LATE AND SOON

In a time when many are shaken; in the winter season when sunshine is rare; at moments when ways ahead are unclear or menacing; one aid -- never easy, but always there -- is the existence of the Carthusians. Above is their symbol: the seven stars are St Bruno and the six companions with whom he founded the Order; the motto explains the image: "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" -- "the Cross stands, while the world turns". To their writings, always anonymous, we can turn when the world is too much with us. And from one of their books,  The Wound of Love: a Carthusian Miscellany (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), I share this magnificent passage of consolation.

           The encounter that love desires, between God and me, involves my whole being. Its rendezvous will be the truth, communion between my true self and the true God. But who am I? I enter into the deep caverns of my spirit in order to discover myself and then to be able to give myself. I encounter my demons, the dark forces that dwell in me. I name some of them, but they are legion. I try to determine my interior face, but it dissolves into a thousand changing masks. I want to offer my heart, but my freedom shows itself host to innumerable determinisms, the majority of which elude me. So, am I only the ephemeral confluence of impersonal and obscure forces?

            No, even if all the ‘matter’ of my being were such, my spirit can look at it from outside and say yes or no to it. Seeing what little light I have, I can trust in the light that comes from God and receive from his word the ultimate knowledge of myself. So I know, in faith, that I am made in the image of God, a subject endowed with freedom, called by God to a communion of love, son of the Father in the Son, by the gift of the Spirit. It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am. My chastity is humble attention before the mystery that dwells in me, that transcends me.

'It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am.'