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Brookline Carmel Bulletin                      J M J T

November 8, 1959

 

 

Cogitatio Sancta

(Holy Meditation)

 

Seeing God in our Neighbor

 

 

We have spoken of finding God in the Blessed Sacrament and in our own souls.  It is also very important that we recognize God’s presence in our neighbor.  God is present in all His creatures, in that He created them and sustains them in being.  Every creature thus bears some imprint of the Creator.  Human beings have the added distinction of being made in the “image and likeness” of God.  (Cf. Genesis 1:26, 27: “And He said:  Let us make man in our image and likeness… And God created man to his own image:  to the image of God He created him.”)  Thus God is present even in the greatest sinner.  St. John of the Cross explains this (Ascent, Bk. II, chap. 5) as follows:  “God dwells and is present substantially in every soul, even in that of the greatest sinner in the world.  And this type of union is continuously in effect between God and all creatures, for in it He is preserving their being:  if union of this kind were to fail them, they would at once become annihilated and would cease to exist.”  St. John calls this type of union “substantial or essential.”  It is “natural,” in contrast to the “supernatural” union that exists between God and those souls who are in the state of grace.  In the latter union, God dwells within the soul in a new and special way and allows the soul to share intimately in His own divine life.  This is what St. John calls “the union of likeness” which “comes to pass when the two wills – namely that of the soul and that of God – are conformed to each other, so that there is nothing in the one that is repugnant to the other.  And thus, when the soul rids itself totally of all that is repugnant to the divine will and is not in conformity with the latter, it is transformed in God through charity.”  This is the mystery of the divine indwelling (which we discussed in the November 1st bulletin).

 

When we realize that God is present in each of our fellow human beings, and that He is present in a special, supernatural manner in those who are in the state of grace, our respect for our neighbor should be very great.  We should recognize that service rendered to our neighbor is service rendered to God, and that, as such; it can be considered a form of prayer.  Here we might stop to ponder Our Lord’s own account of the last judgment (Mt. 25:31 sq.):  “But when the Son of Man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory; and before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate them one from another…Then the king will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave Me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; naked and you covered Me; sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to me…Amen I say to you, as long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for Me.’”

 

The person who is just setting out to live a life of prayer should meditate well on the above passage, lest he make the mistake of exempting himself from works of fraternal charity on the pretext of giving himself completely to God in prayer.  St. Teresa mentions this danger in chapter 5 of her Foundations.  “It is clear that as soon as a soul begins to taste ‘how sweet the Lord is’ (Ps. 33:9) it finds more pleasure in allowing the body to rest from its labors and the soul to enjoy this sweetness.”  This, in itself, is not undesirable.  Other things being equal, it is well for the soul to devote what time it can to seeking God in silent, solitary prayer.  But there is, she warns, “a kind of self-love which insinuates itself here, and so subtly that we do not realize that we are more intent on giving pleasure to ourselves than to God.”  One must be on his guard against a false union – “those delightful types of absorption” which “may amount to union if the result of them is what I have described” (i.e., a true love for God and neighbor), “but if such absorption leaves behind it little obedience, and much self-will, it seems to me that it will be a union with love of self, not with the will of God.”  “Oh, the charity of those who truly love this Lord…How little rest will they be able to take if they see that they can do anything to help even one soul to make progress and love God better, or to give it some comfort or save it from danger!…They give up their own comfort, all because they are not thinking of their own pleasure, but of how better to do the Lord’s will.”

 

 

 

 

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