Heb 11, 27 makes a remarkable statement about Moses. It says Moses
achieved great things because of an unusual gift: eyes that could see what
cannot be seen. “As seeing him who is invisible” (RSV); “As if
by the very sight of him who is invisible” (Knox); “Like a man who
could see the Invisible” (JB); “As though he saw the invisible
God” (TEV). In this paradoxical statement the Bible offers one of the best
definitions of a spiritual person.
When a child is born, its eyes are open. The same rays of light that give vision to adults fall on its retina. But the child cannot see. It observes a disordered tangle of lines and colours. It needs months before it can perceive gaps, judge distances, distinguish objects, and recognise their relative position in space. Ordinary seeing has to be learned in a painstaking process.
There are further dimensions of seeing that can only be acquired by effort and experience. One of these is ‘seeing with empathy’. Suppose we observe a young lady leaving a shop every day at about 5 pm and running in a particular direction along the pavement. Although we may witness this regularly, we remain outsiders to the event because we do not know the why or wherefore. If we were to find out that the lady is a young widow who has a small daughter in a nursery school half a mile down the road; that after finishing her work at 5 pm she hurries to the school to take charge of her child, afraid that it might come to harm if left to itself - then, all of a sudden, we start seeing the event with new eyes. We notice the mother’s love and anxiety for her child; we understand her fear of losing her job and feel something of the pressure of lonely responsibility that rests on her shoulders. We are now seeing with human depth, with empathy. Small traits of her behaviour, which would otherwise have escaped our attention now have a new meaning for us. Some people never learn to see in this way. They are not open to the ‘disclosures’ that make us see the inner life of other people.
Religious people have learned to recognise ‘disclosures’ of a different kind. (1) They perceive in what happens around them an unexpectedly new dimension; an existential, metaphysical dimension; a dimension related to the most important questions of life. A religious person who watches children play in a park radiating joy and vitality, may well ‘see’ in this happy scene a manifestation of such mysteries as the will to live, the search for individual fulfilment, participation of time-bound events in an eternal reality. His eyes see beyond the apparent semblance of things. Like Moses, he may see what is invisible. This kind of ‘seeing’ also needs to be learned.
In this chapter I hope to show how we may gradually develop our potential for such a vision. It is, of course. not an ability that can be acquired from books. Real progress will only come about through a personal discovery of the transcending dimension, a discovery that is successively strengthened by an ever-growing sensitivity. However, information and suggestions such as are contained in this chapter, may help us to make the discovery or to deepen its impact.
To help us acquire the new attitude it pays to read the books of Romano Guardini. (2) This great spiritual writer of our own times has put in modern language what religious people of all ages have asserted: that we are blind if we don’t see the other-worldly aspects inherent in all reality. Guardini works this out in a coherent view.
All things are objects as well as symbols. This means that, apart from whatever physical reality they are, they point to another reality beyond themselves according to their limited, physical nature; they are symbols because they possess a meaning over and above their own physical being. A flag is not just a piece of cloth with colours on it (its physical nature), it symbolises at the same time the independence of a nation, thus going far beyond its physical nature. When we see a flag, we take in at one glance both the physical reality and the symbolic value it stands for. In the same way, an unspoilt and liberated view of things shows us both their physical entities and the dimension they point to as symbols.
We might also put it in this way: all things have a recognisable borderline aspect. They carry their own limitedness in themselves. By their own nature they are seen to depend on the source of being. They have an in-built polarisation towards purposes outside themselves. Think of a spider in its web for example. Catching its prey requires a complicated and elaborate plan. The spider chooses an appropriate place, hangs out a superb net, covers it with a sticky substance and knows how to entangle its victim once it gets caught. What is remarkable is not only the astuteness of the plan itself, which exceeds the spider’s own capabilities, but the fact that there is a plan at all. We live in a world in which planning is an essential part. Or consider the mathematical precision of the web itself. We find patterns that recur throughout the universe, expressing fundamental properties of matter in space that can be verified on the scale of the molecule as well as of giant galaxies.(3) Again, we may see in the spider’s web an expression of the universal laws of matter and the questions which this raises I know that scientists will be inclined to answer here that the spider’s behaviour can be explained by inborn instructions acquired through evolution, but such a reply misses the point. While looking at the spider in its web, we perceive fundamental realities of our existence which cannot be explained either by this spider itself, or by all spiders taken together, or by the mere chain of evolution. Because even in the whole process we would again meet with the ‘borderline’ experience of aspects pointing to the beyond.
