Almighty God does not govern the world just by a sort of external shepherding of peoples and things. He acts in them from within, moves them from within to the fulfilment of His purposes. The activity of any created thing depends on the impulse of God's activity within it. Not only that, but the very continuance in existence of any created thing depends, moment by moment, on the activity within it of God's sustaining power. Now such is God's nature that, wherever He exercises his power, wherever He acts, there He Himself is really and substantially present, in the fullness of His being.
Therefore, wherever anything exists, there must God Himself be, giving it is existence. The very fact that a thing is means that God Himself is there at the roots of its being. All things are rooted in God. - Acts 17:28 - Had I eyes to pierce the ultimate hidden depths of anything that is, a grain of sand or a blade of grass or my own soul, I would see where its own being ended, and know that beyond that is the all holy God, utterly distinct yet infinitely closer in his contact than the soil is to the root it nourishes. - Rom. 11:36 -
Our imagination can lead us very much astray in our efforts to conceive this omnipresence of God's being. We are inclined to think of it as diffused throughout space, much as the ether is said to be. This was an error through which even the great mind of Saint Augustine of Hippo passed before his conversion to the Faith. "Although I conceived you not in the form of a human body, yet I was forced to think you to be some corporeal substance, taking up mighty space of infinite spaces without the world." - Confession, Bk. vii.c1 -
To avoid this we must keep in mind that God is a pure spirit, without quantity or extension. Of itself, therefore, His nature has nothing to do with space or place. But since things that are in space, material things or bodies, have the hidden roots of their being in immediate contact with him as the source of their existence, He is really present where they are. Though not in space Himself, He is immediately present behind, or if we prefer to put it, beneath everything that is in space. And this presence, let it be insisted, is not something diffused, but a concentration of God's whole infinite being in each thing one by one; the fullness of the Divine Nature is immediately behind every particle of reality that exists throughout the universe.
God is present then at the roots of my being wherever I go, present in me in the fullness of His reality. He is present in the same way in the lost souls in hell, as truly present in them, under this aspect, as He is in the saints in heaven. However, we can and do think of God as being more present in some beings than in others, that is in those which resemble him more by nobler gifts they have received from Him, and which by this greater resemblance make His presence within them more manifest. Much in the same way we think of the human soul, equally though it is in every part of the body, as being especially present in those organs, such as the brain, through which its presence is more nobly manifested.
If we ponder over this presence of God in all things by His essence it will bring home to us how utterly dependent we are upon Him. God is of Himself the Absolute, self-existent being, depending on no other: we are ourselves nothing, the fragment of being we do possess totally depending on God for its existence and permanence. Our response, therefore, to this presence of God will be reverence, begetting in us the virtue of religion. The virtue of religion is a habit of the will which inclines us to express our reverence for God in fitting acts of worship. Religion is a word of several meanings, being often taken to cover all our relations with God, including faith and hope and love, but when we speak of the virtue of religion we take it in the more restricted sense mentioned. It is a special virtue with its own special object of giving expression to the reverence which the knowledge of God's excellence and our dependence on Him should inspire in us.
The object of religion, then, is to endeavor to pay our debt of reverence to God. We can only make an effort to pay it, because God's excellence infinitely exceeds our power of praise, but we know that He will be satisfied with the little we can give. But we must give that little. If we want to know how exacting God is of reverence we cannot do better than read Saint Paul's indictment of the pagan world in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. It was - as it is - an appalling world, hideous with vices, never so well catalogued.
But what is most startling in Saint Paul's diagnosis of it is that he places the root of all its moral corruption in this, that knowing the existence and excellence of the Supreme Being from the "visible things of this world" men had failed to offer Him reverence. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness... because that when men knew God they have not glorified him as God or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts... Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart unto uncleanliness...to shameful affections...to a reprobate sense to do those things that are disgraceful." - Rom. 1 - What God had looked for from the pagans was of course the expression of a natural reverence corresponding to their merely natural knowledge of Him. From us He requires a supernatural reverence because by faith we have supernatural knowledge of His infinite holiness and of our own dependence on Him which in a sense is still greater in the order of grace than in that of nature.
