Loving A Hidden God
CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN
Six days after his first prediction of his passion and death, Jesus took Peter, James and his brother John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. And his face shone as the sun, and his garments became white as snow. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking together with him. Then Peter addressed Jesus, saying, "Lord it is good for us to be here!"
Matthew, 17, 1-4
The image of "climbing a mountain" is an appropriate analogy for the story of our lives. All of us are searching for some "hill of transfiguration" and would dearly like to receive an invitation like the one given by Jesus to his three friends, the invitation to climb with him to the top of a mountain where finally we could see the glory that is God.
Some, like Albert Camus, are convinced that such a mountain does not exist. The only mountain we have before us in this life is the mountain of our daily tasks, a mountain that promises not glory but only frustration. We like the doomed Sisyphus in the ancient myth, are condemned to push the rock of our burdens up the side of a mountain only to have it roll back down to the bottom at the end of the day, waiting for us to begin our struggles again the next morning. The crime of Sisyphus was that he tried to join with the gods; his punishment was an eternity of unending human labor. Our crime is to hope for eternal joy; our punishment is to despair.
Spiritual writers like Simone Weil, while recognizing the trials of our present life, still remained optimistic. Certainly life for most ordinary humans has its fair share of suffering but such "affliction" can be a path to a better life. We are called upon to climb over the obstacles we find on this sometimes dark mountain of life, to climb past our own imperfections, in order to finally reach the heights where God waits for us to take us to our eternal home. Our task is to "climb up" so that eventually we might be "lifted up".
As we have seen, Augustine shares this optimistic view. Our search for the hidden God demands that we ascend through the seven stages of darkness, listening, discovery, bravery, human love, and purification. If we do this as best we can, then we may at last reach the "top of the mountain", that peak where we can patiently wait to be lifted up to an understanding of the Wisdom that is God, perhaps for an instant to "see" the "face" of God in time even as we wait for eternity.
Like every other human being, my own journey begins in a valley of darkness, listening with hope for enlightenment. Gradually I come to some understanding of myself, my world, and the task that lies before me. Understandably I am somewhat frightened by the prospect and try to develop the prayerful fortitude to plow ahead. Gradually I come to see that I am not alone, that others are climbing with me and I gain strength by reaching out to them in love. As the summit comes closer I try to purify myself from the last entanglements that hold me back. Free at last, I rush to the summit and wait for the coming of God.
Augustine speaks about this journey in many places in his works but one of the most complete considerations is in his Commentary on Psalm 41. He begins by noting that the force that drives us at every stage in the journey is desire. We want perfect happiness, complete and permanent satisfaction of all of our desires. We want not only to live; we want to live forever. We want our lives to have some importance not simply during this life but even after death. We want to love and be loved and we want never to lose our love. And we want to be free, free of all those internal and external pressures that twist and entangle us day after day. Our desires are for the infinite and eternal and we cannot find perfect happiness until we possess a life that is eternal, in the arms of a loved one who will live with us forever, whose love will never cease, whose infinite concern for us gives us everlasting importance, and whose overpowering goodness destroys all those conflicting desires and pressures that imprison us in this life.
This need for the infinite to be happy and the universal desire for happiness is nothing else than the desire for union with God. We are built in such a way that we have within us a natural need for God because we have been made in the divine image. We are like boomerangs thrown into existence with a natural tendency and need to return to the hand of our master. In choosing not to do so we whirl and twirl without roots through time and all eternity.
This desire for the infinite, this desire to be united with the transcendent is reflected in the Psalmist's cry:
As the deer longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God. Psalm 41 (42), 2
Like a deer's thirst for water, we humans long for the nourishing fountains that can slake our thirst for happiness, the brilliant light that can illumine our darkened minds. Augustine cries out to all of us:
Even now your inner eye is being made ready to see that light, your inner thirst is burning ever more fiercely for that fountain! Run to the fountain! Long for the fountain! Run energetically! Long untiringly for that fountain! Run to that fountain with the deer's fleetness of foot!
Commentary on Psalm 41, 2
The way will not always be easy. Deer in their search for water may need to kill poisonous snakes who block the way. So too we must bravely do battle with the vices that hamper our progress. Even in victory we must not rest on our laurels. We may have cleared the way but we still have not arrived at our destination. As Augustine warns us:
When you judge yourself to be free of crooked desires, do not sit down as though you had nothing else to long for.
Commentary on Psalm 41, 3
We may have conquered our vices but we have not yet reached the divine fountain that has everything we need to refresh us.
