The Place Where Eternity Whispers: Affliction, Suffering and the Sacrament of the Present Moment
[Reading Time: 9 minutes]
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said,
“It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”
And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, “Arise and eat.”
And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baked on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.
And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for you.”
And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.
And he came unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him “…Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.”
And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind:
And after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
-I Kings 19:4-12
For which cause we faint not (enkakoumen: From ek + kakos: Lit. ‘To be wearied and faint coming out of (ek) hardship, evil, suffering (kakos)']) but though our outward man perish (diaphtheirō: From dia + phtheírō: ‘To be thoroughly and completely (dia) corrupted, disintegrated, destroyed (phtheírō)’], yet the inward man is renewed (anakainoutai: From aná, which intensifies kainoō: “To renew" in the sense of completing the process of renewal]) day by day.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment (παραυτίκα ἐλαφρὸν τῆς θλίψεως ἡμῶν: Literally, ‘at this very instant the lightness of our affliction [thlipsis]), works (katergazetain: From katá intensifying ergázomai, meaning to ‘work in absolute precision to accomplish’]) for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are but for a moment (πρόσκαιρα); but the things which are unseen are eternal.
-II Cor. 4:16-18
There are remarkably few extraordinary characteristics in the outward events of the life of the most holy Virgin, at least there are none recorded in holy Scripture. Her exterior life is represented as very ordinary and simple. She does and suffers what others in her situation do and suffer; She goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth as her other relatives did; she goes to Bethlehem for the census as other do; she took shelter in a stable in consequence of her poverty; she returns to Nazareth, having been driven back by the persecution of Herod. She lives quietly with Jesus and Joseph, supporting themselves by the work of their hands. It was in this way that the holy family gained their daily bread.
But by what bread do Mary and Joseph nourish their faith?
How is what happens moment by moment a sacrament for them?
What do they discern beneath the seemingly everyday events which occupy them?
What is seen is similar to what happens to the rest of mankind. But what is unseen, that which faith discovers and unravels, is nothing less than God fulfuling his mighty purpose.
O Bread of Angels! heavenly manna! pearl of the Gospel! Sacrament of the present moment!
You bring God to the mean surroundings of a lowly stable in a manger among straw and hay.
But to whom do you give Yourself?
God reveals Himself to the humble in small things—”He has filled the hungry with good things” (Lk 1:53)—but the proud, who only attach importance to outward appearances, cannot see Him even in big ones.
-Jean Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
Introduction
All that we most need is offered to us in the present moment, if we will but receive it.
This is the question—if.
For the reality of what is most needed to “accomplish with absolute precision” (ergazetai) the work and life of God in us is offered to us moment by moment, if we will but receive it.
There is no “other” pathway that is somehow “better”; no concocted set of scenarios that would be more fitting and more useful, if we somehow had more control over the pathways of our lives. Everything, to say it again, that we most truly need is here, offered, given to us in the present moment—nowhere else; not in our inevitably edited memories of the past nor in the possibilities/hopes/delusions of the future.
The transforming life of sanctity depends on whether or not we receive the present (lambánei), enter into its reality, be that in its total ordinariness or in its dramatic and perplexing mysteries (mystéria). For only in the flesh and blood realities of the experience right in front of us can we begin to truly develop by God’s grace the “eyes to see” and the “ears to hear” (Is 6:9-10-> Is 43:2-9-> Mt 13:10-16) what Jesus Himself speaks of as the eternal “mysteries (mystéria) of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 10:11).
And these sacramental mysteries, oftentimes experienced like Abraham before us, in the “horror and great darkness” (Gen 13:12), nevertheless, work to draw us more deeply into the LORD’s covenantal promises, paradoxically giving “in abundance” (Gen 13:17-21-> Mt 13:12) and bringing the silence of true understanding to our hearts (te kardia synōsin) wherein Christ begins to work the promised healing of our souls (kai iásomai autous).
