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Spiritual Fatherhood and Elijah

A spiritual father is someone who serves the Lord and ministers God’s word to another.  This is what Elijah did for King Abab of Isread.  Ahab, for his part, rejected this fatherhood at first.  Under the enchantment of a destructive marriage and idolatry, the king refused to believe. Instead, he pitted himself against the Lord.  The role of Elijah is to bring Ahab to a place where he might be fathered by God, where he might learn to be a son before the mystery of the Lord. The project took years but finally, Ahab briefly came into obedience, and in that brief moment of obedience he found the blessing of God and true freedom.  This spiritual liberty of being a son was short-lived. The deadly relationship with Jezebel stoled away the blessing that could have been his.  His life would go on to end tragically.  As far as Elijah, he too had to face death.  Anyone who is father to another in deadly peril knows that he too must face death with his son, even when his son refuses to be fathered.  Yet, the story does not end here and neither does spiritual fatherhood.  Rejected by Ahab, hunted by Jezebel, afraid for his life and wanting to die, Elijah was invited into an even deeper intimacy with the Lord. He discovered in the face of disaster the still small voice of hope, and through faith built a new future. The death others wished on him was thwarted and the power of God was revealed – when this spiritual father sustained himself on the bread of angels and dared to stand in prayer on the Mountain of the Lord.  

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The Bread of Life and the Need of the Human Heart

Even earthly bread, if received with thanksgiving, is food for the heart. It joins us in fellowship and sustains not just our bodies, but something of our spirits too because of the love that it expresses. Yes – bread reveals the love of the one who provided it. This love is more important than the nutrients it contains.  If this is true of earthly gifts, how much more heavenly bread?   

God told Adam that he would need to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow among the thorns and thistles. Adam for his part suffered the labor for love of Eve and their children. So too God loves us – and suffers for us. God rained down manna for heaven when his people found themselves most in need of his providence.  Christ said that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. His bread was to do the will of the Father.  He also declared that He himself is the bread of life.  The Word of the Father is given as food for the heart.

From ancient times, the father of a family would break the bread and give it to the members of the household around his table. The offering of Melchizedek is a revelation of divine fatherhood, the paternal love that God has for humanity.  This is what this mysterious priest mediated to Abraham, father of many nations, when he made that ancient sacrificial bread offering.  Christ fulfills this mediation and endows these ancient cultic acts of taking, blessing, breaking, and distributing. He foreshadows this mystery in the multiplication of the loaves, He discloses its significance in his Bread of Life discourse. He establishes these actions in Him the night before He died. He seals their meaning with the offering of his body and blood on the Cross. The power of what he has entrusted to humanity opens eyes on the road to Emmaus. Hearts filled with fear and doubt are set ablaze with love.

The Eucharist, the great thanksgiving, feeds the heart what it most needs.  Without hope, the heart shrivels. The inevitability of death haunts our existence and crushing circumstances can cause us to lose our way. Something in us goads against death even as its alienating power threatens all that is most dear to us. How do we find our standing when our hearts are weak? Yet, God does not wish us to perish – so He feeds us with the Word of the Father, and our hearts, filled with new and eternal meaning, find strength to love again.

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Through the Wounds of Christ the Father Transforms our Wounds

To be a Christian is to be plunged into the mystery of the Trinity.  This mystery is one of both primordial and eschatological love for humanity.  Just how radical this love is defies any attempt to articulate. Yet the Word of the Father has spoken it once and for all in the silence that followed his last wordless cry.  The eternal meaning of this love confronts the ancient hostility that man has taken against God.  This hostility overshadows all that is good in the human heart, but this man-made could not hold back the light of God’s uncreated love. This light is the life of humanity. It shines on us through the Cross because on the Cross, the Word of the Father reveals a love that no sin, or weakness, no wound or imperfection, no power under the earth, on it or over it can ever overcome.  

Since the definitive triumph of good over evil is revealed in the Cross of Christ, then Christian prayer that is under the seal of that Cross also knows this victory. Put another way, participation in divine life and love flows through the sufferings of Christ. Christian prayer dares to enter those suffering depths.    

The reason such access could only only be given at the price of Christ’s blood pertains to the whole reality of sin. We have in our hearts a hostility to the Lord that prevents us from entering into communion with Him.  Contrary to some who accuse God, He is not the stumbling block. Our own indifference attempts to impede His mercy. His justice and righteousness is not the scandal. The scandal is our own hostility. We, by our own actions, close the door to the One who has come to us out of love. He suffers our lack of hospitality even as it is expressed in betrayal, denial, abandonment, the abuse of power, humiliation, and violent aggression. As prayer enters into this mystery of suffering, it discovers the life that he yearns to give. When the Word became flesh, he took into himself our hostility and suffered it in his obedient love.  

