Lectio divina
Knowing God
We must always approach God with the awareness that we do not know Him in His fullness. What we must turn to is the secret, mysterious God, who reveals himself in the way he wants; every time we come into his presence, we find ourselves before a God whom we do not yet know.
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Communion with Him
We must be open to every manifestation of his person and his presence. Perhaps we have learned many things about God through our own experience, through the experience of others, the writings of the saints and the teachings of the Church, the testimony of Scripture; we may know that he is good, humble, that he is a devouring fire, that he is our judge, our Saviour, and many other things, but we must remember that at any moment he can reveal himself as we have never imagined, in a way that does not fit into these general categories.
We must stand before Him with reverence and be open to meeting those who come to meet us, whether it be the God we already know and are familiar with, or a God we are unable to recognize. Perhaps he will warn us who he is first, but he may be completely different from the one we are waiting for. We hope to meet a gentle, compassionate, lovable Jesus, and instead we meet a God who judges and condemns, and prevents us from approaching Him in the conditions in which we are.
Or we come to the meeting repentant, wait to be cast out, and instead find compassion. At each stage of our growth, God is both known and unknown to us. He Himself reveals Himself in the measure established by Him, and thus we know Him, but we never know Him completely, he will always remain the divine mystery, a nucleus of mystery that we will never be able to penetrate. The knowledge of God can only be received and given in communion with God, sharing with him its reality to the extent that it is communicable.
Buddhist thought illustrated this communion with the story of the salt doll. A doll of salt, after a long pilgrimage through the arid lands, came to the sea and discovered something that he had never seen before and was unable to understand. She was on dry land, a small hard doll of salt, and behold, another land stretched out in front of her, soft, dangerous, numerous, strange, unknown. He asked the sea: "But who are you?" and got as an answer: "I am the sea". The doll asked again "what is the sea?" and the sea replied "it's me". The doll: "I can't understand but I really wish I could; How can I?"
The sea said, "Touch me." Then the doll timidly moved one foot forward and touched the water, and felt the strange impression that something was beginning to become knowable. She pulled her leg back and saw that her toes were gone, frightened she exclaimed "oh! Where did my fingers go, what did you do to me?" And the sea said, "You have given something of yourself to understand."
Progressively the water gnawed at little fragments of salt from the doll, and it advanced more and more towards the sea, and the further it advanced, the more it seemed that it understood better, but was unable to say in its own words what the sea is. As it sank, it melted more and more, repeating: "but what is the sea?" At last a wave made what was still left of her disappear, and the doll said, "It's me," she had discovered what the sea was, but not yet what water is.
Without wanting to make an absolute parallel between the Buddhist doll and the Christian knowledge of God, it is possible to find many truths in this little story. The doll knew what the sea was at the moment when it, in its smallness, became one with the immensity of the sea. In the same way, when we enter into the knowledge of God, we do not contain him but are contained in him and in this encounter with God we become ourselves, protected in the immensity.
LATE I LOVED YOU
Late I loved you, beauty so ancient
and so new; late I loved you!
Behold, You were inside me, I was outside,
and here I sought You, throwing myself, deformed, on the beautiful
forms made by You.
You were with me, but I was not with You:
those creatures who
would not exist if they were not in You kept me away.
You called me, you shouted,
you overcame my deafness.
You flashed,
you blazed,
you dispelled my blindness.
You have diffused your perfume:
I have breathed it and now I yearn for you.
I have tasted
you and now I burn with desire for your peace.
(St. Augustine. The Confessions, Book X, Chap.27)..
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