As we will learn, whether we’re willing to admit it or not, the issues at stake do not actually depend on whether our momentary experience is one of hardship, affliction, pain, sickness, injustice, even betrayal (either with us as the betrayer or ourselves as the betrayed); neither chaos, nor confusion, nor the onslaught of darkness, blackness—for those are all simply dimensions, we will find, of the Lord’s healing medicine.
And, on the complete other hand, we will also be forced to admit that it does not depend whether our current experience is absolutely ordinary; just the “regular,” seemingly unnoticed passage of time of a “normal” day, wherein “nothing happens.”
What we are experiencing now at this very moment is, in short, exactly what God in His mysterious and sovereignly wise providence is offering to us for our sanctity, for our healing, if we will but receive it.
In the present moment, we meet JHWH—He Who revealed Himself as the the great I AM. In the present moment, we come to find that it is the LORD Himself Who is acting here and now at each successive point, perfectly designing and formulating it to accomplish in us what is most essential for us.
If it is hard and difficult and painful, we can say, paradoxically, ‘Yes Lord!’
But Why? And How?
The eyes that we need to see, in the Prophet’s words, require that that we be looking beyond the vicissitudes of the vanity of this passing moment into the fullness of eternity in the life of our Suffering Savior. For in the present moment, isolated from past and future, in what the Preacher speaks of as, “life under the sun,” cut off from the view of eternity, the chaos and contradictions and questions and perplexing mysteries simply become too much, too overwhelming.
And so, like Elijah and David and Mary and the Apostles before us, we can come to know precisely through the vicissitudes of life—not in spite of them—that God is here-now-working in all of it to form our spirit, to “renew” our “inner man” in an exact, we might even say, surgical way. As a perfectly skilled and experienced surgeon, He then works in us first to cut away malignant growths that blind us and dull our spiritual senses, then to apply the balm of healing to our souls that we have until that moment refused to receive (Jer 8:18-22-> Rev 3:17-21).
Again and on the other hand, if life is not filled with affliction but actually somewhat “easy” and “calm” and “ordinary,” than that too is what is most necessary for us (though unfortunately, it seems, few of us can continue to maintain a spiritual vision of God’s eternal Kingdom when our lives our at such ease).
And so God works.
And we come to find that it is not the actual circumstances that are primary (Phil 4:11-12), but rather our heart’s relation to God in each passing moment that is most essential. For the life of faith teaches us that He is working in every moment to accomplish His particular work in us for our ultimate good, which extends far beyond the present.
In this way the Apostle, discerning this greater reality whispering to him (and to us) in the present, can declare,
My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various trials (peirasmos), knowing that the testing of your faith produces patient endurance (hupomoné).
But let patience (hupomoné) have its perfect work (teleion ergon), that you may be perfect (teleioi) and complete (holokléroi: 'that which encompasses ‘the whole’ [holos] of what is given to us in every ‘lot’ in life [klḗros], lacking nothing (Jam 1:3-4).
Yet, if we reject this present moment, trying with all our might to somehow bypass and “get around“ it so that we can “get things back to normal,” “back to the way things were,”what actually happens?
Do we actually regain control?
Or…are we simply “back,” more precisely, under the delusion of our control?
Yet—and this is the grievous reality—in our delusions of “knowing better,” we totally miss the good of what God actually has for us in these moments of our non-control.
For if we had control, we would…possibly…probably…give ourselves exactly what we don’t need.
God is my witness.
For the grasping out for sovereignty over each moment of our little, brief lives, especially in the moments of trials, testing, suffering, though it may at first appear to be admirable, will eventually reveal to us that…what we most need is…not the easy life…not the life of control…but rather the “burning medicine” of the exact kind brough forth by the testing of the present, if we will but receive it.
And not in some sort of simplistic, maybe even, masochistic way (“Oh, suffering is good…I need to suffer”). For God, not us, knows what we need in each passing moment, be it in suffering or not.
