Rob Des Cotes

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.    Heb. 4:13

The prologue of John’s gospel teaches us that the light of Christ shines on every person born (Jn 1:9).  And we will experience either comfort or discomfort depending on how we feel about what that light reveals.  As we open our lives to God, Christ’s light inevitably exposes more and more of who we are.  It is therefore important for us to consider the quality of faith we will need in order to continue presenting ourselves to its increasing scrutiny.

Already, in the dim light by which we presently see ourselves, we find ourselves often  resisting the implications of what is exposed.  Like our original parents we are quite adept at the art of misdirection—using whatever is at hand to conceal, even to ourselves, the uncomfortable truths of our being.  How much more will this be the case as the glare of God’s light increases?  How long will it take before we feel it necessary to reach for whatever fig leaves we can find to cover ourselves with?  How soon will we too cry out for the rocks to fall on us and hide us from the face of “Him who sees all” (Rev. 6:16)?  Long before God has occasion to pronounce judgment on us it is we who will more likely disqualify ourselves out of fear of the discrepancies that His light so clearly and indisputably reveals in us.

Such will be the natural response of all but the most arrogant and self-justified among us.  There are many of our race who rashly choose to dismiss God in order to justify themselves (Job 40:8).  They refuse to accept the conviction of the Holy Spirit that calls them to repent.  But for those who cannot deny the truth of what is revealed, rather than inspire diffidence, the reality of our sins can easily tempt us to dismiss ourselves long before God has had opportunity to address us.  It is a natural response to the fear of having our shadows brought to light.  As Jesus tells Nicodemus, we resist coming into the light because we do not want our deeds exposed ( John 3:20).

Left to ourselves, when confronted with negative truth, we will either cling to the lie of self-justification, or else we will disqualify ourselves long before we come to recognize the merciful intent of God’s exposing Light.  By presuming to be our own judges we will eclipse God’s mercy with our own self-judgment.

But there is another recourse, and that is the one offered through the accepted sacrifice of Christ.  To the degree that we believe Jesus’ words—that His blood is shed for the continual forgiveness of our sins (Mat. 26:28)—we will be confident to welcome His light, regardless of what it exposes of our poverty.  Though increasingly aware of the disqualifying truth it reveals in us, we will nevertheless boldly approach God in full confidence, not of our own merit, but that of Christ’s finished work on the cross.

Scripture gives us great assurance for such confidence in the fact that all authority to judge has been given to Jesus, who has expressly stated that His intention is not to condemn the world but to present us to Himself as without blemish (Jn 3:17, Eph. 5:27, Col. 1:22).  Our confidence rests solely on the grace of God.  In faith, we accept the sufficiency our Lord’s sacrifice and, in celebration of this truth, we join the chorus of those who praise God for the far-reaching atonement of His mercy.

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards
Song of Solomon 2:15

Distractions are a normal, through frustrating, part of our maturing ability to pray.  Eventually, we learn to ignore them—to realize that they are on the surface and that the place of prayer comes from a deeper place, in the temple of our hearts.  But we also grow in our assurances that the Lord is nevertheless working, encountering us at a deeper level in the soul, even through what is happening in our thoughts.

Thomas Green, in his book Drinking from the Dry Well, compares our unruly thoughts during prayer to children at an adult party.  He writes,

They don’t grasp what is going on between the adults (i.e. the soul and the Lord) and so they clamour for attention.  And the more we attend to them, the more demanding they become.  Like spoiled children they know they can get our attention by making noise.  On the other hand, if we ignore them they will eventually quiet down, since they learn that they won’t gain anything by their antics.

There will always be distractions in our prayers since our imaginations are always active.   Even when we sleep they fill our minds with data.  It is a natural process that we cannot stop by simply willing it so. But as we come more before the Lord, our thoughts become easier to ignore.  As Thomas Green writes, “As we cooperate with the stillness we are being invited to, the Lord tames and purifies our faculties of prayer.”

Teresa of Avila, in the fourth mansion of her Interior Castle, speaks of a “prayer of recollection” where the Lord Himself brings all the faculties to quiet and enables the pray-er to be totally centered on Him.  But this is a gift from God, which only comes to us occasionally.