Thus, the wounds of Christ, wounds our own hostility has caused, have become sources of grace.  For the love of the Father revealed by Christ is not overcome by the chaos in our hearts.  In prayer, we find this chaos and if we humbly beg, the Father pours his mercy through it. The Father touches the misery, the absence of love in us, through the suffering of His Son, and when He touches our wounds He transforms them from storms of hostility and darkness into sources of divine kindness and light. Such is the power of the Cross.  The wounds of Christ heal our wounds and transform them into new vessels of his love.  

If the Father touches us through his Son, the touch of Christ leaves us the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  With the presence of the Holy Spirit, a taste for eternity lingers in the soul even where misery once robbed it of hope. We find in ourselves not only the desire but the ability to rise above the limits of the present circumstances and see the possibility of a greater freedom and truer love.  A confidence, a freedom is ours because God’s own strength floods through our veins.  We have partaken of the body and blood of Christ. In this way, the Holy Spirit lives in the wound of love God grants us – a wound that heals us and helps us realize the great dignity for which we are made. 

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Come Thou, Wisdom from on High

The Word comes – emptied and humbled for those who are empty and humble

Wisdom from on High
Not a subordinate idea, but primary, First Truth,
Not an appearance or feeling masking something absolute that lies beyond,
but the very manifestation of ultimate reality — indeed the very source and end of all that is.
Not for the world’s nostalgic sentimentality, but for the solemn purpose of heaven’s mirth,
Not static and remote, but dynamic and personally present,
Not abstract and universal, but particular and concrete,
Not repeatable and expected, but unique and surpassing every expectation,
Not in the strongest and greatest, but in the least and weakest,
Not changing and passing, but eternally firm and abiding,

A new dawn for those who believe,
His coming fullness fills everything though nothing can contain Him,
This Coming in history is renewed today in mystery for all who will ready their hearts –
– everything belongs to them:
The angel that declared His Mystery,
The womb that welcomed His coming,
The unborn Baptist who recognized Him,
The powerful who threatened Him,
The carpenter who protected Him,
The baptism that awaited Him

The Presence of God’s Excessive Love
For Divinity has chosen to dwell on earth in tender vulnerability
and today, as then, the human heart can welcome Him and become a divine dwelling.
Not familiar or comfortable, but inconvenient and unfamiliar for God and man,
A surprise, a new beginning, a secret joy that nothing can take away –
Tenderly suffering one’s another’s presence with such mutual hope,
To raise mysterious hymns of glory and to sing great canticles of praise,
On earth as it is in heaven,
The Word who comes, always comes anew
in the astonishing excessiveness of divine love.

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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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Grace Imbued Reason in the Womb of Wisdom

Reason in the womb of wisdom, this is how William of St. Thierry’s Golden Epistle describes the intellectual life of a Christian who disciplines his mind according to the Gospel of Christ.  Such a disciple strains to see, to behold the wonder of what God is doing in the world, so that he might live with the freedom of the sons and daughters of God.  

This pursuit of reason can take many forms. The pursuit of reason can also take up the Holy Bible and all that God has revealed in the life of the Church.  It might also seek meaning in the beauty of nature through any number of sciences, as long as in which ever science it is reason seeks out what in fact exists.  The pursuit of reason can also take up the Holy Bible and all that God has revealed in the life of the Church.  Yet, even the most natural forms of such study are open to flashes of a higher contemplation.  Dedicated study of the truth whereever it leads, as one of the highest exercises of human freedom, disposes those who genuinely love the truth to even more marvelous moments of liberty.

Yet the truth that is sought in this way is opposed to all forms of vain curiosity or the desire to manipulate for selfish purpose or any other effort to selfishly attain power or wealth or influence.  When reason seeks out of the brutality of such human wisdom, it remains out of harmony with reality and in a state of self-contradiction – such enslaving wisdom cannot attain any real freedom.

Reality, what is, does not admit of manipulation because it is endowed with so much meaning a created mind limited to its own resources not only is not able to exhaust its mystery — such limited reason is barely able to scratch its surface.  This is why a prideful and arrogant glance at reality never really sees true beauty and, as a result of this superficial observation, is incapable of wonder or adoration.  The only reason such servile reason ever attains is a futile grasping of what can never fully satisfy.  In the end, though it decorate itself in all kinds of data and the production of all kinds of results, such a pursuit never finds the firm ground on which alone humanity is able to be rectified, to stand tall.

