The Grandeur of God and the sanctification of this world

 

Dear friends,                  

 

The life of the mature Christian and Friend of the Holy Face of Jesus, is inevitably marked by the tension between contemplation and action, prayer and service. It has always been so and, judging from the gospel teaching of Jesus himself, it will always be so. He tells his beloved disciples, during his discourse at the Last Supper:

 

«If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own; the reason it hates you is that you do not belong to the world. But I chose you out of the world (Jn 15:19).»

 

Again, in his priestly prayer to his Father, he prays not for the world but for these you have given me, for they are really yours; (Jn 17:9) and of these chosen ones he says:

 

«They are not of the world, any more than I belong to the world (Jn 17:16).»

 

Yet these "anti-world" statements of the Lord are balanced, in the very same passages of St. John's Gospel, by a strong sense of mission to "the world," of life and service for the sanctification of this world:

 

«I do not ask you (Father) to take them out of the world, but to guard them from the evil one. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world, I consecrate myself for their sakes now, that they may be consecrated in truth (Jn 17:15, 18-19).»

 

With the recent events we are strongly reminded about evil and hatred in this world of ours. We wonder if the end is not near. Seeing what we have seen in the last few weeks we might want to think the Lord is coming back. We are not sure anymore and a lot of "prophets" will say that it is the beginning of the end. And may be we want to withdraw from the world. We feel that the world is the irredeemable, hostile environment within which we found ourselves because of sin, and from which we have to escape by a yoga-like process of asceticism and withdrawal, the problem for Christian faith would not be so great. It would be difficult, of course, to live angelically in this sinful environment, but at least it would be perfectly clear who were the "good guys" and who the bad. As in the classic and simplistic Westerns of 30 or 40 years ago, one would always be able to tell the forces of good (the cowboys) from the forces of evil (the Indians). Everything, and everyone, would be black or white, with no shades of gray. The world would be unam­biguously bad, and flight from it into the realm of pure contemplation of God would be clearly the only good. And, indeed, such a Christian vision of the world has attracted powerful support during the two thousand years of our history-from the Manicheans division between spirit (the work of the good God of Jesus) and flesh (created by and subordinate to, an evil deity), through the Reformation stress on the radical sinfulness of man, to the recent tendency to divide the whole world into "godless" communists and God-fearing free men. It is much easier for man, it would seem, to cope with a world in which good and evil are thus sharply distinguished -in which there is only black and white, with no confusing shades of gray to contend with.              

 

The first disciples, like us, wished it were so. But Jesus insisted they were wrong. In his vision, the evil weeds grow intermingled with the good wheat- in this world of ours-so much so that we cannot totally uproot the weeds before the harvest without also destroying the wheat: St. Matthew recounts this striking parable of Jesus: "The reign of God may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds through his wheat and then, made off. When the crop began to mature and yield grain, the weeds made their appearance as well. The owner's slaves came to him and said, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where are the weeds coming from?' He answered: 'I see an enemy's hand in this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go out and pull them up?' 'No,' he replied, 'pull up the weeds and you might take the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until the harvest; then at harvest time I will order the harvesters, First collect the weeds and bundle them up to burn, then gather the wheat into my barn' " (Mt 13:24-30).

 

Somewhat later in the same chapter, Matthew has the disciples come to Jesus and say, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field." And Jesus replies to them: "The farmer so wing good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, the good seed the citizens of the kingdom. The weeds are the followers of the evil one and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, while the harvesters are the angels" (13:36-39). So this world of ours is a fertile field in which both good seed and evil, wheat and weeds, good men and bad, can flourish. And, mysteriously, both the weeds and the wheat must be allowed to grow together until the harvest time. Their roots are so intertwined in the same soil of the world-they grow so closely together- that a complete uprooting of the weeds would very likely also destroy the wheat. Moreover, I believe we can legitimately apply Jesus' parable to the individual Christian: That is, while Matthew has Jesus say that the field is the world, and the good and evil seed are good and evil men, I believe it is also true (particu­larly in the light of what St. Paul says, in Romans 7, about the "two laws" which are at war within every believer) that the field is the soul of the believer, and the good and evil seed are the good qualities and evil inclinations, the virtues and vices, which coexist in this little field. Here, too, it seems that the good and the evil must often be allowed to grow together until the harvest lest in totally uprooting the evil we also destroy the good.

