Loving A Hidden God

LOVING A STILL HIDDEN GOD

How should we train ourselves for loving God? By loving each other! You may say to me, "I have not seen God." Can you say to me, "I have not seen a human being?" Love each other! If you love the human whom you see, you will love God too at the same time; for you will see love itself, the love that is the God who dwells within each of us.

Commentary on the Epistle of John, 5.7.2.

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If we have been lucky enough to have received a momentary vision of God but have now come back down to earth; or (as is more likely) if we have never received such a vision, our dilemma is the same: "What in the world am I supposed to do now?"

There is no doubt about the two commandments that point out the path to heaven. I must love God above all and I must love my neighbor as myself. But how can I love a God whom I do not see, someone whom I may have heard about and even believe in but have never seen? I may be able to respect someone I have never experienced. I may be able to "look up to them", but can I love them when I have not "looked at them"? Can I love someone, can I desire someone with whom I have never had face-to-face contact? Love depends upon knowledge and the knowledge that is necessary to attract my love is knowledge of someone not knowledge about someone.

Somehow or other I must love God if I am to be drawn towards him as my ultimate end but how can I do this? It is a crucial question for most of us who are still struggling to master the early stages of the climb to Wisdom. Perhaps we have come to some sort of love for others (stage five) and even have somewhat withdrawn ourselves from earthly attachment (stage 6). But few of us would dare to claim that we have achieved "Wisdom" (stage 7), that we have reached the summit where God may reveal himself. We may have some sort of an awareness of God as we struggle through life but few experience even the momentary ecstasy of vision. How can we truly be said to "love" this God who is still hidden and will likely remain hidden this side of death?

The solution to our problem is to turn our love towards those whom we can see, those with whom we share humanity. The testimony of scripture and tradition is that if we are able to love others, then the Holy Spirit is even now working in us. Thus Augustine writes:

The power to love is a gift of God, and a great gift. As St. Paul told the Romans: "The love of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." ( Romans, 5.5)

Commentary on the Gospel of John, 17.6.2

It is only by the presence of the Divine Spirit in us that we are able to want to love God are able to love those around us. God is love and the presence of love in us is a sign that God is with us and in our hearts even though he is still invisible to our eyes. Augustine puts it this way:

Does he who loves his neighbor also love God? Can he love others and not love "love"? By loving "love", he loves God. Or have you forgotten that a little before you said, "God is love"? (1 John 4:8 & 16) If God is love, whoever loves "love" loves God.

Commentary on the Epistle of John, 9.10

If we are able to love others with some degree of unselfish love, a pure love not dictated by our own self-love, then we are at least beginning to love God through them. This is the clear message the apostle John sent to his followers (and through them to us):

We must love one another because love is a gift of God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and has some experience of God. True, no one has ever seen God but if we love one another, God lives in us. God is love and anyone who lives with love lives in God and God lives in them. If you do not have love for the neighbor that you can see, you cannot love the God who is not yet seen. Thus, the command we have received from God is simply this: if you say you love God, you must also love your neighbor.

1 John, 4: 7-21

But who is our neighbor? As the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10, 30-37) makes clear, our neighbor is every human being, especially those who need our help. The Samaritan who rescued the injured man from the ditch was a stranger, an alien, an enemy in the eyes of the culture of that time and place. And yet he reached out in love to someone he did not know simply because he was a human and as such was a "neighbor". In modern terms we would say they were of the same species. In the view of Augustine, they (and we) are all members of one family:

If we consider that we all have one father (Adam) and one mother (Eve), who will be a stranger? Every human being is neighbor to every other human being. Are these people still unknown to you? Nature replies, "They are still human beings."

Sermon 299D, 1; Sermon 359, 9;

We must go out in love to these other humans if we are ever to discover God. Admittedly there will be dangers. We may become so attached to them that we go no further. As Augustine said to his friends:

Go ahead! Love your spouse; love your children! But love them in God so that you might pursue God along with them. You ought not to love them more than God because you will love them badly if you neglect to bring them with you to God. Sermon 344, # 2.

Augustine believed that there was plenty of this "bad sort of love" around and that few seemed able develop the right sort. (Sermon 368, 3) The danger in such wrong-headed love is that it will sometimes make us do silly things and (even worse) do evil things because we are petrified to hear our beloved saying, "You will never see me again!" (Sermon 161, 10).

Our love for these human loves is like the hand of the soul. In holding on to them, we are holding on to the place of God; in loving them with a pure selfless love we are establishing the conditions for coming to a pure love of God. But, at the same time, if we grasp them too tightly there will be no room for the Divine love that God offers to us. (Sermon 125, 7)

But still, with all the perils involved in loving other human beings, it is even more dangerous not to love them, to love nothing beyond ourselves. By so doing we become immobilized. Love is a power which draws us wheresoever we go and it is love for those outside that will draw us away from an unhealthy concentration on self. Through love of others we are able to break down the walls of our narrow self and run into the wonderful universe outside. Though we may not be able to touch God as yet, at least we are on the way.

