Daily Thought For December 1, 2020
Dare to Step Forward toward God’s Mysterious Presence
From early times the Church’s liturgy has set words from one of the psalms at the beginning of Advent, words in which Israel’s Advent, the boundless waiting of that people, has found concentrated expression: “To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul; O my God, in thee I trust …” (Ps 24:1). Such words may seem hackneyed to us, for we no longer attempt the adventures that lead man to his own inner self. While our maps of the earth have become more and more complete, man’s inner self has become increasingly a terra incognita, an alien region, in spite of the fact that there are greater discoveries to be made there than in the visible universe.
To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul: recently I came to a new awareness of the dramatic meaning behind this verse when reading an account that the French writer Julien Green recently published concerning his path to conversion to the Catholic Church. He tells how, in his youth, he was in bondage to “the pleasures of the flesh”. He had no religious conviction to restrain him. And yet, the strange thing is that, now and again, he goes into a church with the unadmitted longing for some miracle to happen that would instantly set him free. “There was no miracle”, he continues, “but, from afar off, the sense of a presence.” This presence warms him and seems to offer hope, but he is still repelled by the idea of salvation being connected with belonging to the Church. He desires this new presence but is unwilling to undertake renunciation; he wants to effect his own salvation, as it were, and without any serious effort. Thus he encounters the spirituality of India and hopes to find in it a better way. But he suffers the inevitable disappointment and begins to examine the Bible. He is so in earnest about this that he starts taking Hebrew lessons from a rabbi. One day the latter says to him: “Next Thursday I won’t be coming since it is a holy day.” “Holy day?” asks Green in surprise. “The Ascension—do I have to tell you that?” answers the rabbi. The young man in his earnest search is suddenly struck as by a thunderbolt: it is as if the words of the prophets were raining down upon him. “I was Israel,” he says, “whom God was entreating to come home.” I felt the application to myself of the words, “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know …” (Is 1:3).
This kind of experience of the truth of Scripture in our lives is what Advent is. This is what is meant by that verse, “I lift up my soul”; from being a hackneyed phrase it can become something new, adventurous and great if we begin to explore its truth.
Julien Green’s account of his turbulent youth provides an amazingly accurate description of the struggles that our own age has to face. First of all there is the universal acceptance of the modern style of life, which on the one hand seems to us to be the inalienable form of our freedom yet is felt to be a slavery that it would take a miracle to abolish. (And there is no question of the Church’s old-fashioned ways being of any use here; the Church is not even regarded as an alternative. Exotic religions, by contrast, present a novel attraction.) And yet it is of great significance that the longing for liberation is not extinguished, that occasionally it asserts its influence in moments of quiet in a church. And it is this readiness to expose oneself to a mysterious presence, to accept it slowly and gradually, to allow it to penetrate, that enables Advent to take place, the first glimmer of light in however dark a night.
Sooner or later it becomes alarmingly clear: Yes, I am Israel. I am the ox that does not know its owner. And when, appalled, we get down from the pedestal of our pride, we find, as the Psalmist says, that our soul lifts itself up; it rises, and God’s hidden presence penetrates ever deeper into our tangled lives. Advent is not a miracle out of the blue such as is offered by the preachers of revolution and the heralds of new ways of salvation. God acts in an entirely human way with us, leading us step by step and waiting for us. The days of Advent are like a quiet knocking at the door of our smothered souls, inviting us to undertake the risk of stepping forward toward God’s mysterious presence, which alone can make us free.
Benedict XVI. (2007). Seek that which Is above: Meditations through the Year. (G. Harrison, Trans.) (Second Edition, pp. 17–23). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.