In the meditation “To Be Pure as He is Pure,” I spoke about the shift from a focus on our own efforts and activity in striving for holiness to a radical childlike receptivity to God’s healing and transforming touch. This is indeed an important, beautiful, and liberating experience that lies, in a profound way, at the heart of the development of our relationship with God. It is a profound healing from the wound of original sin. It is the shift from a “mature” autonomy and sense of heavy responsibility to a truly childlike attitude of radical trust and simplicity, flowering in a spirit of joy and playfulness. This is also a shift from a focus on merely changing external actions toward a true purification and transformation of my inner heart—a place that is so deep, so intimate, that my own efforts and resolves cannot ultimately effect the change and healing that are needed. What I am invited to do, then, is both more simple and more realistic—and in a way immensely easier. In another respect, of course, it is more “difficult,” since beforehand I tried to arrange everything according to my own foresight, I tried to be in control and “work on” those things that were within my grasp. But now I realize that I am invited to do something that is impossible to do on my own initiative—but precisely because of this I can throw up my hands, like a little child, and cry: “God, you’re going to have to do it, because I can’t!” This is sweet music to the ears of our Father. This is the true doorway into a deepening receptivity to God that places no limits on his healing and transforming activity in my heart and my life. Before perhaps I focused on those things I thought needed changing, yet also somehow sensed that there was much more “beneath the surface” which I was not ready to face, and which I kept buried out of fear and the need to keep things “under control.” The realization, however, that I cannot heal myself, in things great or small, or “pick myself up by the bootstraps,” is a tremendously liberating realization. This is because it allows me to throw off the heavy yoke of performance that I have carried for so long, and to open my hands, poor and receptive, to welcome what can only come as a gift from the outside. Yes, as long as my focus remains on my own activity and effort, I encounter frustration, swinging back and forth between presumption and despair—resolving to improve and then getting cast down by my repeated failures. This attitude is deeply ingrained in me, precisely because I have lost my intimate contact with the enveloping mystery of God’s Love that cradles me at every moment, and in which alone my activity finds its meaning. Further, this cradling Love, intimately close to me at every moment, is not something static, but a living and dynamic reality ceaselessly communicating itself to me in creative and surprising ways…and with a tenderness, patience, and constancy that astonishes. The whole of the Christian life consists, in a way, in simply receiving and acquiescing to this divine activity in each moment. Such docility and acquiescence to God’s touch are possible only when a certainty in God’s tender love and his ardent desire for my good begins to grow and mature within me. And he himself will do this if I let him. Whenever I live from a place of fundamental distrust, fundamental insecurity, then I tend to assume that I am safer “in my own hands,” and that I have more hope of success through my own efforts than through God’s grace, which remains impalpable and hidden. This is because I am tempted to see God’s grace (in other words, his very life and activity in this world), not as the true protagonist of my life, as a force of infinite power that is immensely alive and active in every instant. Rather, I am tempted to see it as some abstract, impersonal quality that is just “there,” to be tapped into so I can achieve my own goals and overcome my faults through my continual effort and “personal training.” However, no matter how much I try, I find myself continually confronted with my weakness and failure. In the face of this, it is easy to get frustrated and angry with God for allowing me to stumble and fall so often. If I’m trying so hard, why isn’t he bringing fruit to my efforts? But the truth of the matter is that he is intensely at work…and my falls are simply due to the fact that the dynamic activity of grace has not yet taken complete possession of me. When I yield my heart up to him, however, his Love will not fail to possess and transfigure me. Indeed, this very surrender is something that he alone can bring to fruition in me, through the mysterious workings of his grace; I can only assent to it again and again when I find myself led to the point at which, aware of my weakness and inability, I can either grasp to control—and even resentment—or can yield my heart up without reserve to the healing touch of God’s Mercy. Insofar as I still live the attitude that focuses on my own efforts and achievement, then my places of woundedness and struggle are places that I try to “exile” from myself, to reject or ignore by “pushing them under the rug.” On the other hand, perhaps, when I do recognize them, I engage in a ceaseless war against them, chipping away at them little by little, trying to overcome them in a continuous combat between myself and my wounds, myself and my weakness, myself and my brokenness and need. However, in