As we struggle to climb up the sometimes steep slopes of our lives, we should once again learn from the example of the deer. When crossing a raging river, deer will support each other through the dangerous waters. (Commentary on Psalm 41, 4) We too can find support for our journey, encouraged by those faithful people who live lives of restrained desire, who like us are searching for truth, who endure bravely the harshness of life while being just and kind to others. (Commentary on Psalm 41, 9)
We may become disturbed when others keep asking "Well, where is this God of yours?" It is a legitimate question but it has no good answer as long as we are still in the midst of our climb to the heights. Augustine himself admitted:
As I listened daily to the taunts and pondered day and night the questions hurled at me, even I came to wonder if it were possible for me not merely to believe in my God, but even to see him. I see the things my God has made, but my God himself, who made them I do not see.
Commentary on Psalm 41, 7
Augustine's point is that though we may come to believe in God seeing the wonderful things he has created, we still have not seen HIM! We look for him in the things he has made and see hints but do not find HIM! Thus, we cannot point him out to those who ask.
It is no wonder that we may sometimes be reduced to tears, but these are not tears of sadness. They are tears of anticipation. They are like the tears shed by a lover waiting impatiently for a beloved to arrive on an overdue plane. They are like the tears of children bursting with happy expectation as they stand before the soon-to-be-opened doors of an amusement park. In our tearful waiting for the coming of the Lord, we make our own the words of the Psalmist:
One thing have I begged of the Lord, and that will I seek after: to live in the Lord's house all the days of my life so that I might contemplate the Lord with delight.
Psalm 26 (27), 4.
We cry out with Augustine:
As I run my course, as I am still on the way, not yet arriving, "my tears have been bread to me day and night". (Psalm 41 (42), 4) Notice that the psalmist says "my tears have been bread" not bitterness. My very tears were delicious to me. I was thirsting for that spring, and because I could not yet drink from it, I ate my tears the more hungrily. My thirst remains unquenched and it drags me toward the springs of water. As I wait, my tears have become bread to me.
Commentary on Psalm 41, 6.
Waiting for a loved one yet to arrive, tears do not symbolize something bad that is happening to me but something very good that is yet to happen when finally I hold my love in my arms.
After a fruitless search to see the face of God in creation, I finally come to understand that the only place where I will be able to "see" God (and not simply believe in him) is not "around" me or even "in" me, but only above me. As Augustine says:
I sought my God in visible, material creatures, and I did not find him. I sought the substance of him in myself and did not find him there either and so I became aware that my God is some reality above myself. "I reflected on these things, and poured out my soul above myself" (Psalm 42 (41), 5) so that I might touch him. How could my soul ever attain what it seeks, the reality above the soul, unless it poured itself out above itself? There above my soul, is the home of my God. There he dwells. From there he looks down upon me. From there he created me. From there he governs me and takes thought for me. From there he inspires me, calls me, guides me and leads me on, and from there he will lead me to journey's end.
Commentary on Psalm 41, 8
With one last great effort I struggle free of all that binds me to the dark valley below, and reach the top of the mountain. There is no great feeling of accomplishment or pride. I have reached the top of the mountain of transfiguration but God has not yet appeared. There is still a great distance between the top of my little hill and the place of God in the heavens. Perceiving that distance Augustine cried to his still hidden God:
When I first knew you, you lifted me up so that I might see there what there was to see, and know that I was not yet prepared to see much. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, streaming forth your beams of light at me most strongly, and I trembled with love and awe, and I perceived myself to be far from you, in a region of unlikeness.
Confessions, 7.10.16
Considering the space yet to be traveled to reach God's heaven, it becomes clear that I must remain humble if I am ever to make the trip. If I have achieved some sort of "peak" in my life, it is only a little hill and even this was climbed only with the help of God. I certainly cannot rely on myself to make the final leap into the heavens above, nor even to avoid falling once again into the darkness of the valley below. As Augustine says:
I know that the Lord's righteousness abides, but whether my own will survive I do not know. The apostle's warning frightens me: "Anyone who thinks he stands must take care not to fall. (1 Corinthians 10.12) If I am satisfied with myself I will be displeasing to God.
Commentary on Psalm 41, 12
Only those who are not high and mighty can scale the slopes of daily life and then go beyond to that place where they may be granted the vision of the God. (Sermon 341, # 7) If I have succeeded in ascending the hill of transfiguration, I must be careful not imitate the poor apostles who quickly fell asleep as soon as they reached the summit (Luke 9, 32). I must remain prayerfully "turned towards God" as I wait patiently for the God who will someday come to take me the rest of the way home. (Commentary on Psalm 41, 12)