God, Just as He Is, and You, Just as You Are

“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” (Mt 11:27)

Today’s great solemnity of the Sacred Heart is imaged by the incarnate Son, Jesus, pointing to his heart.  To me, this speaks of God’s desire to be in intimate relationship with each of us, his creatures, his desire to be known as he knows us to our depths.

Scripture witnesses to God’s primordial intention of being in intimate relationship with his human creatures.  Genesis tells us how the Lord God regularly took a walk with Adam and Eve “at the breezy time of the day” (Gn 3:8).  The effect of the Fall is indicated when God came looking for them: “the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Gn 3:8).  Even after the Fall distorted humanity’s relationship with God in a devastating way, he still approached individuals, in hope of drawing near to his people once again.  He approached Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, drawing them into ongoing and deepening experience of himself.  God is a relational God; he can’t stay away.

Moses stands out as one to whom God spoke “face to face, as a person speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11).  He expressed the desire for this relationship that is written into our being: “Let me see your glory” (Ex 33: 17-18).  The Fathers of the Church point out Moses’ spiritual daring in asking to see God.  St Irenaeus comments:
“By his own powers man cannot see God, yet God will be seen by men because he wills it. He will be seen by those he chooses, at the time he chooses, and in the way he chooses, for God can do all things.”
St Peter Chrysologus adds:
“The flame of divine love enkindled human hearts and its intoxication overflowed into men’s senses. Wounded by love, they longed to look upon God with bodily eyes. … A love that desires to see God may not have reasonableness on its side, but it is the evidence of filial love.”
We come into ourselves when we allow this transcendent desire for God to grasp us and mold our actions.

The fulfillment of this movement of God toward his people is his coming in the flesh.  From now on, in Jesus, God has a name, a face, and a heart.  St Bernard explains that he came to us as one of us so that we would be attracted to him, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, by the bonds of human love.  This is the beginning of a deepening relationship that will gradually become more spiritual but will never cease to be personal.

I am currently reading The Practice of Spiritual Direction, by Barry & Connolly, which really homes in on the centrality of personal relationship with God, being able to address God directly, to listen to his response, to enter into dialogue.  This may seem obvious to us, but there are many people who do not know what it means to be in relationship with God, even if they engage in formal prayer.  God is not an idea, a set of values or an image, but a person.  Entering into relationship with God is in some ways no different than with any other person.  We must pay attention to the other person and respond to them, which allows for growth in intimacy, and invites us to live out the consequences of the relationship.  God speaks to us through creation, through Scripture, through life, and through world events.  Paying attention means openness to reality, to newness, to otherness, a willingness to become absorbed in what we see and hear.  When we pay attention to God, we begin to realize that he is his own person, surprising and challenging, not controlled by our preferences or expectations.  And when God becomes real, we can be real with him.  We can go beyond expressing our superficial self, our ideal self, to a level of transparency built on trust.  We can begin to express to God “inner facts” – I love this phrase – the real reactions to life and to God that are stirred in us.  In fact, when communication with God seems to have broken down, it may be not because he has withdrawn, but because we have not been open to engage in dialogue, to acknowledge our real feelings and desires, to accept his invitation to deeper relationship.  We have hidden ourselves.

In our monastic tradition, a primary means of paying attention to God is the practice of lectio divina – the daily exposure to the Scriptures as a place of personal encounter with God.  The example of St Antony shows how hearing the Scriptures proclaimed and allowing this word to touch our hearts can lead to a changed life.  From his youth, Antony was open to the word of God: “attentive to what was read, keeping in his heart what was profitable in what he heard” (Athanasius, Life of St Antony, ch. 1).  After the death of his parents, he heard the word in a new and deeper way in which he felt personally addressed: “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you have and give to the poor; and come follow me and you will have treasure in heaven,” and his immediate response was to give away all he had and dedicate himself to a life of asceticism and prayer (Athanasius, Life of St Antony, chh. 2, 3).  Our monastic forebears emphasized the moral and spiritual levels on which the word of God is understood – the level of personal dialogue with God.  Cistercians put particular emphasis on the Song of Songs as an expression of this ongoing relationship, complete with “pauses, disappearances, hesitations, frustration, … unfulfilled hope, and seeking in the dark” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction, p. 27).  It has always been striking to me that the bride and bridegroom of the Song relate to one another as equals.  Though we are clearly not God’s equals, the implication is that he chooses to come to us as one person to another, face to face and heart to heart.

Another primary means of speaking to God integral to our monastic life is the Divine Office.  The protestant biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has a wonderful book, Praying the Psalms, in which he outlines how these ancient poems educate us in speaking to God honestly, transparently, and fearlessly, about our inner world:
“In order to pray the Psalms, our work (liturgy is indeed work) is to let our voices and minds and hearts run back and forth in regular and speedy interplay with the stylized and sometimes too familiar words of scripture and our experience which we sense with poignancy. … I suggest that most of the Psalms can only be prayed by people who are living at the edge of their lives, sensitive to the raw hurts, the primitive passions, and the naïve elations that are at the bottom of our life.  For most of us, liturgical or devotional entry into the Psalms requires a real change of pace.  It asks us to depart from the closely managed world of public survival, to move into the open, frightening, healing world of speech with the Holy One.” (Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, pp. 16, 20)
Many psalms speak in a frank and evocative way about things we may not find suitable to address to God as we know him: pain, sickness, fear, grief, abandonment, desolation, anger, vengeance might be feelings we would rather hide.  Yet others offer us means to share with God in an explicit way our desire, hope, trust, relief, abundance, joy, and gratitude.

The final primary means of relating to God is through prayer of a less wordy kind – silent or contemplative prayer.  The first time I read the Cloud of Unknowing, I was a college student.  While intrigued by the work’s reputation as a spiritual masterpiece, and attracted to the form of prayer proposed there, I was sidetracked by a misinterpretation of the text, which made it out to be more of a technique than a living relationship.  We can hear phrases such as “naked intent,” “blind groping of desire,” and “nothingness is all,” assume we know what they mean and proceed to put all our energy into accomplishing them, without realizing that these terms only make sense in light of experience.  Prayer which consists exclusively of refusing access to just about all thoughts quickly becomes dry and meaningless and is abandoned.  In my invincible ignorance, I had glossed over the author’s many attempts to avoid misunderstanding and misdirected effort.  Re-reading this work recently, I was able to receive it on a whole other level.  I realized that it was not about technique but about relationship, seeking God himself for himself and refusing to be sidetracked by anything less, anything other than he.  A later work attributed to the same author makes it very explicit that prayer is essentially about relationship between a real person and a real God:
“All that matters now is that this unseeing awareness of your basic self should be carried up with glad, vigorous love and, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, united with the precious being of God, just as he is in himself, no more and no less.” (Epistle of Privy Counsel, 2)
In a word, prayer is: “All-that-you-are-as-you-are worshiping all-that-he-is-as-he-is.” (Epistle of Privy Counsel, 4)

Today is a day to reflect with gratitude on this offer of intimate personal relationship extended to each of us by our incarnate God, nourished by lectio, liturgy and prayer, and drawing us ever closer to his heart.  Will we take up his invitation?