 

Why is this so? I must admit that I cannot really understand it. Naturally speaking, it seems to me (as it does, I assume, to virtually every human being) that it- would be better to destroy the weeds-that the field which is my soul is somehow polluted and unworthy of God because of their presence. But, at the same time, I have learned by experience that this complete eradication of the weeds is impossible to me. We must continually labour at the weeding of this garden of ours (whether the garden be the world or our own souls), and yet some weeds never seem to be eradicated. So, while I do not really understand why the weeds must be allowed to grow with the wheat until the end, this passage (along with Romans 7) is one of the most consoling parts of Scripture for me. I suppose I don't need to know why the Lord is so tolerant, as long as I know that he is! The only response possible to me is to try to be as tolerant with myself and others as he is with us. This is why reparation is so important, it gives us a chance to interceed for the world for the salvation of souls and also thank the Lord for being so merciful and tolerant for all those who do not thank him and praise him.

 

The world, then, is a mysterious, ambivalent reality: sometimes good, sometimes evil, sometimes the one soil in which both good and evil grow. The one thing that seems clear is that Christian faith (unlike some of the other great religions of history) cannot do without, or be understood apart from, the world. The incarnation of Jesus has forever committed God, for better or worse, to this world of ours. And where he is, his disciples must also be. They can be sanctified only where he was-in time and space and flesh. We as Friends of the Holy Face of Jesus, should show solidarity. In the process we will experience all that he experienced-he who, "in the days when he was in the flesh, offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Heb5:7-8).

 

We seek to discover the relationship between the world, in which the pray-er lives and serves, and the experience of mature prayer which I describe as the "dry well," and which Christian spirituality also knows as the "dark night" or "the cloud of unknowing." Many questions, at various levels, could be asked about the relationship for the Christian between the world and the "prie-dieu" (the kneeler for prayer which is still com­monly found in the sanctuaries of our churches), be­tween active life in the world and Christian prayer. The specific question to which the present reflection ad­dresses itself is the following: What is the relationship between prayer and service, between the 'inner" and the "outer" life, for a friend of the Holy Face of Jesus in particular, for one whose prayer has come to be almost entirely dry and "passive"? What the Lord is leading us to, by means of the dryness and darkness, which runs so counter to our own expectations, and our own natural desires. So often we want to be close to God and feel his presence and then we encounter dryness.

 

I realized that there was still more to be said about the dry well. Many souls, it seems, come to peace with the interior experience of dryness and darkness, and yet do not see the connection between this inner desert and their outer lives, their work in the world and their life in whatever communities the Lord has made them part of. Often there is a tension between the inner and the outer: work, family, community, social concerns all seem, somehow, to be obstacles to the contemplative work the Lord is bringing about in the souls. At times we feel that perhaps we are called to flee the world, to give ourselves up totally, whether in a cloister or in a desert hermitage, to the work of interior transformation. Or, if such flight is simply impossible (as it would be for the mother of a young family), we resign ourselves to a split-level life, a sort of spiritual schizophrenia, in which the only relationship between our interior dry well and the demands of our active life in the world seems to be one of continual tension. Yet, the split and the tension need not exist. We hope to see that the outer and the inner, the world and the prie-dieu, they can be harmoniously integrated in the work of purification which I have called the dry well. It is the same God working, both at the prie-dieu and in the world. The darkness in the world of our active lives is as much a part of the dry-well experience of contemplation as is the inner darkness of our formal prayer. That, at least, is my conviction.

