies with everyone who needs this mercy – and deep heartache for the plight of humanity grips the soul. Such grief is honored by God. No sin can bend as low as this humbled knee. No evil can reach as high as this bowed head. No rant can be heard as clearly as the confession of this tongue.  Such prayer knows the deep things of God and opens up space in the wilderness of human freedom for the Lord to make all things new. 
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The Grace that Silence Knows

In the deepest center of the abyss of one’s being there is a fountain of life-giving waters. This fount flows forth from an even deeper abyss into abyss of the heart – for deeper than the misery of the heart is the mercy of the One who knows it. Ever deeper the farther from its center – sanctifying, forgiving, healing, renewing. This life giving spring lives unfathomably deeper than either sin or death can know.

If the truth revealed to us did not propose the secret of such a hidden place, that haunting ache for the One who we do not know remains a mysterious witness. For in the painful emptiness that prayerful silence hears suggests the fullness that eagerly waits to fill it. In the silent cry of the heart one discovers that the ennui that creation suffers for the Creator is only a dim reflection of the ennui the Creator has freely embraced for humanity.

The Cross has unleashed this torrent relentless in pursuing its course — making all things new. The ocean of mercy that issues forth from such glory can never be exhausted. The empty tomb is proof that the vast horizons out to which these waters stream remain, to this very day, largely unexplored. The real presence of the Risen One ensures that this hidden but mighty river will flow in us always until the end of the ages.

The grace that makes holy the human heart invites, calls and challenges each one. Like the morning sun invites and the beauty of spring calls, grace evokes new confidence and enkindles fresh hope.  Like the love of a bridegroom challenges his bride, this wonderful gift surrenders itself into the surrender that each heart renders. For the grace that makes holy makes youthful and new every heart that receives it – no matter how aged.

This freely given gift liberates a soul from its own ego. An immense overflowing flood of love and life, its currents are not imposed, are not extrinsic.  For this most precious and delicate of gifts refuses to coerce what is most interior to man. This grace floods a person’s interiority until the body itself is freed for love. This mysterious power makes chains of selfishness fall away. The ability to do something beautiful for God and one’s neighbor is unlocked.

With tender gentleness, this gift from above re-constitutes and subtly perfects what is most noble within us. It conceives truths and movements of heart by which God Himself is enjoyed and brought to bear for solemn purpose. To resist such a priceless gift is to resist no less than the truth about oneself and the dream that God has kept from before the foundation of the world.

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Christian Contemplation and God’s own Little Ones

Christian contemplative prayer is a prayer that “sees” but what it sees is sometimes painful. Earlier this weekend, Archbishop Gomez reminded us that there are whole families that are afraid of the future of these uncertain times, that there are even children who live in fear. He was referring to specifically to the children of immigrants for whom He shares a particular solidarity and bond. His voice is so important for all of us to listen to on this last day of the Year of Mercy — for today is not the last day that we must be generous with the stranger in our midst. In fact, we will be held accountable before God for precisely how we respond to the plight of those who live among us now.

If we really had the courage to think about it, our callousness today is not limited to questions of immigration or the latest election results. Any society in which babies are not safe in a mother’s womb is a society in which anyone who is vulnerable is at risk. The stakes are high for us as a people. Just as what happens in the womb determines the course of society, so too how we treat our children (whether born or unborn) determines who we are. If only we could face this, then we would remember how to treat our neighbor, even the undocumented ones. In the meantime, we have passed laws to promote all forms of insobriety and intoxication– a culture of escape from self-torment.

Do not be dismayed by callousness or escapism — Christ has come to save us even from this. Against our own self-hatred, our faith in the Just Judge reminds us that we do not have to be the fanatical zealots of the latest political cause. If we turn to the Son of God, we do not have to demean ourselves before the altars of social progress and material wealth. If we embrace the Word of the Father, we do not have to indulge frenzied fits of social nihilism. If we will accept the gift of His Heart given for us, we do not have to give our hearts to heartless programs.

Christian contemplation prayer allows us to access the very Heart of God, and in the Heart of the Trinity, we discover a point of entry into the heart of our neighbor.  This is because the deeper that one goes into the mystery of prayer, the more familiar with the deep things of God one becomes.  What does contemplative prayer “see” in the immensity of God’s presence?  In the fullness of God there lives an abiding love for humanity, for each person in the unique exigencies of his and her own real life situations.

The prayerful heart knows that the Lord’s love for each one of us is a particular and unrepeatable love – as manifold in its expressions as the variety of beings that He has summoned into existence.  Because the Almighty Father treasures each of his creatures in unrepeatable and unique ways, the soul that prays becomes vulnerable to the overflowing intensity of this same divine tenderness. This is why a heart truly steeped in prayer cannot be indifferent to the fear of little children and of families. It feels moved into action to relieve the burden that God’s own little ones suffer.

Invisible and more powerful than anything that can be felt, prayer allows Eternal Love to blow forth like a wind or a breath. From the Father and the Son this Holy Wind blows through our cry of faith into the deepest crevices of our personal existence and out to the very ends of the world around us. An elaborate harmony of astonishing mutual recognition and tender empathy, this Hidden Mystery rushes into our own secret sorrows and fears to make His home with us. In ways of which we are hardly aware, but that make all the difference, the Uncreated Gift of the Father and Son bows our very spirit in adoration while lifting it up with a joy that nothing can take from it. Our sorrow and fear become His and His joy and hope become ours.

The Trinity leads us out of ourselves, our own self-occupation, and into the love of the Father for His whole work of creation and every person in it.  As we see how much He wants to save each of our neighbors, we learn to ache with the same ache that lives in the deep in the Mystery of God. The more we are implicated in this movement of love, the less we are able to be indifferent to the plight of our neighbor.

To be silenced by the immensity of God, to be baptized into the three-fold personal presence of the Most High, this is the mystery of contemplative prayer, of a prayer that “sees.” Such deep prayer joins us to the suffering of all those with whom God has implicated Himself. This heart to heart can in a single instant completely convince the soul of its true worth, and, in the same moment, bind it to the plight of its neighbor in way that it cannot not act.  The realization dawns – the heart knows the secret that God knows — no longer alienated, its own misery has become a rendezvous with the One crucified by Love and with all the little ones that He entrusts to it along the way. 

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