Without reverence, the external worship of God is an abomination to Him, and the Sacred Scripture contain fearful denunciations of those who offer God a gorgeous ritual that is empty of heart. On the other hand, whatever is done - be it the simplest gesture, an inclination of the head - out of reverence for God, has the merit of this virtue of religion, greatest and most beautiful of moral virtues. The whole vast liturgy of the Church, from the Eucharist/Mass to the Sign of the Cross is a great act of religion, for it is all inspired by the motive of paying reverence to God. Our individual acts of worship, such as private prayer, and our participation in the Church's official worship, such as attendance at Mass/Eucharist, will be true acts of religion in so far as they are inspired by the same reverence.
We have called religion the greatest and most beautiful of moral virtues. It is the greatest because it is concerned with people's primary duty of worshipping his/her Creator/Maker; it is the most beautiful because nothing gives human being such dignity and grace as the attitude of reverence towards God. Then, as it were, the glory of Him in whose presence He stands is reflected on Himself and "he is transformed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord." - 2Cor. 3:18 - Saint Benedict Joseph Labre was perhaps the most unwashed and least physically attractive of all saints. Yet, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, his face would become radiantly white, as if illumined from within, and his features dazzling in their sheer dignity and beauty. That was but an extraordinary manifestation of the truth that the glory of the creature is the worship of his Creator. To serve God is to reign.
Religion then is a special virtue that inclines us to offer worship to God in token payment of the reverence that is His due. It follows that the first thing Religion will do, the first act of Religion, will be to make the will give itself with alacrity, promptly, to the divine worship. When we give ourselves in this way to any cause we are said to devote ourselves to it, and so this first act of Religion is called devotion. A will making itself ready, eager to do or give whatever God's service demands, here is devotion in the truest and highest sense of that world; it constitutes our practical recognition of what we have called God's presence in the world by his essence. Devotion is not the same as sensible fervour, for devotion has to do essentially with the will and not with the feelings. Sensible fervour in the worship of God may indeed be present without any real devotion at all.
For example, a certain type of religious music played, say in "the dim, religious light" of a cathedral may well excite one's sensible fervour while leaving the will unmoved, unbowed before the reality of God. It is probably common enough for the people to feel more devotion at a service like the Holy Hour than in Mass. The Mass, the great Sacrifice, the supreme act of all Religion, is something swift and bare, something that only the grace-moved will can offer to God. Sensible fervour is not a bad thing; apart from being a possible overflow of real devotion, it is often the gift of God sent to entice souls first into His service. But it must never be made the real basis of one's service to God. Otherwise that will be sorry service, growing ever more grudging with the years.
If we want to fix on one of the numberless examples of devotion offered to us by the Saints we can picture to ourselves Saint Teresa of the Child of Jesus, in her last illness, dragging her fevered, wasted body night after night to the choir for the Divine Office. On the way, she would have to pass by the open cloister, swept often by a cutting wind. The Office would leave her so exhausted that it would take her over an hour to crawl - as she literally had to do - back to her straw pallet. "As long as the soldier has his feet under him" he must be at his post.
The way to acquire devotion is to think frequently about God's goodness and greatness and our own immediate and utter dependence on Him. We can work up sensible fervour or enthusiasm by means of hymns and an organ, but we can only get our will moving by thought. A will prompt and eager to serve God and worship Him will follow only from a conviction that God deserves to be served and worshipped and that it is good for us to serve and worship Him. The stronger that conviction the more ready and eager is the will likely to be. It is only daily meditation on what God is and what we are - "I am He who is, you are she who is not" said Our Lord Jesus to Saint Catherine of Siena - that will give us the conviction that begets and sustains devotion.
Gladness of heart - not an emotional enthusiasm, but a deep and quiet gladness - is of the essence of devotion. To worship God with a glad heart, that is what devotion makes us do. And that is what God wants from us above all else. At best our service will be paltry and imperfect. God knows that and does not mind, but He would have us be generous, giving gladly what we can, ever desirous to do more. "Father, with gladness have I done your will" said Saint Dominic when he lay dying. His sorrow in life indeed, like that of all the Saints, was not that he had to give so much to God, but that there was so very little that he could give. His and their solace was the knowledge that God looks not at the gift but at the devotion in the heart that gives. "God does not ask a perfect work" says Saint Catherine Siena, "but infinite desire."
BY REV. FR. ANSELM MOYNIHAN O.P.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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