St. Francis de Sales writes
regarding the first consideration when praying:
“First, a lively earnest
realisation that His Presence is universal; that is to say, that He is
everywhere, and in all, and that there is no place, nothing in the world,
devoid of His Most Holy Presence, so that, even as birds on the wing meet the
air continually, we, let us go where we will, meet with that Presence always
and everywhere. It is a truth which all are ready to grant, but all are not
equally alive to its importance.”
God is here, He is there, He is
everywhere, and He is particularly in His People. St. Francis begins with the first
three of these – God is here, He is there, He is everywhere. The fancy word for
this is “omnipresent” or “omnipresence”. “Omni” comes from a Latin word that
means “all” – God is all-present, His presence is everywhere, it is universal.
Wherever birds fly they fly in
air – that’s pretty basic; it is also basic that God is everywhere – even in
the most hellish conditions, as we’ll see below. God’s presence is everywhere
spatially, but it is also everywhere in terms of the conditions within and
without us – and coupled with His presence is His knowledge of where we are inside
ourselves, of what is going on within us and around us – God is all-knowing,
the fancy word for this is “omniscience”. This is, of course, one of the many mysteries
surrounding God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
Consider that two people may be
in the same place spatially but in different places emotionally, psychologically,
spiritually – God is in all of those places, He knows all, He understands all. He
is our Creator and He knows His creation; in another sense He is the Father
from whom every family of heaven and earth derives its name (Ephesians 3:14 –
15); and in yet another sense He is particularly the Father of those who are in
Jesus Christ (John Chapter 17).
“A blind man when in the
presence of his prince will preserve a reverential demeanor if told that the
king is there, although unable to see him; but practically, what men do not see
they easily forget, and so readily lapse into carelessness and irreverence.
Just so, my child, we do not see our God, and although faith warns us that He
is present, not beholding Him with our mortal eyes, we are too apt to forget
Him, and act as though He were afar: for, while knowing perfectly that He is
everywhere, if we do not think about it, it is much as though we knew it not.”
Francis says, “…if we do not
think about it, it is much as though we knew it not.” At first, living in the awareness
that God is always with us, that He is everywhere at all times, may seem an
impossibility, it may seem beyond our reach. While it is beyond our reach, it
is not an impossibility.
Christ came to us to bring to us
that which is beyond our reach. Because we could not reach up to God, God
reached down to us. Jesus Christ lived in unbroken communion with His Father,
and He calls us to live in that very same communion, that very same relationship.
Paul and his friends cultivated a
life in Christ that caused Paul to write, “…we look not at the things which are
seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18); “we
walk by faith not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7).
Consider that a dimension of
faith is spiritual sight, spiritual vision, the ability in Christ to see the
unseen (Hebrews 11:1 – 3), just as Moses “saw Him who is unseen” (Hebrews 11:27).
This way of living is to be the
norm in the Christian life, in fact it is part and parcel of the Christian life
– it is not to be the exception but rather the rule as we “keep seeking the
things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” and as we set
our minds “on things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians
3:1 – 4).
Does not Jesus say, “I am with
you always”? (Matthew 28:20).
“And therefore, before
beginning to pray, it is needful always to rouse the soul to a steadfast
remembrance and thought of the Presence of God. This is what David meant when
he exclaimed, “If I climb up to Heaven, Thou art there, and if I go down to
hell, Thou art there also!” And in like manner Jacob, who, beholding the ladder
which went up to Heaven, cried out, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I
knew it not” meaning thereby that he had not thought of it; for assuredly he
could not fail to know that God was everywhere and in all things. Therefore,
when you make ready to pray, you must say with your whole heart, “God is indeed
here.”
Francis, in this concluding
paragraph, points us to two passages of Scripture,[i] Psalm 139 and Genesis 28:10
– 22. Psalm 139 speaks to us of God’s intimate knowledge of us and His presence
surrounding us wherever we go – including “if I go down to hell, you are there
also.” There are many hells in this life, perhaps some of us experience more of
them than others – some are of our own making and some are not. There is no shortage
of hell on earth, and there is no shortage of hell within the hearts and minds
and souls of people. However we may view this passage, however we may
experience it – whether when we consider ourselves or in thinking of others – God
is there.
In Genesis 28:10 – 22 we see
Jacob traveling from his family’s home in Beersheba to his uncle Laban’s home in
Padden-aram. That night Jacob took a stone and used it as a pillow or headrest;
as he slept he had a dream in which he saw a ladder reaching from heaven to
earth with angels ascending and descending on it; Yahweh, the True and Living
God, spoke to Jacob and renewed and extended the covenant which He had made
with Abraham and Isaac (Jacob’s grandfather and father).
Upon awaking Jacob exclaims, “Surely
Yahweh is in this place, and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This
is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Jesus evokes this image when He
says to Nathaniel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened
and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51).
Life in the Son of God is a life
of open heavens – whether we perceive this or not is another matter. We may, by
God’s grace, cultivate our eye of faith, training our eye to be single (Matthew
6:22 – 23) and presenting ourselves as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1 – 2) – or
we may live as “mere men” and women (1 Corinthians 3:1 – 3), living according
to the “natural” as opposed to living in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians Chapter
2, Romans 8:12 - 17).
As Esau, we may despise and not
honor our birthright; or as Jacob, with all of his faults, we may passionately
seek Christ and His Kingdom. Jacob was in the House of God and he didn’t
realize it – it was no accident that Jacob used a rock, a stone, to rest his
head – when we rest upon our Rock, the Stone cut without hands, that anointed
Stone – we will see things via the eye of faith that we would otherwise not
perceive.
As we follow on to know Christ,
we will often look back and say, “Christ was in that place and I knew it not.
Christ was in that situation and I didn’t realize it.” However, the more we
follow on to know our Lord, as we learn to take up our cross and follow Him, denying
ourselves; the more we will also say, “Christ is in this place, right now, with
me…He calls me to relationship with Him, right now, in these conditions, in
these circumstances, in this very place.”
As we learn to “rouse our souls” we say with Paul, “Brethren, I do not regard myself
as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the
prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13 – 14).
Wherever we are today, God is
with us. Is not His name Immanuel?
[i] I recently read a comment
on brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic “mystical” tradition, such as St.
Francis de Sales, to the effect that they aren’t grounded in Scripture – the person
who wrote this should have known better. This is a good example of the fact that
you shouldn’t comment on the furniture in a house unless you’ve been in the
house and used the furniture.
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