Waiting on the Mountain

Loving A Hidden God

WAITING FOR GOD ON THE MOUNTAIN

Jesus took Peter, James and John and went up the mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the appearance of his face changed and his garments became white as snow. And there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking together with Jesus. And Peter spoke to Jesus saying, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us set up three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elias." And while he was still speaking there came a voice out of a cloud saying: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear him!" And on hearing it the disciples fell on their faces and were very much afraid.

Matthew, 17.1-6; Luke, 9.28-35; Mark, 9.1-6

I. Waiting On The Mountain.

Shortly after his conversion, Augustine and his mother Monica seem to have been "lifted up" from their own personal hill of transfiguration to a direct experience of God. Augustine describes the event as follows:

A few days before the death of my mother Monica, we stood by ourselves at a window which overlooked the garden of the house where we were staying. There we talked together, she and I alone, joyously speaking about the Truth that is you, O God. Our love flamed upward as we spoke about the Divine Wisdom and panted after it. And then suddenly, with a final great exertion of our hearts, we were able to experience it. But this lasted only for an instant. Sighing, we quickly returned back to the sound of our own voices.

Confessions, 9.10.24

For a moment Augustine and Monica were lifted up from the top of the mountain and looked into the face of God. As far as we know, it was Augustine's one and only mystical experience.

There is no guarantee that any of us will ever have a similar experience of the Divine. Although Augustine believed that such a mystical moment is possible for anyone (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 20.13.1),

in fact it is granted to very few. (On the Harmony of the Gospels, 1.5.8) There is nothing that we can do to cause it to happen to us. Assisted by the grace of God, we have chosen to climb to the heights, but choice is ineffective in going higher, in making the final "leap" from the mountaintop to the heavens. It is up to God to take us the rest of the way. No spiritual exercise can take us any further. There is no "ladder to God" that we can use nor is there a "tower of Babel" that we can construct that will take us to the heavens. Reaching the top of the mountain, all we can do is wait.

Simone Weil describes this need for prayerful passivity succinctly:

There are people who try to raise their souls like a man continually taking standing jumps in the hopes that, if he jumps higher every day, a time may come when he will no longer fall back but will go right up to the sky. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. We do not need to search for God, only change the direction of our gaze. It is for him to search for us.

Simone Weil, Waiting For God, Emma Crauford trans. (New York: Harper-Colophon Books, 1973), pp. 194 & 216.

Once reaching the top of the mountain we need to be quietly careful. We can still destroy our progress by choosing to return to the valley below, lusting after the pleasures and comfortable certainties of the earthy life we have left behind. As Weil says, we must focus our attention on the heavens above, searching for the God who is now very near, waiting for him to "lift us up" to the place where we may glimpse him passing by.

II. The Nature Of The Vision:

Augustine speaks about three ways through which we can be said to know God. The first of these is the philosophical where, supported by grace, we come to know through reason or faith that God exists and begin to understand something of his nature. This is a pure act of intellect which may or may not be accompanied by any feeling of joy. To prove the existence of God or to understand that Jesus Christ is both human and divine may cause little affective response. It is an understanding of God, not an experience of God.

The second way of knowing God is through an experience of God in and through his works. This is different from the simple understanding of God described above. It is a genuine perception of the divine that comes through an awareness of the beauty of nature or the sanctity of other human beings or the mystery of our own "self". Since it is an experience it cannot be communicated to others. We may be able to convince another intellectually that God exists, but we cannot give them the "feeling" of the divine presence that we are sensing at the moment. It is not just an act of intellect; it involves the whole person. It is an encounter with God, not directly, but through creation. It is not so much a "seeing" of God as it is a perception of the hand of God in the things that he has made.

The final way of knowing God is through a direct experience. This strictly speaking is what it means to "see" God. It is a "face to face" experience of the person of God. Such rapturous vision is very different from the understanding of God or the seeing of God in the things he has made. As Augustine writes:

Here the brilliance of the Lord is seen, not through a corporeal symbolic representation like that given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus, 19.18) nor through a spiritual vision like that given to Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1) or to John in the Book of Revelations. Rather it is a direct vision in which God speaks face to face to the one whom he has made worthy of such union.

The Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.26.54.

This "vision of God" goes far beyond an "understanding of what God is" or a "getting a picture from what others tell us". It is even more intimate and complete than the face to face contact we have with someone we love. Even if we are "two in one flesh", even if we have the most intimate physical union with our beloved, we still do not experience their "essence", that which makes them to be what they are. Our union with God goes far beyond that. It is more like the immediate awareness we have of our own "self", our own feelings, our own joy, our own fear, our own sorrow.

In the Beatific Vision that is promised in the next life and the mystical vision that is sometimes given in this life, there is an immediate contact with the very essence of Divinity. We do not become God but we do become one with God. This does not mean that we gain a full understanding or a full comprehension of the divine essence. We do not even have such comprehension with respect to ourselves. Even though we are closer to our own "self" than anything else, we still remain mostly a mystery to ourselves.

It is no wonder, then, that God will remain a mystery even though we are united with him through all eternity. We will never completely comprehend the depths of that mystery. Indeed, Augustine suggests that this is the reason why we will never get bored in eternity. There will always be something new to discover and be amazed at. (Sermon 362, 27-30) It will be like standing in the shallows of a vast ocean, in union with it but never being able to plumb its depths.

Has anyone ever achieved such rapturous union in this life? Augustine believed that it was possible for anyone who has "died to this world" by purifying themselves of all earthy entanglements to be gifted with such vision (Letter 147, 13.31) and he was convinced that Moses and St. Paul actually received this gift. (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 12.27.55; 12.28.56; see Letter 147, 13.32) But even in their case the vision of God could only be:

... as far as this can be attained by a rational and intellectual creature when withdrawn from all bodily senses and from all obscure symbols of the spirit.

The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 12.27.55

Even if a human being achieves such perfect detachment from the earthly interests of body and mind, the vision of God that may follow will never have the perfection or permanence of the Beatific Vision. To use the imaginative phrase describing Moses' vision, the very best that a human being can expect is to see the "back parts" of a God who is quickly passing by. (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 12.27.55) The vision will be over before we know it and is not likely to change our life that much.

Certainly, these divine visions did not take away the problems that Paul and Moses faced during the rest of their lives. Paul tells us that he was still subject to a "sting of the flesh" which his prayer could not take away. (2 Corinthians, 12:8-9) Briefly seeing God did not prevent Moses from momentarily distrusting God and losing thereby a chance to enter the Promised Land. At most such moments of ecstatic vision give a wonderful memory which can become the basis for hope as the trials and sorrows of this life continue.

III. The Method Of Being "Lifted Up":

We can only guess about the method God uses to "lift up" his chosen friends from the summit of the mountain to experience the glory of his heavenly house. Augustine hints that this final ascent from the summit will be accomplished in much the same way as we have been helped by the grace of God to reach the summit. We struggle to the summit by living a life of virtue and this is nothing else than loving in a proper way. It is only by the gift of the Holy Spirit that we are able to accomplish that. As Augustine wrote to Julian:

When you come to list the various gifts by which God helps us: by commanding, blessing, sanctifying, compelling, provoking, illuminating, you never mention "by giving love". And, as John teaches, "Love is from God". (1 John, 4.7) It is by reason of this love, which is given to the human heart by the Holy Spirit, that the same John will say "He gave to them the power to become sons of God". (John 1.12)

Incomplete work against Julian, 3.106

We become doers of the good when we come to love doing good. This love is caused by the delight we begin to find in good living. Just as illumination is the crucial element in the mind coming to "see", so too delight is the crucial element in our coming to "love" what we now see and understand. We are drawn to choose to do a particular act because of the delight that we perceive will come from doing it. Human beings, and any animal capable of choosing between alternatives, can be influenced to act in a certain way by making them delight in so acting. As Augustine observes:

Show a green branch to a sheep and you will attract it. Show a child some chestnuts and you will attract it. It is drawn by its love. It is drawn by desire of the heart. Now since it true that every person is drawn by what pleases them, are we to say that Jesus-God cannot thus draw a person to Him?

