Thursday, March 30,
2017
Our minds are finite and therefore our vision of the world,
and by extension of reality, is limited. This is one reason why the Pharisees
simply couldn’t grasp or appreciate the enormity of what Jesus was trying to
tell them. The Gospel passages for this time in Lent are depicting the confrontations
between them and Jesus (see John 5:31-37) on this account and why they
considered Jesus to be a blasphemer and a heretic. (Certainly issues of power,
control and pride also figured in to their refusal to accept him, but I’m not
going into that today.)
Since our minds are finite, our vision and understanding of
God is limited as well. As we progress in the spiritual life we begin to see
how God is so much greater than anything we have conceived of up until this point.
We could adopt a mantra that says, “No, God is even greater than that.”
I’d like to consider this in terms of one important reality:
the expansiveness of God’s mercy and His ability to forgive, and to do this, I
turn to a couple of passages from the Patristic era that I think you might find
consoling or inspiring.
Saint John Chrysostom (344-407) On the Incomprehensibility of God:
“If our sins are countless that is
all the more reason for going to him, for we are the sort of person he is
calling. . . . He is called the God of consolation, of mercy, because unceasingly
he consoles and encourages the unfortunate ones and the afflicted, even if they
have committed thousands of sins.”
Saint John Climacus, (7th century) The
Ladder of Divine Ascent
“The mercy of God has no limits,
nothing is too great for it.”
“If the passions lord it over us
and we are weak, let us with great confidence offer to Christ our spiritual
weakness and our impotence; let us confess them before him. He will help us
irrespective of what we deserve, on the sole condition that we descend
continually to the bottom, into the abyss of humility.”
Isaac of Nineveh (7th century) Ascetic
Treatises
“When God sees that in all purity
of heart you are trusting in him more than in yourself . . . then a strength
unknown to you will come to make its dwelling in you. And you will feel in all
your senses the power of him who is with you.”
Finally, concerning our inability to see God in all His glory,
I like this little Sufi explanation by al-Ghazzzali:
“. . . just as the bat sees only at
night and cannot see in the daytime because of the weakness of its sight, which
is dazzled by the full light of the sun, so also the human mind is too weak to
behold the full glory of the Divine Majesty”
(in Essential Sufism, p. 76)
God bless you!
No comments:
Post a Comment