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Hidden Glory: beautiful birthplace of prayer

The glory of God shines though hidden in both the fleeting joys and the difficult exigencies of this life.  Divine immensity disguises itself in what seems small and inconsequential: the haunting glance of a despised and marginalized neighbor — whether threatened by danger or death, whether in the public square or in the womb. Hidden here is God’s self-disclosure in my neighbor.

In a single moment this mysterious glory can shake the heart from slumbering indifference.  In an instant, we are moved away from the temptation to simply pass by and into the overwhelming need to be implicated and inconvenienced by the plight before us – whether a young person aching to find some reason for their existence or someone disenchanted by the unrelenting cycle of this world’s misery.

To know the warmth and radiance of heaven manifest in such heart breaking encounters is to discover a secret power breaking into our world. To be touched by the unfamiliar, subtle and delicate uncreated dynamism at work in these hidden moments tastes of the very purpose of life itself. Before this irrevocable dawning of Divine Glory onto our personal affairs, we see every other wonder, no matter how impressive or overwhelming, a passing shadow.

Even the slightest glimpse of this mystery fills the heart with such limitless fullness, nothing circumscribed by the merely visible and tangible can hold it.  Where we see and feel any lack of love, the light of this glory shines even now, in this very moment, with unperceived radiance, an aching paradox, a clashing of opposites. In the very face of fury and hostility, splendor concealed in mercy cries out always with love, to love, by love and for love. And this light shines unconquered everywhere and on everyone and in our own hearts, even as we attempt in vain to shut our eyes against it or with rage, to snuff it out.

If you want to put love where there is no love, unaided human industry is of no avail.  Whatever outcomes you attempt to control, the Living God cannot fit in these.   No method (no matter how difficult to master), no technique (regardless of how well practiced), and no program (how ever cleverly concocted) even begins to sound the depths of the inexhaustibly deep dug well of overflowing divine life and love.  No titanic exploit of human industry, whatever the dynamic psychic state or powerful social awareness it produces, even remotely attains the height of this divine humility. No purely natural evolution in human enlightenment will ever glimpse more than a vestige of the least shadow of this Uncreated Splendor.  We may rightly exhaust ourselves in our efforts to welcome Him in the distressing disguise of the poor, but the divine call to love is never exhausted and to ignore its unique claim over our hearts is to live nothing other than a diminished life.

To see this glory from above is to acknowledge at once that we are all beggars here below.  The glory of God is from above, completely beyond our power to grasp or manage. Before His overflowing torrents of life, the only proper response is surrendered vulnerability, humble obedience and selfless adoration.  From above, this eternal fire is sovereign over every matter, no matter how urgent, of this world and in our hearts. Nothing can force or prevent or impede this unquenchable river: it is over all and in all, sustaining everything and everyone in existence out of pure love, and all this inexhaustibly and unfathomably, for no other reason than for His own sake.  Even when ridiculed, rejected, despised and crucified – this glory rises again and abides forever, unconquered.

This is why, with the suddenness of lighting, this glory breaks forth in deepest darkness. When all seems most lost, an astonishing flash of divine gratuity discloses the limits of evil to eyes aching for truth. This is the fresh glory of an unanticipated new relation, of unexpected harmony in the heart and between hearts, of an unimagined joyed shared with God and with others, with expressions so tender and wonderful, this world’s time and space are too small for them. Yet every moment of this life is pregnant with this uncreated splendor, which is always beginning and still in progress.

Not dis-incarnate, but an enfleshed, this beautiful presence of the Living God can only be shared face to face and heart to heart. This inexhaustible divine self-disclosure can be found in the secrecy of one’s own home or in an anonymous encounter on the street, in a cup of water offered to a weary pilgrim or an ear that listens into the heart-ache of the distressed, in a kind smile of welcome for the stranger or a loving word of truth to a displaced soul searching for home.  This glory can even be the gentle glance at one’s very enemy – the one whose wounds of betrayal and hatred you still bear – that dares to echo with that primordial divine judgment, a judgment renewed in those eyes that conquered death: “yes, it is very good that you exist.”

This is the the hidden glory in which Christian prayer is born and by which such prayer reaches the very heart of God. For His part, God is always pleased to welcome this cry of the heart because He delights in how much this effort to embrace both sorrow and joy welcomes His glory — in all its exquisite hiddenness and distressing disguises.  The Almighty carefully implicates His glory in these simple movements hidden in depths too secret for anyone to understand about themselves. In His tender compassion, He has chosen the limitations, the inadequacy, and the voids in which this prayer resounds to be raised in an eternal chorus of unvanquished love.

As for me, in my efforts to be a loving father, or a good husband, or a half decent teacher – my sin is before me always.  When I am tired of raging against the One who alone can heal and free me, I realize it is time again to humbly acknowledge my sin and to begin my journey home into His merciful embrace. When I want to open my eyes to see His face, I must humble myself and ask for the gift to praise Him again. He is Lord even over the hostility of my own heart, and only He can quiet those raging waters — they cannot drown Him, for He has vanquished death itself.   Whenever I approach as His unworthy servant, His voice with unearthly jubilance echoes ‘my son.’ Here, I begin to learn to praise His glory.