Commentary on the Gospel of John,26.6.5

This image of "being drawn" is the one used by Augustine to describe the action of grace on the will as we strive to do those acts that will bring us to the summit of the mountain. For example, when he considers the scene in the Old Testament where God influenced the fierce warriors of Israel to choose the young David as king, he asks:

How did he induce them to choose? By tying them up in chains? By no means. He worked within them. He moved their hearts and drew them to choose by their own free will.

On Corruption and Grace, 14.45.

So too, the grace whereby we are able to do any good acts is through the gift of the Holy Spirit whereby we are able to love (desire) rightly. This is accomplished by making the good so desirable that we are drawn naturally to choose it.

This is the way that God has helped us to the summit of the mountain. Perhaps it is also the way that he will "lift us up" from the summit to see the home he has prepared for us. Perhaps he will draw us up by letting us hear the sounds of the party that goes on forever in heaven. Such a possibility is at least suggested in the following passage from Augustine's Commentary on Psalm 41:

The Psalmist (Psalm 73, 17) climbed up to the divine sanctuary and arrived at God's house. He was led to God's house by a kind of sweetness, an inward secret pleasure that cannot be described, as though some musical instrument were sounding delightfully from God's house. As he still walked about on earth, he could hear the music. He was drawn to its sweet tones, following its melodies and distancing himself from the din of flesh and blood, until he found his way even to the sanctuary of God. It is like what happens in ordinary life. When people celebrate on earth, they usually set up musical instruments outside their houses or assemble singers there or provide some kind of music which adds to the pleasure of the guests. If we are passing by and happen to hear it, we say, "What's going on?" And they tell us that it's some kind of party. "It's a birthday party," they say. Or they announce, "There's a wedding reception." They tell us this so that the songs may not seem out of place and the joy may seem to be justified by the festive occasion. Well, in God's home there is an everlasting party. What is celebrated there is not some occasion that passes. The choirs of angels keep eternal festival because the eternally present face of God brings a joy that is never diminished. Melodies from that eternal party reach and delight the ears of the heart. The sweet strains of that celebration drift into the ears of those who still walk on earth and are drawn to the refreshing springs of water that eternally flow in heaven.

Commentary on Psalm 41, 9

Unfortunately in this life the attraction of these sounds and sights of heaven will never be so overpowering that we cannot ignore them. That is why even after a mystical experience it is still possible to fall back, to experience a new darkness. In this life "we are lifted up" gently in such a way that we can always close our eyes to the invitation.

IV. Concluding Reflection

We may never achieve any direct vision of God in this life, even if we have been able to struggle to the top of the mountain by living decent lives as best we could. We may never be "lifted up". We may never see the vision of the glorified Christ that was given to the three apostles on the hill of transfiguration. Does this mean that we have not received the gift of wisdom? The answer is "no". It just means that wisdom must manifest itself in us through our patient acceptance of God's will.

Moreover, the guarantee that we shall eventually see God for all eternity is not based on whether or not we have had some mystical experience of him in this life. Rather it is determined by our continuing struggle to be worthy to receive this vision, by our struggle to keep our focus on what is above rather than the vices we have left behind, by our struggle against the temptation to turn back and leave the summit in despair.

We prepare to see and love God by trying to live a decent life, and it is these efforts that insure our salvation. A mystical experience of God, a vision of God, an overpowering feeling of love for God, all of these are gifts that God may (or may not) give to us. The gift that we give to him is our effort to scale the mountain. It is up to him to take us the rest of the way and he may not do that until the moment of our death. Then we will realize that we have been saved by our own efforts and his grace, not by moments of ecstatic vision granted to us in this life.