doing so I am actually exiling myself from my innermost heart, from the place where God, most intimately, comes to me. This is because my weaknesses and my woundedness surge up in me precisely from the place that most deeply needs and cries out for God…and it is precisely here that he yearns to meet me. Prayer then is a matter of getting in touch with the inner movements of my heart and allowing them to come to the surface, thereby opening them to God and surrendering them to his healing Love. Said more accurately: prayer is a matter of opening myself to God’s loving gaze and letting this gaze draw out into the open all in me that is buried and broken, so that the radiance cast from his eyes can illumine, heal, and transfigure it within the Divine Beauty. + + + What is the root of the difficulty about which we have been speaking? It arises from the tendency to get lost among the multiplicity of our experiences, our struggles, and our weaknesses, and losing sight of the primary, all-encompassing reality that gives meaning to all else. The mystery of communion, of intimacy, of childlike restfulness in the cradling arms of God’s Love and in the peace of his tender gaze—this is the primary, all-enfolding mystery in which all else finds its place. Even when we are not involved in the danger of a do-it-yourself attitude toward holiness, we can still focus a lot on the reality of desire, of seeking, of pursuing healing in the encounter with God’s Love. But this very progression of the spiritual life into greater health, holiness, and intimacy (the “not yet”) is completely enfolded at every moment in the “already” of God’s tender Love which is totally victorious from the bosom of eternity, and which cradles me in itself here and now, in every instant, in the peace and joy that come as a pure gift from him. Indeed, precisely to the depth to which I allow myself to rest in the Father’s Love, allowing him to gaze into me and cherish me as his beloved child—even and especially in my weakness, my brokenness, and my wounds—to that degree the progress of healing and transformation will spontaneously blossom. This is because it is ultimately God’s work to heal and transform. He alone makes saints, just as he alone has made creatures and children of God. What he seeks is my “yes,” my trust-filled and loving consent. This is expressed above all in the inner space of the heart where my intellect, will, and affectivity are united in the depths of my personal being: in the unspeakable reality that I refer to when I say “I.” The heart is the place of decision, the place of my inmost choice for or against Love. As the Catechism says: The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place “to which I withdraw.” The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant. (par. 2563) This inner “yes” of the heart, of course, is also expressed in my concrete daily choices and responses to the many situations of my life, through which God unceasingly comes to me in mystery. But both of these forms of consent, the inner and the external, are in the last analysis simply a matter of acquiescence to the touch of God’s grace which goes before, awakens, sustains, and brings to consummation. To have a heart soft and receptive to this touch (a heart of flesh!), a heart that allows God to do, always and everywhere, what he wants to do…this is the key to my healing and transformation, and indeed to my “cooperation” with God for the good of my brothers and sisters. Let us look at our Virgin Mother. This was precisely her attitude; she is the one who was and is a pure “Yes” to God, pure loving acquiescence. And her “yes” was pronounced and lived, not in a kind of false passivity, but in a trusting and generous readiness, an active responsiveness, to the touch and the gift of God at each moment. Yes, Mary is the woman who lived always with open hands, receiving all that God gave, assenting to all that he did, and abandoning herself totally into his hands in return. This brings us back to the beginning of this meditation, where we mentioned childhood and the spirit of playfulness. In Mary we see this beautifully. Because Mary is and knows herself to be God’s beloved daughter, she is able to receive and live each moment of life in unhesitating trust, not as a burdensome task or demand, but in gratitude and playfulness. She does not fix her eyes on suffering, nor on difficulties that may arise, nor even so much on the tasks and responsibilities entrusted to her. Rather, she keeps her eyes simply on the beauty of the Beloved, and welcomes his own loving gaze upon her…allowing all else to unfold from and within this. Often in the writings of spiritual authors there can be an excessive focus on suffering, as if it were automatically something “good” and to be sought (as a form of sacrifice, penance, or sanctification), or even simply something deserving of our attention at all. But this attitude either leads to fear and self-pity—fear if we are not yet experiencing suffering, or self-pity if we are—or to vainglory—for example, “look how much I am suffering”—or indeed to a kind of “accumulation” of suffering and sacrifices, which focuses our eyes on entirely the wrong thing. I cannot imagine Mary “counting” the cost of anything, nor choosing what she thought “more difficult” because it was thus somehow more … Continue reading Opening My Heart to the Healing Touch of God