Longing for God, part 4: "Oh my God, what have I done?"

Friday, March 17, 2017

Longing for God, part 4: “Oh my God, what have I done?”

We begin where we left off yesterday, with the humble prayer of Saint Augustine:

“My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.”  (This prayer can also be found online in its original translation: “Too narrow my mansion.”)

As we make our way back to God (see part 3: coming home), like Saint Augustine, we invariably pass through a time when we become more aware than ever before of our own wretchedness, of the depth and extent of our sinfulness and of the sheer insanity of how we have lived. At this point we might be tempted to despair, to give up the journey, or to doubt that God would ever want to look on us with patience, loving-kindness and forgiveness. In this I recall the first two of the 12 Steps for addicts: (1) We admitted that we were powerless over ______ and that our lives had become unmanageable, and (2) We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The enemy of our souls tries to lure us into a trap. Be on guard not to begin dwelling not on your own sinfulness but rather on the sins, imperfections and shortcoming of others around you. This is useless work and nothing other than a distraction. As such times we are prone to judge others far more harshly than we would want the Lord to judge in us. Once we recognize this happening, we need to redirect our thoughts to considering our own sinful condition.

As for the despair, it, too, is a temptation of the devil. Don’t  give into it. Take comfort in these words from The Cloud of Unknowing:  “Be not humbled by the unimaginable greatness and incomparable perfection of God in light of your own wretchedness and imperfection. In other words, look more to God’s worthiness than to your own worthlessness.” (24) In addition, the Cloud concludes with these words of encouragement: “For it is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you would be.” (75: last paragraph)

The author of the Cloud encourages the reader (namely, us) to take the whole body of our misery together and call it a lump, and that when we go to meditate, lay a “cloud of forgetting” over the lump and direct our hearts and our thoughts to what lies above. I have taken this advice myself and have found it to be particularly helpful.

At other times, we may be inspired to pray the Jesus Prayer as we go about our day: It is consoling in its humility and its compunction: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

And so as best I could, I have laid before you a very brief and inadequate outline of a type of spiritual journey which many of us have been called to follow in our own lives:

                First, we become aware that we are indeed longing for a closer relationship with God.

                Second, we become aware that this yearning is itself a gift that God has implanted in our souls.

                Third, we decide to reorient our lives towards this God of our yearning and away from the paths we have taken when we have gone astray, and of the trivialness or the constant distractions that get in our way.

                Finally, we take a courageously close and honest look at the extent of our past failings and lament them, at all times trusting that God’s love and mercy will transcend the “lump” of our own darkness.

You can find more eloquent descriptions of these stages than in many places in the spiritual tradition. As always, take what resonates with you and put the rest aside for now.

God bless you! Have a blessed weekend.