Sometimes what we call distractions might actually be a dialogue in which the Lord is revealing, through our own thoughts, what He wishes to say or make known to us.  Green writes,

Our “distractions” are often related to the demands of our active life.  And they may well be inspirations from God concerning our choosing and acting.  The distinction we need to make in prayer is whether we are listening to the Lord or merely talking to ourselves.

If the objective of prayer is to bring all that takes place within us into relationship with the Lord, even our thoughts can serve as vehicles for this encounter.  If, however, our imagination sends us back to ourselves we have lost the basic intent of our prayer.  As Green says,

If I become all wrapped up in a discussion with myself about my problems and concerns—if the Lord is forgotten in the process—then these concerns are a distraction from our intent in prayer, which is to be with God.  But, if I bring these thoughts to the Lord and talk to him about them, then they are not really side trips.  They become the very substance of our encounter with Him.

The advice Green offers is that we first acknowledge our distractions and then intentionally translate them into the language of prayer.  He writes,

This is why I have not found it helpful to try to block out all the distractions in my prayer.  As I have learned over the years, it is better to begin the prayer by surfacing all my concerns, bringing them into the prayer and then handing them over to God saying, “Lord, these are my concerns as I come before you today.  If you wish to speak to me about them, fine.  But if not, let them pass away.”

Such an approach is a much more effective way of dealing with distractions than our struggling to stop them.  As we grow in our attraction to God we will find it easier to ignore whatever tempts us away from our first love.  In the meantime we are assured that God is sanctifying our prayer, and encouraging us always to choose the better focus for our attention.

Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.
Luke 10:42

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”  So God led the people around by the desert road.

Ex. 13:17-18

Desert experiences are an inevitable part of our spiritual pilgrimage.  As disorienting as they are, maturity eventually teaches us to not only anticipate these times of lostness, but to even welcome them as seasons of grace where God, in a unique way, fashions and strengthens our faith.

The desert is a place of God-breathed confusion, a time of disorientation out of which new truths find their footing.  In the desert we lose our bearings.  Without the securities that used to mark our path we become more dependant on God as we seek redirection in our lives.

More often than not, the desert is something thrust upon us rather than something we choose for ourselves. Whether we are prepared for it or not, we suddenly face new variables in our lives, ones that are untried and often unspecific.   Forced to let go of familiar shores, faith becomes our only guide as we advance towards the mystery that lies ahead of us.

One of the more disconcerting features of the desert is that it often closes the door on the past.  Not long after they had set out on their journey, the Israelites pined for the days when they at least knew what defined their lives.  But the Lord made certain they had no choice but to move forward. We too must face the fact that we cannot go back to where we once were.   To the degree that we fail to come to terms with this we will not be able to fully respond to God’s presence in what lies ahead.

Like Abraham in the desert, we must, at times, leave our homeland in order to go to “to the land I will show you.”  And to the degree that we lack peace in trusting God, we will naturally hesitate and try to turn back.  The desert however removes from us the option of return.  It forces us to accept that we don’t know where we are going, or how long it will take to get there, and that we will have to place our faith solely in the fact that God does.

Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these forty years, taking away your pride and testing you, because he wanted to know
what was in your heart.
Deut. 8:2

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Rom 12:15

In his book, The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin speaks of mirror neurons recently discovered in the brain that are the basis for human empathy.  Empathy is the capacity we have to feel what others are feeling as though we were experiencing it ourselves. And for Rifkin, the potential for cultivating this capacity is what gives him hope for humanity.

Empathy is the basis for compassion, from which justice and mercy arise.  It gives us solidarity with the plight and the frailties of others.  We cry when we see someone else crying.  Or we empathize with the person who has lost their home, or the child whose feelings are hurt.  It also gives us solidarity with the plight of non-humans.  We feel for the baby seals in Labrador.  Even clear-cut logging can appeal to our sense of empathy for a denuded landscape.

But empathy, according to Rifkin, is not hard-wired.  It can be cultivated or atrophied.  As Jesus warns, our love has the potential to grow cold.  Our hearts can become calloused and lose sensitivity to the needs around us.  With our affections disordered, we no longer feel the way we should for the concerns of others.  But empathy is also something we can cultivate.