In this way, Guardini says, things are windows to what is invisible. They are stepping-stones on our way to transcendence. Or, inversely, they may be considered as lamps radiating eternal values or rather apertures through which the eternal becomes transparent. A mighty storm, for instance, may lead us from an appreciation of brute force to an acknowledgment of force as such. The fierce cyclone that uproots trees and ravages the countryside may become the aperture through which we get a glimpse of what power means, including the power that must be at the very root of being.
Whatever exists is the image of an idea, not only because we grasp it as an idea but because the idea itself was there first. Things are individual forms of universal values They are mirrors reflecting transcendent realities. When we see a cat looking after its kittens we are actually looking at love as such. The love of the cat may be limited and instinctual; yet it points to the reality of love as such, linking it up with human love and referring somehow to the mystery that love exists at all. If the concern of the mother cat has any value - and who would deny this? - we are touching the value and existence of love as such, also of the extra-temporal Love that must somehow be at the root of being.
What we should learn is that discovering these wider dimensions in things is not just the adding of theoretical reflections. It is also a question of a different way of seeing. Just as when we look at the face of a person we know and see sorrow or happiness, and not merely the skin or his face, so when we watch the spider we see in it pointers to realities beyond. Paul stated, “Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made” (Rom 1, 20). Paul did not say that God’s invisible qualities were deduced by reasoning; he said that they were seen. He stated that they are perceived in the things that God has made. Neither our intellectual, nor our religious seeing can be separated from the way we look on things. The human eye is more than a mechanical camera. It is an instrument of perception for the whole man, Or, to put it in Guardini’s words, “The roots of our eyes lie in our heart . . . Ultimately our eye sees from within the depth of our heart.” (4)
If all things can be said to be symbols pointing beyond themselves, this can be said with even more reason about the liturgy and the sacramental life of the Church. We know and believe that sacraments are visible signs that not only signify God’s grace but bring it about. The rites of liturgical worship are external actions that somehow express our communication with the infinite. Here, most of all, we have to go beyond symbols if we want to do justice to the situation. A few thoughts on Holy Mass may illustrate this point.
The Eucharist is a sacramental event, a happening replete with symbolic expression. In sacrifice man is somehow in touch with the roots of existence. This should fill us with a sense of mystery. A verse from the Rigveda may put us in the right frame of mind.
“I ask you about the furthest limit of Earth;
where, I ask is the centre of the world ?
I ask you about the Stallion s prolific seed;
I ask you about high heaven where abides the Word.The altar is the furthest limit of earth:
this sacrifice of ours is the world’s centre;
the Soma is the Stallions’s prolific seed;
our prayer is the highest heaven where abides the Word.” (5)
The poet speaks about the four greatest mysteries of our human existence, What is the extent of the universe? For which purpose (round which centre) was it created? Where do Iiving beings (exemplified by the horse) obtain their power of life ? What do we know about the divine firstcause (the Word) of all that exists? The poet replies that the answer to these questions is somehow contained in the sacrifice he is taking part in. Or, rather, he feels that, through the sacrifice, he is in living contact with these great realities that, strictly speaking, lie outside our scope. The altar in some way or other reaches the furthest limits of the universe. For a short while “this sacrifice of ours” becomes the centre of the world. The sacrificial wine we drink (the Soma) contains the indestructible power of life. Our prayer, however small it may be, makes us speak to God himself.
These thoughts of a pious Hindu apply equally well, if not better, to the eucharistic sacrifice. Although the actions and the words may be simple in themselves, they transport us into the midst of unspeakable realities. When we attend Mass we should become conscious of the unseen dimensions: of the overpowering greatness of God who is somehow present, of the almost infinite space of the universe surrounding us, of the amazing dynamism of life and mind. A sense of mystery should pervade us.
The Vatican constitution on the liturgy prescribes that the celebration of Mass should incorporate silence. (6) This should not only be understood as requiring the insertion of moments when no prayers are said aloud. Rather, the Church expects an attitude of inner silence, an emptiness that is open to receive rather than a self-appointed fullness anxious to give. With interior silence we should listen to the Word, observe the sacred rites and respond to manifestations of the community. Our silence will not be the silence of a passive spectator, but the silence of openness to God.
Another thing we should not forget, perhaps, is that because Mass is a ritual, our participation too should take place on a level deeper than words. We are not acheiving our purpose simply by understanding what is happening, by grasping it mentally. Although our intellect rules our behaviour, it has no claim to a monopoly. The whole of us must take part: our heart, our emotions, our body, the unspeakable aspirations and frustrations we feel deeply inside. We express ourselves too by our gestures and postures. When we kneel down in adoration or when we receive the sacred species in communion, something happens to our whole being.
