URGENT

In the midst of the news, the urgency is right here. Read it carefully, and slowly. From an Italian nobleman, centuries ago, who ended up in England. Anselmo d'Aosta, alias Anselm of Canterbury.


I heard this in French on a CD by the admirable and bilingual Michael Lonsdale, and couldn't wait to find it in English. Here it is. I have labelled it "urgent' because I am increasingly convinced that it is. While the Anglicans are into ecclesiological treaties and the Vatican is busy blocking Cardinal Sarah, the urgency is right here. Incredibly moving. 
"Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in him.
Enter into the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything save God and what can be of help in your quest for him and having locked the door seek him out. Speak now, my whole heart, speak now to God: 'I seek your countenance, O Lord, your countenance I seek.'
Come then, Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you.
Lord, if you are not present here, where, since you are absent, shall I look for you ? On the other hand, if you are everywhere why then, since you are present, do I not see you ? But surely you dwell in light inaccessible. And where is this inaccessible light, or how can I approach the inaccessible light ? Or who shall lead me and take me into it that I may see you in it ? Again, by what signs, under what aspect, shall I seek you ? Never have I seen you, Lord my God, I do not know your face.
What shall he do, most high Lord, what shall this exile do, far away from you as he is ? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and yet cast off far from your face ? He yearns to see you and your countenance is too far away from him. He desires to come close to you, and your dwelling place is inaccessible; he longs to find you and does not know where you are; he is eager to seek you out and he does not know your countenance.
Lord, you are my God and my Lord, and never have I seen you. You have created me and recreated me and you have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. In fine, I was made in order to see you, and I have not yet accomplished what I was made for.
And you, O Lord, how long ? How long, Lord, will you be unmindful of us ? How long will you turn your countenance from us ? When will you look upon us and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes and show your countenance to us ? When will you give yourself again to us?
Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, show yourself to us. Give yourself to us that it may be well with us, for without you it goes so ill for us. Have pity upon our efforts and our strivings towards you, for we can avail nothing without you.
Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek you if you do not teach me how, nor find you unless you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in desiring you; let me desire you in seeking you; let me find you in loving you; let me love you in finding you."

Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion I.

GLINTING RIPPLE, SLOW TIDE

Half-awake at 5 a.m. after a transatlantic flight is a good time and condition to reflect, meditate and pray. I had been reading Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, which always enchants me by its simplicity and by the flavour it gives of the man -- Nicolas Hermann, a 17th-century Lorrain of little education, who became first a footman -- but, being large and clumsy, he broke things --, then a soldier, was lamed and then joined a religious order as a lay brother, working in the monastery kitchen for 40 years. A grander and more educated clergyman interviewed him on a number of occasions and wrote down Brother Lawrence's replies, as well as some things he'd heard about him.

The Practice, as the little volume of the interviews is called, radiates a perfectly simple faith. He knows that, left to himself, he is a wretched piece of humanity, and he keeps wondering why God has done him so many favours. and goes on doing so. But he refuses to worry about it, because that's up to God. So he goes about his daily business, constantly placing himself in God's presence, because that is all that really matters for our souls: even in a clattering busy monastery kitchen with everyone shouting for stuff at the same time, he does his work with admirable serenity. And if he fails at something, he says, he is never surprised, because if he didn't get constant help from God he'd be like that, perfectly useless, all the time.

So, pondering that at 5 a.m., I was taken back (and yes, slightly taken aback, too) to my experiences on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, with a sort of tide of immense peace creeping up the beach of my consciousness. And it occurred to me that in fact all one needs to do is to be completely open and receptive; because God is everywhere and always around us and asks nothing better than to be in us as well. Hardly a new thought; but for whom it happens to, a new experience.

Later, over EMT (Early Morning Tea), I read the passage about the "Journey to the Purity of Heart" in the admirable  Carthusian publication The Wound of Love, in the light of those considerations. The Carthusian points out that it will be a long and difficult journey, but that eventually Grace will complete the task for us. Well, I thought: did Brother Lawrence not find a shortcut? But the Carthusian did agree that we receive rather than achieve; only, he said (and this was the most useful point he made), it cannot be had cheaply -- I thought of T.S.Eliot: "a condition of complete simplicity/ costing not less than everything".

Brother Lawrence, a soul of great and childlike simplicity to start with, paid the price in length of years. Some of the Carthusian Fathers paid and pay it, one assumes, in spiritual exercises. And for those of us in the world it may be paid in all kinds of experience, disappointment, suffering -- or, if the Lord keeps showering one with undeserved and unexpected favours, perhaps in years and (intermittent) constancy also. The low, gentle ripple creeping up my beach, after all, had taken more than five years to get there since, on my 70th birthday, I decided that rock-climbing, hiking the Pyrenees and crossing Europe on a motorcycle were not going to happen, I needed a new adventure proper to my age, and chose faith as the most suitable. Mmmmmm -- was it I who did the choosing?

JOY IN THE DARK

It is interesting that the only two Sundays in the liturgical year that have joyous names fall in the middle of sober, even penitential seasons. In the midst of Lent there is Laetare; the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday – “Rejoice!”

Today was Gaudete, and the rejoicing was linked to John the Baptist replying to the envoys of the Pharisees. “No,” he said, “no, I am not the Messiah.” “Uh, huh? So, are you the Prophet Elijah?” “No, I’m not Elijah.” “OK, listen. We have to have an answer for the guys who sent us, all right? So who are you really?”

[Long, pregnant silence. Finally the scarecrow in rags with Al Pacino’s face deigns to answer. And he replies with a quotation.]

“I am the voice that cries in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’”

[? ? ?]

“In the midst of you there is Someone you do not know: Someone whose sandals I’m not worthy to undo.”

Temporary end of story. Beginning for us. As someone in France wrote: In the midst of us there is the Someone we do not recognise. He is here, already. He is here, among us. Whose face he has taken, we don’t know. We look around us and see all kinds of people on the train, in the shopping mall. Which one of them is He? We don’t know. Perhaps the best bet is to say, Anyone of them; Everyone of them; All of them.

The presence of God is one of the astonishing mysteries that gets deeper as you live and think about it longer. This morning I was at Mass in a vast and icy cold village church on a mountaintop, where the echo and the sound-system combined to make part of the service and almost all of the sermon incomprehensible. And yet, at the Consecration, at the Peace, and at the Communion, there was a sense of the Presence I have rarely felt. And the awaiting of the Birth became very quiet, and very joyful – an extension of ‘Be it unto me according to Thy word’ and of the Magnificat: the quiet, accepting, awaiting joy of Mary.

So today, three candles: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; but all of them burning in Mary’s inner room. Rejoice!