God sent His Wisdom into the World so that human reason might be born in truth.  When reason pursues the truth with the first movements of humility, of faith, of love, of service to neighbor, of reverence to God, it is as if an embryo, the conception of a new form of life.  Striving to implant itself, to find the nourishment it needs to grow, grace moves such new embryonic reason to grace and from glory to glory: leaving behind what is safe and familiar, dying to old judgments that only hold it back, the converted mind seeks a new nourishment of which it is not yet familiar.  Such movements of graced reason find a place to rest only in the womb God has fashioned for it, the womb of His own Wisdom – a sacred place meant for life and love.    In the womb of Wisdom, human reason, like a fetus, is nourished for explosive growth in maturity and freedom.

Baptised in such wisdom, the Christian is born, the mind is renewed, and one discovers the confidence to offer bodily sacrifices which give true spiritual worship to God.   The Womb of Divine Wisdom, the womb where men and women learn by love and for love to see God’s vision of things, this is where reason imbued with grace begins to delight in the truth for which it was made, the spiritual life is born, and the dignity of humanity is raised up. 

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Following the Star

Epiphany is a celebration of the manifestation of the Lord to the whole world.  Pope St. Leo says it is the day that Abraham saw and longed to see.  This celebration includes the mystery of a radiant star whose mysterious light draws pilgrims from afar.  It is a light that shows, discloses and reveals where those who seek the Lord might find him.  The radiant splendor of this light is the source of jubilation for those who find it:  “Behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.  They were overjoyed at seeing the star” Mt 2:9 -10.

What did the Magi from the East mean when they explained, “We saw his star rising and have come to do him homage” Mt 2:2?  Were these Gentiles wise because they knew the Scriptures and prayed over its meaning?  These astrologers seem familiar with the the ancient oracle of  Balaam, “A star shall come forth from Jacob” Nm 24:17.

These Persians of the priestly caste were part of prophecy, witnesses that what was once promised was now being fulfilled, “Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you.”  As they followed the star, they came to the conviction that the hope of the Gentiles rested with the newborn King of Israel, “Nations shall walk to your light and kings will come to your dawning radiance.” “Bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord” they experienced for themselves how “The Lord will be your light forever” Isaiah 60:1, 3, 6, and 19.

The light these travelers saw was like the light St. John describes in the Apocalypse, “The city had no need for sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure” Rev. 21:23 and 24.  So important is this manifestation of glory that the Evangelist indicates this mystery at the very beginning of his Gospel, “In Him was life, and this life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” John 1:4-5.  This saving glory and this guiding light is found by following the Lord in faith, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” John 8:12.

The Star is connected to the Word disclosed in the words of Sacred Scripture.  Those who want to find this Star for themselves must search the Scriptures like the Magi searched the heavens.  As St. Maximus the Confessor explains, “A star glitters by day in the East and leads the wise men to the place where the incarnate Word lies, to who that the Word, contained in the Law and Prophets, surpasses in a mystical way knowledge derived from the senses and to lead the Gentiles to the full light of knowledge.  For surely the word of the Law and Prophets when it is understood with faith is like a star which leads those who are called by the power of grace in accordance with his decree to recognize the Word incarnate.”

This search, this prayer imbued gaze on the Scriptures, this lectio divina is worth the effort.  The Light of this Word brings peace and is transforming glory for those who gaze on it.  St. Augustine encourages, “The Lord of hosts is himself the King of Glory.  He will transform us and show us his face, and we shall be saved; all our longing will be fulfilled, all our desires satisfied.”

In the encounter with Christ this start establishes us in, the soul falls in love with the Lord in deeper ways and is moved to a loved filled adoration of the immensity of God and the greatness of his mercy.  The stillness and peace which brilliant radiance of the Word envelops the soul is so great, mystics like Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity are moved by this splendor to cry out in prayer, “I want to gaze on You always and remain in Your great light.  O my beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may not withdraw from Your radiance.”

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The Wisdom of God

I once asked a Carthusian why he embraced a life of silence and anonymity.  It seemed to me that he could have done more for the Church if he were actively ministering in the world.  I was thinking with the wisdom of men.  He answered me with the wisdom of God.