Of course, in all this the focus of our attention should fall on Christ. It is he who comes to us in Mass. He speaks to us through the word of the readings. He expresses his concern and affection through the love that radiates from his community. By offering us his body and blood he invites us to join in his supreme sacrifice. Christ is at the root of the mystery of our existence, and in the Eucharist it is Christ who takes us by the hand to help us face the awesome implications of our being. When we reduce our hearts to inner silence it is Christ we are waiting for. He is word, bread and love; way, life and truth.
The measure of success in liturgical participation will be the extent to which we succeed in going beyond the sacramental symbols with body and soul. The whole purpose of the liturgy is to transport us beyond ourselves, to forge a bridge between our limited human lives and the infinite world that is God’s. Until, ultimately, Christ himself takes over in us - he who is in himself the sacramental union between God and man.
A fundamental consideration we always have to keep in mind is that whether we think or speak, we use human language. Human language cannot adequately express divine realities because it derives from our limited human experience and is entirely constructed round human categories. A nightingale can produce beautiful sound, but it will never be able to sing Handel’s Messiah. Foraging ants pass on signals to one another with the help of their antennae; an attempt to reproduce Shakespeare’s Hamlet in ant language would result in disaster. Whenever we speak about God, or about realities related to him, we should be conscious of the inherent inadequacy of our language. (7)
Every word is a symbol, an image expressing a human experience. Take for instance the word ‘father’. It conveys a precise meaning in human relationsnips, but when we apply it to God the meaning is entirely symbolic. When Christ employs this term, he does it to affirm about God a wealth of notions that are important and meaningful: God’s authority, his concern for us, his new relationship to us end so on. The parable of the Prodigal Son elaborates the image of God’s fatherhood in a striking and moving manner. But at the same time we know that God cannot be called a ‘father’ in any carnal sense, that his father-like qualities exceed anything we can imagine about human fathers that in fact God is a very exceptional father, “the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth receives its true name” (Eph 3, 14). While affirming whatever is positive in the symbol ‘father’, we have to go beyond it to a far areater reality than can be expressed bv this human symbol.
When we say about God that he knows, or loves, or wills, or does something else, we are appropriating to him typically human actions. The all-perfect God is not distinct from his acts. He is his knowledge, his love, his will. God need not perform one action after another, as we mortals have to do, nor does he have separate faculties for understanding, memory, decision making or affection The absoluteness of God’s inner affection, the unchanging dynamism of divine power and action which always remain at their climax, are totally beyond our imagination and our powers of expression. When we make affirmations about God’s knowledge, love, will, and so on, we should be aware that we are using symbolic expressions. Constrained though we are to use them, we should go beyond them in mind and heart.
Conscious of these limitations of religious language, we should feel a great desire to reach out beyond the symbols to the mysteries that lie behind them, beyond our human expression about God to the living reality of God himself. We may well ultimately find that silence is a better medium of union with God than spoken words. We are closest to his light when we have realised the darkness of our own limitations. We are nearer to grasping his greatness the more we have become speechless and over-awed in his presence.
The daily period of meditation recommended in chapter twelve affords good opportunities for cultivating our sense of vision. Having rid ourselves of everyday noise and distractions, we should spend much time in carefully considering the many symbols through which divine reality speaks to us. As I have stated before, it is not the astuteness of our reasoning or the appropriateness of our words that matters. Having put ourselves humbly in the presence of God, we should ask him to open our eyes and to make us discover the unseen dimensions of his presence.
When we reflect on Scripture passages, when we allow its images to get hold of us, we should constantly feel in our hearts the search for living contact with the God who addresses us in this way. With great reverence for God’s word, we should listen with undivided attention and silence to the deeper meaning of what he says. We should observe Jesus’ words and actions as ‘signs’ (Jn 20, 30), signs which lead us on to understand the unspeakable.
We should try to take some of this attitude with us throughout the day. While listening to other people, observing plants or animals in nature. or watching a programme on TV-, we should keep alive our awareness of the symbolic value these experiences may have for us. We should refuse to remain at a superficial level. We should be prepared for ‘apertures’ so that we can ‘go beyond’.
Of special importance to us should be the occasions when we visit a church or participate in a liturgical function. We should remind ourselves from the outset that we are then in surroundings particularly aimed at linking us up with divine mysteries. We should be determined to make our whole personality, body and soul, express its desire for God through the symbolic rites and actions.
