Monthly Spiritual Message, March 2005
By Br Patrick Colbourne OFM Cap,
Once in a while each one of us experiences magic moments in life. Some of these we can see coming and so we prepare for them with great excitement to make sure we do not miss out on anything.
There was a ritual in some families that was played out when the eldest daughter was bringing her boy friend home for the very first time. Dad would be warned to be on his best behaviour and not carry on as he usually did at teatime. Mum would be warned about his likes and dislikes and was expected to turn out one of her special dinners. The younger boys were under all kinds of threats about conduct at the table.
Top sports people speak about pre-match jitters and great actors refer to stage fright.
All such occasions are prefaced by a certain type of fear or anxiety that is not caused by trembling in the face of disaster as much as it is due to concern that we might not perform to full potential, that everything might not go just as it should, that we might miss out on savouring the full beauty and joy of the moment.
This is the type of fear we intend to describe when we refer to the fear of the Lord. Scripture says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit and, as such, could have nothing to do with trembling in the face of approaching disaster. The fear of the Lord is the anxiety we feel at a significant point of a relationship when there is a chance we might not grasp the moment fully. It implies that such encounters do not just happen but require preparation.
The text from the Psalms which heads this piece indicates two steps in the process of savouring a magic moment: being still and knowing or grasping. The old Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible says, ‘empty yourself’. We have to clear our minds and hearts of all other anxieties when we come to experience God’s presence. We owe Him this in justice because He created everything that we are and is our final destiny and it would be a pity to miss the moment. Great people have missed it. The Apostles missed it during the agony in the garden when they might have been of some use to their friend.
We have to approach the moment convinced that this is a real moment of pure, unmixed love, in which He comes out to us as the father did to the prodigal son. We will miss the feeling unless we can immerse ourselves in the piece of Scripture before us and taste it to the full.
Sometimes it may take an apparent contradiction to make the penny drop. We know how Cain killed Abel and how the blood of Abel cried out for vengeance. Cain got life with a mark on his forehead that no one could miss. The blood of Abel is mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer. When the blood of Christ seeped into the earth on Calvary it stained the spot to remind the Father to forgive us. We might be forgiven for thinking that God had mellowed with age and become more tolerant between the Old and the New Testament. This is no so. What has happened is that I have come to see an alternative way of living. I am starting to mature because of being still and watching. I will not appreciate the full message until I mature. Many points made in the Old Testament were written because of the hardness of your hearts. My heart has to change before I recognise what lies before me.
St Bonaventure starts his Breviloquium with a passage from St Paul [Eph: 14-19] in which Paul wrote: I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth receives its name, that He may grant you from His glorious riches to be strengthened with power through His Spirit unto the progress of the inner being; and to have Christ dwelling through faith in your hearts; so that, being rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breath and length and height and depth, and to know Christ’s love which surpasses all knowledge, in order that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
St Bonaventure is introducing young students to the study of theology which he identifies with Holy Scripture. They will not grasp what it offers unless the Holy Spirit expands the capacity of their hearts to recognise the content of love and the superabundance of overflowing happiness.
Studying scripture by considering scientifically the language, the manuscripts, the historical circumstances and geographical sites of the events and the manner in which the text was edited is only the entrée, if we wish to taste the main course of love we have to clear the palate of all else. To do this we have to empty ourselves of human concerns and enter the realms of faith for we are sitting before divine revelation which originates from the Father of Lights, is proclaimed by the wisdom of His Word, by means of the Holy Spirit who inspired the sacred writers and inspires us to grasp what they intended to teach. The end result is not something restricted but the fullness of eternal happiness. Such happiness is not restricted to saints and scholars for the Spirit moves wherever He wills. To whom else shall we go since you have the words of eternal life.
Let us then be still and realise God wants to communicate with us at the level of love.
Patrick Colbourne O.F.M.Cap.
SFO National Spiritual Assistant
