Loving A Hidden God

THE TEACHER WITHIN

As I speak to you here, my friends, there is a great mystery. The sound of my words strikes your ears, but the real Teacher is inside you. You really do not learn anything from another human being. Oh, I can suggest some truths through the sound of the voice, but if the Divine Teacher were not in you, the sounds I make would be empty. Do you want proof? Well, have not all of you heard my sermon? Even so, how many of you will leave this church untaught? I have spoken to all of you but those who do not hear the Spirit of God speaking within themselves will leave unaware of the message. In truth, all the instructions we hear from outside ourselves are nothing more than aids and suggestions. The one who really teaches us has his magisterial chair in heaven. Why else would Jesus say: "Call no one your teacher on earth. You have only one teacher: God himself." (Mt. 23:8-10) Let God speak to you deep inside yourselves. No human being can be there. Even if some friends are standing by your side, none of them can be in your heart. It is the Divine Master within who teaches you. It is Christ who teaches you; it is his spirit that teaches you. If his spirit and his grace are not in you, any words blaring from outside are useless clatter.

Commentary on the First Letter of John, 3.13.2

In his Confessions (9.10.25) Augustine tried to describe the indescribable: standing face to face with God and hearing his voice speaking directly without intermediary. He and his mother seemed to have had an instant of such contact, a mystical experience in which mother and son for a brief moment stood face to face with the Father-God of us all.

Of course it did not last. The silence necessary to hear God through such immediate contact was soon disrupted and from the heavens both fell back to earth. As far as we know neither had an experience as intense as this again. Monica soon died and Augustine spent the next forty years trying to bring the reality of God to people embroiled in the confusion and noise of everyday living. Monica through her death received the permanent vision of God. Augustine for the rest of his earthly life was left with only a memory.

Still, the memory brought with it the conviction that God still spoke to him now from deep inside his very self. He became convinced through his faith and through his experience that Christ dwells within every human and that for every human he was the most important teacher, a teacher who reveals truths about the world by illuminating them with his presence, a teacher who speaks to each person about themselves through their conscience.

Throughout his life Augustine returned again and again to the theme that the words of human preachers and teachers were useless if those listening would not listen to the quiet words of the God within. To those who crowded around him seeking the answers to the meaning of time and eternity he advised:

We have our teacher within, Christ. If your ear cannot understand the words coming out of my mouth, you should turn to the Christ who is in your hearts. He is the one who is teaching me what to say and who reveals to you the message he wants you to hear from my words.

Commentary on the Gospel of John, 20.3.

The people he preached to over his lifetime had a need to be inspired by God not because they were more ignorant or stupid than the rest of the human race. Augustine assured them that their need to listen was a need for every human being no matter how skillful they might be in theology, no matter how noble a position they held in the Church. He made this point very clearly one day in a sermon to the ordinary people of his congregation. He said to them:

My friends, you know that all of us have one Teacher and that before him we are all fellow pupils. The fact we bishops speak to you from this high podium does not make us your teachers. It is the one who lives in each of us that is the Teacher of us all. He was talking to all of us just now in the Gospel, and saying to all of us what I am repeating to you. He says it about us, about both me and you when he says: "If you remain in my word [my word, not Augustine's], you are truly my disciple."

Sermon 134, 1.

How God speaks to us on the ordinary days of our lives is as much a mystery as mystical experience itself. God seems to be able to communicate with us either through messages hidden in the creation surrounding us or directly in some indescribable way through spiritual images that are formed in our minds. (City of God, 16.6) In both cases we "hear" a God who speaks from within our very "selves". The words of humans or the events occurring in the created universe are but the occasions for the Divine Teacher to reveal the truth hidden in the words or event. Just as the sounds of the voice of the preacher resounding outside us cause the delicate membrane of our ear to vibrate and carry the message inside through the thin barrier of flesh, so the whisper of God pierces the even more slender membrane that separates time and eternity in the depths of our soul. The touch of God's voice deep inside causes our soul to resonate in tandem and suddenly we "know" the truth that he wants us to recognize, a truth that goes far beyond the simple words of the teacher or the passing events of our day.

One thing is sure, the place of God is in our soul and it is through the "listening" of our spirit that he speaks to us. Thus when we come to understand the ultimate truths hidden in the universe and especially when we come to believe in the truths revealed through our faith, the avenue of revelation is our own minds. Perhaps the message was first proclaimed by some human being but once the sound was inside it was then illuminated by the light of the Divine Teacher. It is through such illumination more than the power of the words coming from outside, that we come to say to ourselves: "Indeed, I understand and it is true!" The function of the human teacher who seeks to instruct us is thus not so much to communicate a truth as it is to "not get in the way" of the illumination of the God who teaches deep within the listener. As Augustine, himself a teacher, explains the process:

Even when I say what is true and the listener understands it to be true, I am not the one who taught the truth. He is taught, not by my words, but by the realities themselves now revealed by the illumination of the God who dwells within. Even if I encourage a person who cannot grasp a truth as whole to separate it into its various parts and then consider it bit by bit, it is still not my words that teach. All they do is propose a process of discovery that is suited to the listener's ability to learn from the Divine Light that is inside them.

The Teacher, 12.40.

In the case of truths about ourselves, unpleasant truths that demand correction, pleasing truths that give hope, inspirations that call us to some new way of serving God and working out our salvation, the instrument of communication is again our mind, now acting in its function as conscience. Sometimes the truths revealed here are the most difficult to accept because they say something about our own lives and perhaps challenge us to change. We fight against the message. Rather than desiring to follow out what we hear, we try to hear what we desire to hear. (Confessions, 10.26.37)

This battle against the truth does not normally occur when the truth is some esoteric fact about the universe. No one that I know has become emotionally upset by the discovery of the rules of geometry. In these areas that do not pertain directly to us, we accept the truths and move on with our lives. Our reaction is often quite different when the truths are truths about ourselves, truths that perhaps we have been avoiding for years, truths like:

I am selfish!

I am proud!

I am constantly plagued by my passions!

I have an addiction that is destroying me!

It is difficult to hear such harsh truths even though they may have been sounding in our internal ear for years. We have known what we are in some vague way but we have avoided listening too intently lest we face the unpleasant conclusion that our lives are somewhat of a mess and that we must do something to crawl out of our comfortable mire. It is much easier to stand before the world and cry "I understand geometry" than to stand and hear the truth of the words about ourselves sounding deep inside, words that no one outside has perhaps dared to say to us about our vices and weaknesses.

These truths about ourselves are terribly difficult to accept but they are also terribly important. I can be saved (Thank God!) without knowing too much geometry; but I cannot be saved and thereby see God if I avoid the truths about myself that the God within is whispering to me deep inside. Thus, the counsel of Augustine to all us [whatever our status or stage of life may be] is well-advised:

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us enter into ourselves; let us leave behind all noise and confusion. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place in our consciousness where we can be free of noise and argument, where we need not be carrying on our disputes and planning to have our own stubborn way. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we may come to understand it.

Sermon 52, 22.

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