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The Glory of the Lord

Only those who enter into his prayer with their whole lives really come to understand the heart of Christ.  From his heart, an endless sea of the deepest and most noble of human desires flow with divine power.  The most intimate of these was offered the night before he died, “Father, I will that where I am, those whom you have given me may be there with me so that they might contemplate the glory you have given me from before the creation of the world.”

This prayer of Jesus, uttered with full knowledge of his impending passion and death, assumes we understand what glory the Father gives to Jesus.  Glory is the radiance of personal greatness, and true glory is almost always hidden in this world.   The one who sees someone in his glory really knows the truth about that person.   To see the glory of the Lord is to know who he is.  His eternal glory is revealed on the Cross – where God has died that men might live.

Entering into the events of Christ’s passion grounds prayer in this eternal glory.  Without entering into Christ’s passion and death, prayer remains merely a nice thought, a polite thing to say.   To really learn to desire what God desires, to really know what to ask for and how, this can only be learned when we follow Christ crucified from Gethsemane to Calvary. For the Christian as it was for Christ, our “if it is your will let this cup pass” must become “into your hand I commend my spirit.”

The threshold into the deepest mysteries of our humanity is always close to us: persevering in kindness in the face of hatred, suffering for righteousness sake, forgiving and seeking forgiveness from one’s enemies, making all kinds of renunciation, accepting humiliation and enduring even what seems to be abandonment by God.   Such are the things of real love.  Not only do they test us, but even more, these humble actions attract God and make of our prayers something beautiful in His eyes.  This is because such things make our prayer a participation in the glory of the Lord.   

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Living for the Glory of God

In our last several posts we have been examining the spiritual doctrine of St. John of the Cross for entering into what he calls “The Night of the Senses.”  This night is a hidden encounter with Jesus beyond our comfort levels.  Living a life devoted to God beyond what is merely comfortable prepares us for this life changing experience of God.  In fact, this kind of encounter with the Lord is vital if we are to spiritually mature and fully enjoy the friendship He has invited us to share with Him and one another.  
To get to this spiritual place of prayer, the 16th Century Carmelite emphasizes, first of all, that it is mainly God’s work.  Our part is to cooperate in faith.  We also saw that our activity, although secondary to what God is doing, is none-the-less very necessary.   The Lord is counting on us to rise to the occasion.  What is our part?  To imitate Christ by a prayerful study of His life.  When we take up this kind of study, St. John of the Cross proposes we begin discover in Christ a life completely given for the glory of God.  In his theology of prayer, God blesses our feeble efforts to make the life revealed in Christ Jesus our own.
Now we get to a very difficult teaching – renunciation.  Jesus admonishes his followers that unless we renounce ourselves and take up our Cross and follow Him, we cannot be his disciples. This means we must be willing to suffer the loss of all things for Christ Jesus.  Why is renunciation so important in following the Lord?  Love is not a wish – it is an action.  We can only love at our own expense.  Our hearts are filled with inordinate desires that weaken us, dissipating our strength on things that fail to satisfy.  Our strength must be reserved for the love of God.  This means some things that are otherwise good, but not for the glory of God, must be forsaken. 
At this point, many throw up their hands in discouragement.  It sounds as if God never wants us really to enjoy ourselves, to recreate, or to have any fun at all.    How could anyone live such a humdrum life?   Those who are discouraged by this, however,  might be buying into a reductionistic view of what gives God glory.  A life lived for the glory of God is anything but humdrum.
The glory of God is man fully alive, says St. Irenaeus.  Those who take up the path of renunciation discover a great paradox.  The more one renounces the drive to satiate oneself all the time, the more satisfying life becomes.  If we act against our tendency towards the easiest, the most comfortable, the most gratifying, by doing the opposite out of love for Jesus – we soon discover beautiful dimensions to life we never knew existed.  Things and the gratification they give, things like one’s own reputation, take their proper place.  It is not that they are never enjoyed.  In fact, they can be more fully enjoyed when they are not what is driving us anymore.  In this way, renunciation is a pathway to true human freedom.    
The humdrum, banal life can not reach beyond the merely gratifying, the comfortable, the pleasurable.  While many think freedom is about being unrestained in the pursuit of these things – this view of freedom is insipid.  Such a life is not any freer the more freely it gives itself to things.  Instead, it is imprisoned by what it desires – not because what it desires is bad, but because human desire needs to be healed.  Stuck in what seems to satisfy, such a life is very unsatisfying.  The human heart is made for more.  It needs a greater freedom to thrive.  
In a life lived for the glory of God – whether something is gratifying, comfortable or pleasurable is totally secondary.  Such is the freedom of the children of God.  The things of life, the things God meant to be gifts from Him to show us his love, no longer master us.  We can enjoy them for what they really are.  Such a life discovers that deeper satisfaction which God alone provides.   Such a life is free to go to even greater kinds of freedom, free to really love, free to completely thrive.   
What a paradox St. John of the Cross proposes!  This childlike freedom opens our heart for the hidden encounter with God which makes us spiritually mature.  Christian prayer is ordered to this new freedom — and the freer we become the more profoundly we encounter the Lord.
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