In this world Christ Jesus gave Himself primarily to the exercise of union. Our life in this world, our Christian life, even our earthly life — let us not distinguish between the Christian life and the human or earthly life — should be an exercise of union like that of Christ, and consequently our prayer should be a prayer of union, a contemplative prayer.
This is the truth; our duty lies here.
(Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, OCD Where the Spirit Breathes: Prayer and Action, Alba House, 1998; 150-151)
Jesus gave Himself to union even before He was born, in the very first movements of His life – it was all to help humanity learn the loving gaze of the Father. Before this great mystery, humanity has the duty also to open the eyes of its heart not because it sees, but because it needs to choose to see, to open its eyes if it is to receive the gift of Christ. Just because we do not understand our prayer does not mean our prayer is not filled with great meaning. The meaning of the most beautiful things is always hidden until they unfold themselves and we learn to see them. The same is true of the gift of the Incarnation and the gift of contemplative prayer.
The saving presence of Christ is always hidden before it is made known. Jesus in the womb of Mary, in the unfolding and development of his embryonic life, already unites God and man in his very person. This means humanity’s proper place, the place established by God, is in the eternal sonship of the Word of the Father. To contemplate with the eyes of faith, this is to dwell in the Word. The unborn Christ found His humanity in the eternal meaningfulness of His Sonship even before His human consciousness was completely formed. It is also in contemplative prayer that man finds himself in union with the Son, even before he is fully conscious of it, because the Son united Himself to all humanity before it was conscious in the womb of a woman.
Contemplative prayer is pregnant with the Truth generated by the Father, truth about who man actually is and who God is. This means, to fully live our human, earthly life, we need to receive the love of the Father as His sons and daughters – in Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being. This means surrender, acceptance, and reverent silence before the mystery of the Word made flesh. The hypostatic union of God and Man in the Person of the Son is the principle and pattern for mystical union in the life of every Christian – so that when souls adore Him, they also allow Him to see them, and, in being seen by Him, they discover in his gaze a meaningful exchange that no word but the Word can contain.
Jesus makes known a new union of God and man in hidden poverty. – and only by entering this hiddenness, through humble prayer, do we become poor enough in spirit discover the Kingdom of God. Since Jesus comes into the world through His virgin mother to find His home in the poverty of a dark cave in which he and his parents shelter with animals, we must find our home in the poverty of our earthly circumstances, ordering them, no matter how lowly to God. Since He allows His boundless freedom to be bound in swaddling clothes, and His divine dignity to be hidden in a feeding trough, we must gratefully accept our limitations and powerlessness as the concrete circumstance that God has chosen to make known His glory through us. In these humble circumstances, the humility of God opens the pathway of union, not for the spiritual elite, but for all those who humbly respond to His gentle invitation.
Mystical union is tasted in contemplative prayer – accepting the poverty of this kind of prayer is essential. Union with God is not grasped but received as a gift, and only empty hands can receive it. Just as the hypostatic union is sheer un-grasped for gift, so is the union that contemplative prayer tastes. Contemplative prayer approaches Christ, even in the final days before His birth, with empty hands, bent in adoration, waiting for the moment when it will see what it is not yet conscious of. Mystical union of the soul with Christ follows the pathway of self-emptying and humility from its first unconscious moments. For the soul that aspires to contemplative prayer, this means divesting oneself of even the power to grasp through silently abiding in Him who it has not yet experienced. Prayer that binds this poverty of spirit around itself like swaddling clothes gives God the space and freedom to manifest anew Divine Humility at work in humble humanity.
_________________________________________________________________________
This post was first published on Beginning to Pray and is reprinted here with permission.
Image courtesy of Unsplash.