,

 

When I began to reflect on this world of darkness, and to put my thoughts on paper, it was still not very clear to me how prie-dieu and world were interrelated in the contemplative work. My "hero," St. John of the Cross, could not be of much direct help to me here, since he writes for those who can, and are called to, withdraw totally from the world. St. Teresa of Avila is much more helpful, since (I believe) she recognized that the world and thus the darkness in the world is as much a part of the cloistered, contemplative life as it is of life in the world. Her world may be smaller than that of the active apostle or the lay Christian, but it is just as noisy and no less dark! But even Teresa did not experience, or directly discuss, the world of darkness as we are called to experience it.

 

On the other hand, while much has been written-especially since Vatican Il-about the role of the Christian in the world, I do not believe that the contemplative dimension of this involvement has been much explored. There is a passage in a book of Carlo Carretto, which is very much to our point. The author, speaking to busy people who say they have no time to pray, writes, "Try to look at the reality in which you live-your work, your commit­ments, your relationships . . . -as a single whole from which you cannot disengage yourself, a whole which you have to think about. I shall say more: a whole by means of which God speaks to you and through which he guides you."(Carlo Carretto, The Desert in the city, Collins, 1979, p.21) As Carretto's book makes clear, however, he is really concerned with a different question from ours. He is speaking to the urban man and woman of today, and he is seeking to show them how they can create, or discover, a desert (of contemplation) right in the midst of the city where they are called to live. By contrast, our concern is to discover how the "city" itself is really an integral part of the "divine desert" of contemplative transforma­tion.

 

It would seem, then, that we are, as friends of the Holy Face of Jesus, called to explore together what may be virgin terri­tory. St. Martha of Bethany becomes a central figure. She has always figured in the Chris­tian literature on prayer, but almost invariably as a foil for her sister, Mary, the true contemplative who had chosen "the better part."

 

Martha comes to centre stage: She taught me, as I hope she will teach you, some very beautiful lessons about the meaning of the world of darkness (her kitchen being her world) in the contemplative life of purification and transformation in God.

 

It seemed evident that the Lord of love was really working to the same end in the world and at the prie-dieu. This was an exciting discovery, because it meant that there is no need for spiritual schizophrenia in our lives as "active contemplative". As Martha it is "praying always"; it is a "contemplative in action" (to use the great Ignatian phrase).

 

I would like to end this by referring to a poem, which I have long loved. It is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit, and it captures perfectly the mystery of God's grandeur embodied in our darkness, so totally embodied that the two cannot really be separated in Hopkins' vision:

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to greatness, like ooze of oil Crushed.

Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared

with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black west went

Oh, morning, and the brown brink eastward, springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

 

World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings. (Gerard Manley Hopkins, s.j.  "God's Grandeur")

 

As I said, I have long loved Hopkins' poem; the mysterious interpenetration of wonder and sadness-wonder at the grandeur of God continually revealed in our world, and sadness that all is bleared, smeared, smudged in the hands of man, in my hands. It takes much longer, though, to realize that the "grandeur" and the "smudging" were really fused together in the design of God, that he was and is, forever, Redeemer; that is, that, in taking on our sinful nature He made sin his own. He became sin (incredible as it sounds) in order that we sinners might become holy. "For our sakes God made him who did not know sin, to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God" (2 Cor 5:21).

 

Did Hopkins realize this when he wrote "God's Grandeur"? Did he merely mean that the light of God and the darkness of man coexist side by side in this world of ours, with the Holy Spirit's light ulti­mately victorious? Or did he see more deeply, with St. Paul, that the Light and the darkness have inter­penetrated so totally that the Light shines in the darkness and transforms the very darkness itself?

 

But then, who can ever really understand a God like this? The more we contemplate the Holy Face the more we will be able to understand It will take, quite literally, an eternity of exploration, of contemplation of the mysterious depths of this beautiful God of ours. I can only hope that Darkness in the world will be, for me and for you, one small step on that endless journey of discovery of the Grandeur of our God.

 

Inspired by a reflection from father Thomas H. Green

Michel Nolin asf