Father:
My beloved Son,
they, our beloved ones,
have turned away from Us…
Unable to endure receptivity to our gift
they have tried to appropriate it to themselves
—as if it were something possessed in isolation,
something grasped and enjoyed immediately
by the lustful desire to control and dominate.
You, my Son, delight of my heart,
you allow yourself to be begotten of me
in an eternity of silent receptivity.
You are the Word I speak in eternal Silence,
and precisely in Silence I can say all:
in this silent presence of the Spirit
who is himself the Silence of our Love.
Son:
Father, I eternally behold your gaze
which is ever beholding me,
and Love is the endless communication
passing between us, and binding us as One.
We see, we welcome, we contemplate
in an endless communication beyond words
—Lover and Beloved united in Silent Fullness.
Here the Silence of our Union
and the Word that I am from you
are inseparably a single reality,
distinct only as Meaning is from Form.
For the fullness of my identity as Word
is itself born, not in speech, but in Silence,
and were I to be partial, graspable,
then I would cease to be fully Word.
And from this silent fullness, Father,
we have created our children…to share in this.
They are surround by partial words—created things—
yet engulfed in the fullness of our abiding Presence
which cradles them at every moment in silence,
so close it can not be grasped and possessed,
but simply enjoyed in silent reception.
They, however, did not understand
that we remain silent only in order to speak
yet more deeply and truly,
without limiting or falsifying the Word.
Father:
They would not accept the presence of mystery,
the glory which is poverty, and poverty which is glory:
the openness in mutual self-donation and reciprocal acceptance
that marks the very inner reality of our Trinitarian Life.
They would not abide the obedience
which is but the docility of a silent heart,
corresponding in filial love and trust
to the fullness of the silent gift of Love.
They would not live, within this gift,
according to the passion of chaste love
that is deeper than possession and enjoyment
—for it is so deep it cannot rest on the surface,
but penetrates to the depth of mystery
in affirmation of the beloved
and in the reverent donation of self.
The fires of our divine intimacy
were too great for them,
and they desired something easier,
something less demanding and profound.
The ecstasy of our divine Joy
scorched their petty, grasping hearts,
and now they prefer to remain on the surface,
listening to the sounds immediately accessible
rather than dwelling in the silence, listening,
so as to receive the Word and respond to it.
Spirit:
But my silent presence remains with them,
ceaselessly surging at the heart of the world.
The heartbeat of our life, Father, Son, and I,
remains the silent mystery glimpsed in every thing.
Father:
But now we must speak to them partially,
in fragmented and imperfect words,
preparing them gradually, over time,
to hear the Word in its fullness speak.
Son:
A glimpse here and there,
an idea, an image, an understanding,
can never add up to the Whole.
Father:
That is why the words we give
will be but accompanying expressions
of a Covenant of love that binds them to us,
who bind ourselves, forever, to them.
Our very abiding presence to them
will be the Word binding all words together.
And these words will rise,
through the generations and generations,
in a crescendo, in which you, the Word,
will finally yourself come to them in the flesh.
This will be our Word—my Son, my Word—
the very reality of your presence with them.
In the face of this incarnate mystery
they will only be able to fall silent,
at last, therefore, able to listen to our silent speech.
In their beholding of you,
who behold each of them with love,
they will glimpse the mystery beyond limitation,
the Love beyond hindrances and fear.
In the silent beating of your heart
they will come to feel and hear
the eternal surging of our own.
And through this encounter
their closed hearts will be reopened,
by Love, to Love…and enter into Us again.