Reading Under the Other Sun

  That is why Adam had to undergo the test of freedom, to grow in maturity towards a conscious love. That is why sacrificial Love could not be revealed until Abraham's knife had glinted in the eyes of Isaac or until Job's cry had resounded, calling on God to transcend his own power. That is why the chosen people were a stiff- necked people, who got their name - Israel - after wrestling in the dark with the unnamed Stranger. That is why, finally, when God took on himself the destiny of Isaac and of Job, he came in secret, so that only by the free love of humankind could he be recognized in a crucified slave, defiled with blood and spittle. Even the risen Lord does not force himself on our presence; it was with a cry of faith and love that Mary Magdalen recognized him in the garden, and the beloved disciple on the lake shore. Our God comes in secret, and the Church herself, where we are united by the Spirit to the eucharistic body of the risen Christ, is a secret whose holiness i...

  Love is disinterested if it is interested in the being, which is to say the deification, of the other person. 'Let me stay outside, let me be a stone trampled under your feet, my name soon effaced, like the humblest memorials in the Middle Ages, while you go into the banqueting hall!' Where there is prayer like this, disinterested love is present. Make no mistake, setting out on this path means becoming vulnerable to all the pain of the world. If we did not know that Christ had shed his blood on the cross and uttered his cry of unimaginable despair, we should be crushed beyond recall. Everyone who relinquishes the security of a sleepwalking existence is sooner or later mortally wounded by the world's suffering. But because God became man and took this suffering on himself, the way of vulnerability and death becomes for us resurrection. And we can pray and fight for universal salvation: 'My son, I give you this commandment: let mercy always prevail in your balance, t...

  And as, through Christ, this life of the Trinity is shed abroad, we find the same thing happening in the way we know our neighbor. The person, set by its very brilliance beyond the reach of rational analysis, is revealed in love. This disclosure surpasses all other ways of knowing a human being; it requires prayer, attentiveness, even to the point of dying to oneself; knowing a person is unknowing, the darkness of night made luminous by love.   Then, momentarily at first, we see the open face, that place where nature most readily allows the person to show through, first by the transparency of the eyes. For a moment, the face is seen, not weighed down by nature, but in God. Then we see everything from the opposite side. The person, far from deriving its meaning from the world in which it is immersed, suddenly illuminates the world by its presence and interprets it to us. The frets of time and pain on our flesh, the weariness which drags it down, the wrinkles which wither it...

  Each heartbeat is an act of faith. Living cannot but be celebration. That is why Alyosha Karamazov tries to dissuade his brother Ivan from nihilism, begging him to love life, to dare to abandon himself to the great love that is within him; only afterwards will it make sense to him. And it is why even today, despite the apparent victory of nihilism, there are so few suicides.   Through loving life we become aware that God's grace is prevenient, that existence apart from him is impossible, because life is inseparable from grace.   'Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being' (Genesis 2.7).   The Fathers are constantly commenting on this passage, saying that uncreated grace, which is light and fire, is implicit in the act of creation itself. Humanity receives life and grace at the same time.  From the beginning grace is inherent in the very fact of existing.  ...

  We must learn at times to stop and listen to the silence, to savor it and be awed by it, becoming like a chalice to receive it. This might happen during a calm moment at home or alone in a room, in a church that stands open in a city or during a walk in the woods. It might be in the Gospel which we must try to read every day, in a psalm, in a text or in a word that touches our heart and transfixes us: then we go no further, we pause in silent, at times overwhelming anticipation… Clement, Olivier. Three Prayer . SVS Press 2000