Time and will permitting, I may or may not return to flesh out these little thoughts, but if I do not write them down now, they, too, will be “gone with the wind.” So we write.
At the end of Goethe’s great poem-play, Faust, stands a summary poem through which the soul may ascend towards the One from which all things come forth. We read, in part: “Alles vergaengliche is nur ein Gleichnis...” “Everything transitory is but a likeness.” All that exists is in some way a likeness of that which simply IS, that which many of us call “God.” All beings and all things manifest, in a manifold of ways, the One beyond and within all.
Another way to express the truth of reality experienced here and now is that everything is theophanous: every moment, every thing, every being, every person presents to the wondering soul the One living and true God in some way. Everything good presents something of God’s goodness. And even the lack of goodness serves the vision of God, for the very lack reminds the desiring mind of that which is utterly and simply good. And that is what by tradition we call “God.”
In a moment, in a few words spoken heart to heart, in the sound of beautiful music that lifts the soul, in the dancing shadows seen through the windowpane, a passing being glimpses that which does not pass, but always IS, even as it passes by the gazing, wondering mind. Or to express the underlying experience in words borrowed from the Jewish mystic, Martin Buber: “In every you we meet, we gaze towards the train of the eternal You.”
You spoke to my heart, and I heard your words, I heard what you said. Yes, it was your passing human being that I heard. But in and through your words, I heard not only you, dear soul, but I heard the One for whom we are made for heart-to-heart communion, now and forever. You spoke, and the One spoke in and through you. You touched your heart as you spoke, and the Almighty pierced the depths of my heart “with a love that was more than love.”
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I am not really “a parish priest,” but a man, a human being, sent to help open these particular human beings to the reality we call God. Who sent me? The Almighty, I trust, through the decision of the local bishop.
Our one goal is “to get to God,” using the phrase from St. Ignatius of Antioch, the old man on his way to be fed to lions in Rome. Our goal is God, and the way is love. Or more fully, the way is “faith working through love.” Faith is the radical trust of the soul in the unseen God, the One shining through each moment of loving attention And love is the divine Presence itself moving the soul to seek, to find, to delight forever in the goodness of the One. And the way and the goal are one: by God we come to God; by love we move into the mystery of Love.
There is no other way that I know to get from here to there.
What else is life for?
You spoke--but not only you--
a word and not a word,
I heard but not only this I
Your voice and not your voice,
within but not within,
there, but not only there.
It was you, and it was You.
To God be the glory now and forever.
