Lectio
“In the boundless dynamism of human consciousness, we implicitly experience the Holy Mystery as the atmosphere, ground, and horizon of all daily knowing and loving. It is the intimacy at the root of all that we do. It’s our basal spiritual metabolism.”
— Fr. Harvey D. Egan, Karl Rahner: Theological Giant of the Twentieth Century (lecture)
Meditatio
While we can look around at creation to see the work of the Creator, and we can know of his existence by all of the beauty, complexity, and mystery in nature, where we truly come to know God is in our hearts. That is, in the consciousness beneath our consciousness. For it is there that he makes himself known. It is in the abyss of our beings, beneath and beyond anything we can think, see, hear, taste, or touch, where God calls to us and draws us from his home in our hearts to the eternity of his.
But it is impossible to plumb these depths without first being called there. Our encounters with the Holy Spirit that resides within us are always first initiated by that same Holy Spirit. That is, we are powerless to seek God without God’s mysterious grace empowering us to do so.
For this reason, salvation is a process of submission to grace in faith, and not some noble, courageous, or righteous act that we take of our own power or volition. Therefore, we cannot brag or boast about whatever good we have in our hearts, because only God is good, and all of the good in us is from God. Likewise, whatever closeness with our Creator we experience is the result of his lifting the veil between us, not of some special effort we have put forth or labor we have undertaken.
And yet, as we are called into this relationship with the Spirit of God that dwells within us, and as we are drawn deeper into the abyss of eternity from which we came and toward which we are headed, we come to find that it is, and always was, within us. We come to find that what we are actually being called to is to become the truest and fullest versions of ourselves.
That the ground of our being is the ground of Godself within us calling us to itself.
Oratio
closer to me
than I am to myself
calling me deeper
into who I really am
the loving abyss
into which I surrender
the darkness
the emptiness
the indescribable fullness
of Holy Mystery
into which I dissolve
or am made whole
eternally
someday
or so I pray
Contemplatio
In the moment of graced awareness, when the veil was lifted, even if for but a second, what, if anything, were you lacking?
Related Scripture
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” — 1 Corinthians 3:16 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like When Grace Comes Calling: The Gift We Cannot Earn or Control, which explores the same paradox at the heart of this piece — that even our turning toward God is God’s initiative, and that grace is the precondition of our consent to it.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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