For Rifkin, to empathize is to be more fully human.  He envisions the extension of empathy to the whole human race as well as to fellow creatures, including the biosphere.  It is not difficult to imagine such an increase in global empathy.  When, for instance, the earthquakes hit Haiti, within an hour we had You-Tube videos available globally.  Within a few hours of the event the whole world was geared up in empathic response.

Another person for whom empathy provides hope for human potential is the Carmelite scholar Edith Stein who sees it as God’s invitation for us to become more fully human.   Stein recognizes empathy as the very basis for community when she writes,

Empathy comes to life when the “I” of the self and the “you” of the other emerge as a “we” at a higher level. Empathic individuals are thus able to engage a larger world than their own.

All our relationships, to some degree, are the result of empathy.  It’s what allows us to “get into” the other person, to understand and to share experiences with someone else.  For Stein, this “crossing over” to the other person is what takes place in any meaningful communication where we enjoy a moment of shared experience.

Another attribute of our mirror neurons is that they enable us to also experience what the other person feels about us.  Empathy helps us form a more objective opinion of who we are. As Stein puts it,

I get the image the other has of me, a reflection of what I present of myself to them. Such an experience of reflexive sympathy enables me to obtain a better understanding of myself. This new self-knowledge offers a corrective to the illusions I have about myself, allowing me to gain a glimpse of who I appear to be through the eyes of another.

Self-understanding then is made more accurate by what we learn about ourselves from those around us. By becoming aware of the evaluation of others, including our sense of how God feels, we are brought to question our evaluation of ourselves, and led to a more precise and mature self-knowledge.

Whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

1Cor. 6:17

Prayer calls us from the periphery of our lives to the center of who we are; from what is superficial in us to the most profound aspects of our being; and from the illusion of autonomy to union with God as our first reality.  It is the crucible where we work out our salvation, becoming more and more conformed to the unity of Christ with His Father.

Such lofty thoughts are easier to grasp with the help of good imagery, and St. John of the Cross has provided us with a beautiful metaphor of this evolution towards unity in the image of a burning log.   In the same way that fire dries out a wooden log so that it can more deeply receive the flame, so too are we being carefully prepared for increasing union with God through the purification of our hearts.

John of the Cross likens the early stages of our spiritual life to a damp log that is thrown onto the fire.  Before the fire can claim the wood for itself it must first dry out the log.  He writes,

The fire, at first, acts on the wood by driving out all its moisture.  Very slowly, it expels from the wood everything that is inconsistent with the nature of fire.  It then starts to burn on the outside until at last it transforms the wood into fire.

The whole of our spiritual life can be seen as a preparation for the soul to receive more deeply the love of God.  And, in the same way that a dry log catches fire more easily than a wet one, so the soul responds more immediately to the impulse of God the more prepared it is by the Holy Spirit.  As St. John of the Cross writes,

In the prepared soul, the love of God enters immediately, for at each touch the spark catches fire in the dry tinder.  It seems to such persons that every time this flame shoots up, it raises them up to the activity of God in God.

John of the Cross describes the experience of unity as that of an inflamed heart caught up in the fire of God’s love.  Such congruence can only take place in a soul that has been purged from all that, in John’s words, is “irrelevant and immature.”  It is the excessive humidity in a log that prevents the wood from catching fire as readily as it should.  Similarly, the excesses of self prevent us from recognizing and responding to the movement of God within us.

This process of drying is something that, at first, we resist.  But we soon recognize its benefits in producing in us a greater conformity to God.  We become more united to Gods’ action within us.  As John of the Cross writes, the effect of this unity is that “it stirs the heart so deeply as to make it dissolve in love.”  The word “dissolve” means to loosen and set free.  It also means to combine, as in a solution.  Such is the experience of those whose hearts melt, or dissolve, in the unity of God’s presence.

And lastly, as the log becomes one with the fire, it takes on not only the properties of fire but also its ministry.  As John of the Cross explains,

In this way the wood loses all its own properties, and acquires all the properties belonging to the fire.  Once it is dry, it dries other things.  It acquires the heat of the fire and then produces heat itself.  It takes on the bright flames from the fire and then reflects that light itself.  This is all performed by the properties of the fire now that the log has been conformed to these.

Since the log no longer resists the flame, it now receives the fire deep within.  And, as the fire transforms the wood into itself, it makes it more directly a part of its ministry.