To help us in our pursuit of a contemplative disposition, I recommend that one should read and pray the following extract from a 6th century treatise called “Mystical Theology”. (8) The text shows us how by a process of eliminating limited human terms about God, we may arrive at a better appreciation of his incomparable majesty. After having attempted, in vain, to formulate about God what we know - by admitting all the time that he is greater and different - we finally come close to God in a union of silent love. I recommend especially the last paragraph for careful meditation.
The cause of all things
embraces all
and is above all
is not without being nor without life.
He does not lack reason or intelligence.
Yet,
He is not an object.
He has no form or shape,
no quality, no quantity, no weight.
He is not restricted to any place:
He cannot be seen.
He cannot be touched.
Our sense cannot perceive Him,
our mind cannot grasp Him.He is not swayed by needs
or drives
or inner emotions.
Things or events that take place in our world
can never upset Him.
He needs no light.
He suffers neither change
nor corruption nor division.
He lacks nothing
and remains always the same
He is neither soul nor intellect.
He does not imagine, consider, argue or understand
He cannot be expressed in words
or conceived in thoughts.
He does not fall into any category
of number or order.
He possesses no greatness nor smallness,
no equality nor inequality,
no similarity nor dissimilarity.
He doesn’t stand, nor move, nor is He addressedHe doesn’t yield power,
neither is He power itself nor is He light.
He doesn’t live,
nor is He life itself.
He may not be identified with being,
nor with eternity or time.He is not subject to the reach of the mind.
He is not knowledge,
nor truth,
nor kingship,
nor wisdom.
He is not the one, nor oneness;
not Godhead nor goodness.
He is not even spirit
in the way we understand it
nor sonship nor fatherhood.
He is not anything else known to us
or to any other being.
He has nothing in common with things that exist
or things that don’t exist.
Nothing that exists
knows Him as He really is.
Nor does He know things that exist
through a knowledge
existing outside Himself.
Reason cannot reach Him,
or know Him.
He is neither darkness nor light, neither falsehood nor truth.All statements affirmed about Him
or denied about Him
are equally wrong.
For although we can make positive or negative statements
about all things below Him,
we can neither affirm
nor deny Him Himself
because the all-perfect and unique cause
of all things
is beyond all affirmation.
Moreover, by the simple pre-eminence
of his absolute nature,
He falls outside the scope
of any negation.
He is free from every limitation
and beyond them all.
The higher we rise in contemplation
the more words fail.
Words cannot express pure mind.
When we enter the darkness
that lies beyond our grasp
we are forced, not merely to say little,
but rather to maintain an absolute silence,
a silence of thoughts
as well as of words...
As we move up from below
to that which is higher
in the order of being,
our power of speech decreases,
until,
when we reach the top,
we find ourselves totally speechless.
We are then overcome
by Him who is wholly ineffable.
1. I. T. RAMSEY - Religious Language, SCM Press, London 1957. pp. 18 - 26.
2. Esp. R. GUARDINI - Die Sinne und die religiöse Erkenntnis, Werkbund-Verlag, Würzburg 1950. See also: Von heiligen Zeichen, Grënewald, Mainz 1953; Wunder und Zeichen, Werkbund-Verlag, Wurzburg 1959.
3. An exciting description of this is provided by P. S. STEVENS - Patterns in Nature, Peregrine Books, Aylesbury 1976.
4. R. GUARDINI - Die Sinne etc., p. 33.
5. Rigveda I - 164, 34-35; R. PANIKKAR, The Vedic Experience Darton, Longman and Todd, London 1977, p. 102.
6. “Sacrosanctum Concilium” - no 30; A. FLANNERY, Vaticen Council 11, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1975, p. 11; see also the “General Instructions on the Roman Missal”, no 23; FLANNERY, p. 168.
7. For those who want to study the question from a more technical point of view, I recommend: The problem of Religious Language, ed. M. J. CHARLESWORTH, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1974.
8. The text is taken from The Mystical Theology of PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, esp. ch. 4, 5 and I have rendered the text rather freely and have slightly rearranged its order; ch. SANCTI DIONYSII AREOPAGITAE, Opera Omnia, ed. B. CORDERIUS, Typis Antonii Zatta, Venice 1755, “De Mystica Theologia”, pp. 543-588. For more information about this work, see 1. P. SHELDON-WILLIAMS “The PseudoDionysius”, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. ARMSTRONG, Cambridge University Press 1970, 457-472; V. LOSSKY, The Vision of God, Faith Press. London, pp. 99-105.