Embracing the Mystery of God

SCRIPTURAL REFLECTION

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (Dt 6:4-5).

“Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or has instructed him as his counselor?  Whom did he consult to gain knowledge?  Who taught him the path of judgment, or showed him the way of understanding?”(Is 40:13-14).

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Is 55:8-9).

“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:11).

“Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways (Rom 11:33).

 

NOTES

1.  In broad strokes, the gratuitousness and openness of the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (between the Father and the Son, between the Son and the Father, between the Holy Spirit and the Father, between the Father and the Holy Spirit, between the Holy Spirit and the Son, and between the Son and the Holy Spirit) is the condition of possibility for a love that brims over and flows into creation.
2. Divine Fatherhood creates. Creative love is generative love. Love creates. Love generates.
3. “God is called Father not simply because God creates. God creates precisely because God is our Father.”
4. The proper name of God in the Old Testament is “Yahweh” (“I am who am”). It is this “I” of God that distinguishes us from God—that we are not gods and that our little “I” can only be understood in reference to the much greater “I” of God.
5. Hence, we have to cultivate and deepen our awareness of that distinction between the “I” of the Creator and the “I” of the creature.
6. When God created us in His image and likeness, God actually raised our dignity to the level of being His “dialogue-partners.”
7. Being dialogue partners of God, we are called to a higher level of communion with Him.
8. The vastness of God’s mystery never absorbs us into Himself. The distinction between Creator and creature is preserved in the dimension of operative knowledge and free love.
9. Hence, the distinction between the Creator and creatures allows us to see the distinction between nature and grace, body and soul, time and eternity.
10. Eternity embraces temporality. Grace envelops nature. The soul leads the body to its redeemed state.
11. Spirituality is that interface between eternity and temporality, grace and nature, the natural and the supernatural.
12. Divine revelation is the process that demonstrates how this mystery actually unfolds itself to human perception without ceasing to be mysterious.
13. Spirituality begins when one accepts this beautiful gift of revelation, or of at least when one enters into this process, and then assumes responsibility for its nourishment, growth and fullness.
14. Spirituality requires openness to the mystery and mysteriousness of God.
15. Such a spirituality of openness will not therefore impose its own will on God, whether in prayer or in action, whether in hindsight or in foresight, but simply allows God to be God over us.
16. Spirituality must learn to wait for the little revelations of God, without setting deadlines, and without even making these little revelations–such as answered prayers or blessings received–or expectations of such little revelations, as our barometers for spiritual progress, growth, or greatness.
17. Spirituality does not follow our strict mathematical equations and linear rules of cause-and-effect.  Thus, one day we may find ourselves so awed and cognizant of God’s mystery, and on another day, we feel so distant from things sacred.  There is no such a thing as a spiritual accretion over time of what has been experienced of the divine.  Such belief in a spiritual belief is still very linear and mathematical, like 1 +1 = 2, a method applicable only to material reality.
18. To put our spiritual journey into such an arithmetical box of security and sense of control is to pigeonhole God and deprive Him of His mysteriousness.
19. Openness to the dynamics of spirituality requires that we set our minds and hearts free, including the task of setting God free, including God’s infinite mysteriousness.
20. In short, let us be humble enough to allow God to be God.

POINTS FOR REFLECTION

1. Identify one or two significant events when you really struggled with the mysteriousness of God, when you were so confused, clueless, helpless, or even angry with God.
2. In what way have I imposed my own will on God and deceived myself in the process by calling it “God’s will,” when in the ultimate analysis it is merely the projection of my own selfishness?
3. When was the last time I truly surrendered myself to God’s will, no matter how mysterious God’s will seemed to be?