The Carthusian explained that by entering into silent anonymity God could make his prayer more fruitful for the salvation of the world than anything else he could possible accomplish on his own.   He understood the primacy of contemplation in the life of the Church, a truth which today is often neglected.  This primacy derives from the fact that the life of the Church is essentially the life of grace, a life freely given by Christ.  No method or technique or program or anything else born of human industry compels the Blood of the Lord — but the humble petition of a repentant sinner always moves Him to act.  Such is the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is foolishness to the world, but divine foolishness is wiser than the wisest man.  In the world, to make a name for yourself is important especially if you want to be successful.  In the mystery of God, to magnify the Lord is important if you want to be faithful.  In the world, your self-reliance makes a positive impression on most people for a short time, but whatever you accomplish by your cleverness eventually will be forgotten.  In God, your reliance on Him will be viewed negatively by most people for most of your life, but what God accomplishes by your trust will last forever.  What about when we are unfairly accused and mocked and rejected?  Christ never promised we would be treated fair when He commanded us to pick up our own cross and follow Him.  Yet this is exactly where the foolishness of God comes in.  In the wisdom of the world, such humiliation is a doom worse than death — but in the wisdom of God, this is a hidden blessing through which new life can flow into the Church by our loving obedience.

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The Key of Wisdom

In speaking about the Silence of God and its importance for the Christian life, Catherine de Hueck Doherty recounts her own journey into this silence and then makes this beautiful observation:

“There is a moment when God gives us a key to the mystery of life.  We always had a key to his heart, and he always had a key to our hearts.  But this is a special key.  It is the key of wisdom, which allows us to live a good life.  It is given to those who have walked the silver sands and, out of love for him, decided to plunge into the endless infinity of his sea of silence.  They needed the key to guide themselves amid the noises of the world.  They needed a key to choose what is wise. One of the things Satan does is confuse.  And his favorite confusion is to substitute earthly wisdom for divine wisdom.  Many are caught on this bait.  But with the key of wisdom one can avoid such pitfalls.  And this key can unlock many doors, even doors men have invented that block their own true progress.” Molchanie: The Silence of God, New York: Crossroads (1982), 88-89.

The key of wisdom is vital for those who yearn for true prayer.   Psychological techniques for meditation are often substituted for the silence of God.  This is because such methods yield spiritual experiences – but such experiences lack the wisdom that is only given in God’s silence.  Indeed, no psychological achievement or state of consciousness can replace the silence of divine love, the silence of a heart to heart with the Living God.  This silence lives in our holy patrimony of prayer.  It is entered into through the obedience of faith.  Because this heritage is not passed on as it should be, because it is often rejected as anachronistic out of nothing but chronological snobbery and a lack of confidence in God, we can sometimes find ourselves cut off from the silence in which this key of wisdom is found.   Catholics need to work to recover the tradition of true Christian prayer.

True prayer – where, pierced to the heart, we gaze on the Son of Mary gazing on us in love, where the Father delights in us and the Holy Spirits burns within – such prayer is possible by faith alone.  This standard is strongly articulated in terms of a warning for our time by a Camaldolese Hermit whose words were edited by Father Louis-Albert Lassus, O.P.:

“The dominate spiritual climate manifests … an extreme individualism.  It is not so much God who is of interest to us, to speak with Him and to belong to Him, but rather we look for personal experience, we shut ourselves up in our own spiritual search …Let us admit that, at present, a spiritual self-centeredness reigns, which arises from the current opinion that the world is only an appearance and that, basically, the self and God coincide.  If the supreme criterion of life in Christ is no longer adherence in faith to the Triune God, but personal experience, the change to a religious syncretism will be quickly made.”   In Praise of Hiddeness: The Spirituality of the Camaldolese Hermits of Monte Corona, Bloomingdale, OH: Ercam Editions (2007), 53
True faith opposes syncretism and the lack of confidence in God’s love which feeds it.   True faith creates space for a kind of prayer which deals with reality and one’s own hostility towards God.  True faith frees from individualism and self-centeredness because the prayer it makes possible leads to a heart to heart with the Lord.  By true faith prayer begins when we hear Christ beg us to give Him our misery that He might give us His glory.
In true contemplation, the world is not an appearance but the place God manifests his glory.  We pray precisely because “the self” is not God but someone in whom God has placed his hope.  Prostrating ourselves before the One who is so beautifully other than we are – this is our freedom from individualism and self-centeredness.  Such a raising of our hearts and minds to Him is pregnant with gratitude even when some gifts He offers are especially hard to accept.  What does the key of wisdom unlock for the soul that hungers for a true conversation with God, a conversation that is open to sacred silence?  Even in the deepest sorrows, most tragic disappointments and overwhelming trials, souls like Catherine de Hueck Doherty witness the discovery of astonishing tokens of friendship from the One who constantly lavishes us with his immense love in ever new, ever unimaginable ways.
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