11 — IN SEARCH OF GOD

Presence of God. — I recollect myself in the inner sanctuary of my soul to seek there God, living in me through grace.

Meditation

1 — “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk. 17, 21), Jesus taught us, and St. Teresa of Avila comments: “To speak with her heavenly Father and enjoy His company, the soul does not need to ascend to heaven... To seek Him it has no need of wings, because it is enough that it withdraw into solitude and contemplate Him within itself” (Way, 28, 2).

But if God is in us, why do we struggle so much to find Him, to recognize His presence? St. John of the Cross answers: “It is to be noted that the Word, Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is essentially and by presence hidden in the innermost being of the soul. Therefore, the soul that wishes to discover Him must go out from all things according to the affection of the will, recollecting itself to the highest degree within itself, as if all else did not exist... God, then, is hidden in the soul, and there the good contemplative must seek Him with love” (C. 1, 6).

The answer is clear: God is in us, but He is hidden. To seek Him one must go out from all things according to the affection of the will. “To go out,” according to the Saint’s terminology, means to detach oneself, to deprive oneself, to renounce, to annihilate oneself, to die spiritually to oneself and to all things. It is the way of nothingness, of total detachment: it is the death of the old man, an indispensable condition for life in God.

St. Paul also said: “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3, 3).

The loving search for God hidden in us goes hand in hand with this dying to the world and to ourselves. The more one dies, the more one finds God.

2 — St. John of the Cross continues: “Whoever seeks something hidden must enter secretly into the hiding place where it is, and when he finds it he too is hidden as it is. Since, therefore, your beloved Spouse is the hidden treasure in the vineyard of your soul, to acquire which the prudent merchant sold all his goods, you too must, forgetting all your own things and withdrawing from all creatures, hide yourself, in order to find Him, in the innermost retreat of your spirit” (C. 1, 9). It is a new invitation to detachment—to forget and withdraw from all things—in order to penetrate the depths of the soul, into the hiding place where God conceals Himself.

We live too much outwardly; too often there is in us an entire world of very lively tendencies, impulses, and passions, which push us toward creatures and induce us to give them our heart, to place our hope in them, to seek our comfort in their remembrance. And we live in this superficial world, which occupies us to such a point that it makes us forget the deeper life, truly interior life, where the soul could remain in intimate union with its God. The Lord waits for us, so to speak, in the depths of our soul, but we do not enter this depth, so absorbed as we are by “our affairs” to which we give all our interest.

We must therefore go out from ourselves and from all things, forget ourselves and all things, flee from the exterior world, from superficial life, in order to “hide” ourselves with God “hidden.”

* Cf. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene: Union with God according to St. John of the Cross, Ed. del Carmelo S. Giuseppe - Rome.

Colloquy

“O my God, You make me understand well that I myself am the room where You dwell, the hiding place where You conceal Yourself. Come then, rejoice, my soul, knowing that all your good, the object of your hope, is so close to you that it dwells in you and you cannot be without Him. What more do I want and why do I go seeking outside myself, O my Lord and my God, when You have deigned to place Your kingdom, Your dwelling, in my very soul? Here then, in the inner sanctuary of my heart, I want to love You, here to desire You, here to adore You; no, I will no longer go seeking You outside myself” (cf. J.C. C. 1, 7 and 8).

External things, creatures, their words may perhaps speak to me of You, but they are not You and therefore they weary me, distract me, while here, in the little heaven of my soul, I can find You as You are, in all Your essence, Your substance, Your charity.

But, I understand it, O my God, to find You I must go out from all things; go out from the noise and whirlwind of external life, from the clamor of worldly things, from curiosity that drags me outward to see, to hear, to know. Go out with the will from all this exterior world which continually tries to seize my attention, my thoughts, my affections. Help me to silence my useless curiosities, my excessive talkativeness; help me to pass amid the events of earthly life, its showy attractions, its affairs, its dizzying activity, without my gaze and my heart stopping in these things seeking in them satisfaction, comfort, and personal interest.

To go out from all things means to die a little, to die to superficial life, to purely human life, to the old man with all his passions. To go out is to become unbound, detached from everything in order to seek You alone; does not this “going out” identify with the steep “ascent” of the mountain of perfection, with the narrow way of “nothing” that leads to the “all” of life in perfect union with You? What a new light, my God! How clearly I see that this ascent, this mountain of perfection, and the very splendid summit where the soul is perfectly united with You, are found not outside but within me. The summit is the hiding place, where You conceal Yourself, and to find You I too must hide myself with You, always walking in the way of “nothing,” of total detachment from all things. Will it then be possible to detach oneself from everything, to leave everything to find You, O my God? But what comfort to my weakness to know that in this harsh path of total renunciation I am not alone: You are always with me. O Father, be my strength; O Word, be my light; O Holy Spirit, be my love. O Most Holy Trinity, You are my great treasure, to acquire which it is very little to sell all the things of this earth!