Kindle Notes & Highlights
The better a man learns to pray, the more deeply he finds that all his stammering is only an answer to God’s speaking to him;
God’s word is his invitation to us to be with him in the truth. We are in danger of drowning on the open sea, and God’s word is the rope ladder thrown down to us so that we can climb up into the rescuing vessel. It is the carpet, rolled out toward us so that we can walk along it to the Father’s throne. It is the lantern which shines in the darkness of the world (a world which keeps silence and refuses to reveal its own nature); it
casts a softer light on the riddles which torment us and encourages us to keep going. Finally, God’s word is himself, his most vital, his innermost self: his only-begotten Son, of the same nature as himself, sent into the world to bring it home, back to him. And so God speaks to us from heaven and commends to us his Word, dwelling on earth for a while: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him” (Mt 17:5).
Harassed by life, exhausted, we look about us for somewhere to be quiet, to be genuine, a place of refreshment. We yearn to restore our spirits in God, to simply let go in him and gain new strength to go on living. But we fail to look for him where he is w...
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“Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe”—and who, perhaps, believe all the more readily for not being able to see.
“You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (Jn 5:39-40; 46-47).
The “life” which is in the Word is not the fitful spark which the children of Adam nurture within themselves. It is genuine life, full-blown and definitive;
The glory of God is man fully alive
If we want to live in his light, we must listen to his word, which always addresses us personally, which is always new since it is always free.
The word of God can require something of me today that it did not require yesterday; this means that, if I am to hear this challenge, I must be fundamentally open and listening.
Mary's great Fiat
But this fellowship at the level of being, preeminently mediated to us in the sacraments, can only persist if it is also at the level of spirit, i.e., if the word’s freedom is matched by a corresponding readiness on man’s side to hear, follow and accept.
The vital thing is the living encounter with the God who speaks to us in his Word, whose eyes pierce and purify us “like a flame of fire” (Rev 1:14),
Unless he responds by such obedience to the free word of God in him, man is
not living up to the idea which God the Father had of him at creation.
Man was created to be a hearer of the word, and it is in responding to the word that he attains his true dignity.
Man
is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself. He is built like a tabernacle around a most sacred mystery.
This looking to God is contemplation. It is looking inward into the depths of the soul, and hence beyond the soul toward God. The more contemplation finds God, the more it forgets itself and yet discovers itself in him.
But the being of God, which is revealed to us in his word, is not only for the eyes of the lover. In itself, in all objectivity, it is the unique marvel, ever new. No seraph, no saint in all eternity could “get used” to it; in fact, the longer one gazes into this mystery, the more one longs to go on gazing, glimpsing the fulfillment of that to which our entire creaturely nature aspires. The creature, seeing and hearing God, experiences the highest bliss of self-fulfillment, but it is fulfilled by something infinitely greater than itself, and its fulfillment and bliss are commensurately great.
Even in eternity itself God will not cease, in the freest self-giving, to be our fulfillment; so that even when we enjoy the vision of God we shall always be hanging on his every word, we shall always be listening to him.
In the eucharist (and in all the Church’s sacraments, and in the Church as a whole, seen as sacrament) we are incorporated into the incarnate Word at the level of being; as Paul constantly repeats, we are “in Christ”: he is our milieu, the medium in which we live. It is so close to us in silent intimacy that it goes unnoticed, but we encounter it in its sovereign, personal
freedom and spiritual character in the express word of scripture, preaching and church teaching, and above all in contemplation.
the eucharist demands contemplation. The Christian’s existence as a tabernacle demands that he exist as a hearer of the word. If he is to cherish the word within him he must attend to the word which is above him.
Thus everything points us to the perfect Christian who saw herself as the recipient, the womb of the Word of God, and the one who brought the word to fulfillment: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Mary is the “image of the Church” for two reasons: she is the location of the Word’s indwelling, both bodily and in terms of being, in the most intimate union of mother and child sharing one flesh; but this indwelling arises from the spiritual servanthood of
her whole person, body and soul, which knows no autonomy but only the law of conformity with the word of God. It is because she is a virgin, that is, pure, exclusively a hearer of the word, that she becomes a mother, the place of the Word’s embodiment. Her “breasts” are blessed only because she has heard the word of God and kept it (Lk 11:27 f), because she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19, 51). All contemplation must take its directions from Mary if it is to keep the twofold danger at bay: on the one hand that of seeing the word as something merely external,
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The hearer par excellence is the virgin, who becomes pregnant with the Word and bears it as her Son and the Father’s. As for herself, even as Mother she remains a handmaid; the Father alone is Lord, together with the Son who is her life and who fashions it. She is the product of him who is the fruit of her womb. She still carries him within herself, even after she has given birth to him; to find him, all she has to do is to look into her heart, which is full of him. Still, she does not neglect to contemplate the growing child beside her, the youth, the man. His thoughts and actions continually
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How can a person seriously believe that God is love and has given himself up for us on the cross, because he has loved and chosen us from all eternity and has predestined us for an eternity of bliss in his presence—how can anyone seriously believe this “to be true” and at the same time refuse to love God in return or despair of God’s love?
“milieu”—a milieu for which the creature,
“Cogitor, judicor: ergo sum.” The creature comes
view
he is the eternally Beloved of the Father; he is also the One sent and authentically accredited by the Father, to see whom is to see the Father, and there is no path to the Father which does not pass through him. The
his death and resurrection: “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:14-20).
God, who became “flesh” like us so that we should become “spirit” in him, and who therefore “is able to help” us toward our “heavenly call”, since he was “made like his brethren in every respect”
Simon the fisherman could have explored every region of his ego prior to his encounter with Christ, but he would not have found “Peter”
(credo ut intelligam),
(intelligo ut credam),
It is only “in Christ” that things can attain their ultimate goal and meaning,
And the man who actually submitted to God’s control was the same who was prepared, on coming into the world, “to do God’s will” (Heb 10:5, 7); on the cross and in the resurrection, as the new Adam, he gave his consent as the exemplar and representative of us all.
the Word which is his Son, comes to full expression by giving up his life for us, giving us his flesh and his Spirit and incorporating
us into him; we are drawn into the divine, triune love through the two modes of his being as Word.
His prodigality bursts the bounds of finite life as the Son returns to the infinite Father, together with whom, from all eternity, he breathes and shares the one Spirit.
In this sense the Spirit, proceeding
from the Father, is visible in salvation history even before the Son: as the Spirit of God in the Old Covenant; as Wisdom, poured out on the prophets and into the whole creation; then as the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant, alighting on Mary the Virgin to bring the Word to her and cause him to become, in her, first flesh and then “Spirit” again.
In the Spirit she utters that Yes of hers which is the origin of all Christian contemplation,
she
keeps “all these things, pondering them...
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The feminine, Marian element in faith, which implies a fundamental openness and readiness to receive God’s
“seed” (1 Jn 3:9 AV) is identical with the contemplative element implanted in every act of faith through the grace of God’s Holy Spirit.
So the Spirit who leads us into all truth is indivisibly christological and trinitarian:
In that he is the architect of the Son’s return to the Father as his installation to be head and life-principle of the Church, pouring the Son’s life into the sacraments, scripture, liturgy and preaching, initiating Christian life in its entirety, the Holy Spirit is always and of necessity the Spirit of the Church:
only in this context and under these conditions that God’s Spirit is present in prayer and contemplation.