Moreover, if we are lucky, we may find someone who shines with a visible spark of the divine. God's home is in heaven but here on earth he has a place in the hearts and souls of those devoted to him. They are God's "tent" in this land of pilgrimage. In our admiration for and love of the good people we find around us on our own journey we can be refreshed and encouraged to go further. (Commentary on Psalm 26/2, 6)

Such "living saints", people like Monica and Ambrose and Simplicianus and Ponticianus, certainly played a major part in Augustine's conversion. He was able to see in these human "tents" or "places" of God the hint of the wonder of God Himself. As he would later remark:

God's home on earth is found in those who are faithful to him. How much I admire those servants of God who have conquered the desires of body and mind and who have been raised up to the living God through the good works they perform!

Commentary on Psalm 41, 1

Through our love for the good people that we have come to love, through our wonder at their faith-filled lives, lives filled with good works for no recompense, we can come to hope that there is indeed something and someone above us who will make sense of our somewhat absurd life, someone who will accept us despite our confusion, someone who loves us despite our unbelief.

Indeed, in loving the lovely people who run with us through life, we experience the love of God without being conscious of it, that invisible divine love that has brought us together with all those whom we have loved and still love with a love that makes us rejoice not in our own "self" but in the wondrous selves of our loved ones. As Simone Weil wrote:

Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God than friendship for the friends of God.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God, translated by Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper-Colophon, 1973), p. 74.

In the absence of the vision of God, at least our love can be aimed at the neighbor that we can see, doing those pedestrian loving things we can sometimes do for each other in this life. If we cannot feel the love of God, at least we can be kind to each other. Such was the conclusion reached by St. Thérèse of Lisieux when at the end of her life she lost her intimate experience of the presence of God. Mary Frohlich describes this period in Thérèse's life as follows:

Feeling herself at an immeasurable distance from God, she abandoned herself to letting God love through her all those who are "nothing". She shifted her attention from desire for a heaven "elsewhere" to a passion to be involved in, to throw herself into the present moment, a moment composed only of love.

She no longer expected to encounter the "essence" of God. Instead she dedicated herself to simply living neighborly charity in the very ordinary "here and now".

Mary Frohlich, H.M., "Desolation and Doctrine in Thérèse of Lisieux," Theological Studies, vol 61 (2000), pp. 270 & 274.

At very least, such "neighborly charity" should express itself in respect for others as "temples of God" of equal importance. Any form of discrimination whereby we begin to think that we are more "eminent" human beings than others is certainly contrary to the command to love them as ourselves. In a way it is pretense of divinity. We imagine ourselves as some sort of "God" and are convinced that the "God" who is in us is a bit better than any "God" that can be found in others.

Flowing from respect for others should be the desire not to harm them and to rescue them from harm to the best of our ability. It may not be within our power to make their lives any better but at least we can try to avoid making them worse. Of course we must also try to bring good to them if we can, not some grand extraordinary good far beyond our power, but the ordinary good that we can produce. Thus, in her dark experience of the absence of God, Saint Thérèse dedicated herself, not to changing the world, but to being amiable to those around her who were disagreeable.

Augustine was convinced that there is always something that each one of us can do for those we meet on our pilgrimage to heaven. As he told his parish congregation:

We should all do for one another whatever things we have at our disposal. If you have more than enough, lavish it on those with little or nothing. Let those with money feed the poor, clothe the naked. Let those with the gift of counsel guide others by scattering the darkness of doubt with the light of a loving faith. If others can teach, let them distribute truth from the storehouse of the Lord, confirming the faith of the faithful, calling back those who stray, seeking out the lost. There are things that even the poor can do for each other. They can loan their feet to the lame, the use of their eyes to the blind. Some can visit the sick; others can bury the dead. Indeed, it is extremely difficult to find anyone who cannot do something for someone else. As St. Paul says: "Bear one another's burdens and in this way you will accomplish the law of Christ. (Gal 6.2)

Sermon 91, # 9

And more, in serving those in need we serve Christ himself. Augustine imagines Christ shouting to us from heaven:

I have ascended to heaven, but I still remain on the earth. Here at the Father's right hand I sit, but there I still hunger and thirst and am without shelter.

Commentary on the 1st Letter of John, 10.9.

At very least by lovingly serving others here on earth we prepare ourselves to love the God whom we will eventually see. As Augustine says:

Because you do not yet see God, by loving your neighbor you merit seeing him. By loving your neighbor you cleanse your eyes for seeing God, as John clearly says, "If you do not love your brother whom you see, how will you be able to love God whom you do not see?" (1 John 4.20) ... Love your neighbor and see deep inside the force that causes such love. There you will see, as far as you can, God himself.

Commentary on the Gospel of John, 17.8.1-3.

In loving others we thus can come to know something about God. Even though the best we can achieve is to see "the back parts of God", it is a beginning. (The Trinity, 2.17.28) Even such imperfect awareness of the Divine makes this life more bearable. The darkness in which we began our journey has somewhat cleared and our hope has been solidified that some day we shall reach the land of eternal life where finally we will see God face-to-face. In the meantime, we are at peace. We now know that we are not alone. We are surrounded by those we love. We are accompanied by the still hidden God who lives in them and who will stay close to us as we journey on through all the rest of the days of our lives.

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