And so He speaks.
Our loving Father whispers to us; the Spirit of the Crucified and Risen Christ gently comes down, standing, as it were, next to us, And as the Prophet says, He does not yell out at us; He “will not cry out, nor raise His voice, Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street” (Is 42:2). His voice is heard in silence, and we hear it when we learn to wait—דּוּמִיָּה (dûmîyâ: From dāmâ: To be cut off, destroyed, and thus, silent—in such a way that we stop obstructing the working of the Holy Spirit in our present moment. And when we are brought, sometimes kicking and screaming into this stillness of silence, the Lord begins to open our eyes to see the “treasures of grace” and “pearls of the Gospel” that He is specifically desiring to give us through all of it.
And whether or not we receive it, what we can attest here is that the pathway into our fuller reception of God’s gracious working in the present moment, in whatever form it happens to take, begins as we let go of our spiritual control—utterly die to it (dāmâ) so that we can wait for God, Who is working in absolute precision in exactly the way that we most need, if we will but receive it.
The Sacrament of the Present Moment: Background
These phrases—“treasures of grace,” “pearls of the Gospel” and the “sacrament of the present moment” come to us in the writings and lectures of an 18th century French figure, Jean Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751), a priest in the Society of Jesus and later professor at the Jesuit college in Toulouse before leaving academic theology to become an itinerant missionary and preacher. It was nearly two decades into this itinerant life that he first came into contact with the nuns of the Order of the Visitation in Nancy in NW France—a relationship that would prove decisive.
Due to his growing kinship with their community and eventual seven years spent as director of the Jesuit retreat house in Nancy together with his later years of personal correspondence with them, we have preserved for us a collection of his writings. What we have, therefore, is not systematic theological expositions, but rather real-life excerpts drawn from his frequent lectures and conferences to them as well as letters of spiritual direction with them in the years after he left. These were preserved by the community and later formed into a collection which was published in 1861 by Henri Ramière under the title L'Abandon à la divine providence.
Kitty Muggeridge, graduate of the London School of Economics and notable French translator (as well as ski champion of Great Britain in 1924 and in 1925 and later wife of author, satirist and 1930’s communist turned British soldier, spy and eventual convert to Christianity, Malcolm Muggeridge). The excerpts below come from her 1981 translation of Caussade’s works, which she published under the title, The Sacrament of the Present Moment.
A treasure discovered in the the small things
To continue from the passage quoted at the opening,
But what is the secret of how to find this treasure—this minute grain of mustard seed?
There is none.
It is available to us always, everywhere.
Like God, every creature, whether friend or foe, pours it out generously, making it flow through every part of our bodies an souls to the very center of our being. Divine action cleanses the universe, pervading and flowing over all creatures. Wherever they are it pursues them. It precedes them, accompanies them, follows them…
Would that it might please God that kings, and their ministers, princes of the Church and of the world, priests, soldiers, commoners, in one world, all men, might know how easy it is for them to achieve a sublime holiness!
They have only to carry out faithfully the simple duties of a Christian and of their condition, humbly to accept the suffering involved and to submit without questions to the demands of Providence in everything that is to be done and suffered.
This is that spirituality which sanctified the Patriarchs and the Prophets before the introduction of so many methods of direction. This is the spirituality of all ages and all conditions which surely could not be sanctified more highly or more wonderfully and, at the same time, more easily than by the simple practice of what God, the only director of souls, gives them at each moment to do and suffer, whether it be obedience to the laws of the Church or of princes.1
If this were so priests would scarcely be required except for the sacraments. For the rest, we could do without them. And those simple souls who are always seeking advice about how to reach God, would be relieved of the heavy and dangerous burdens needlessly imposed on them by those who take pleasure in exercising control over them.2
1. This statement virtually restates the words of Abba Antony a milenium and a half earlier (251-356) in his letters to the growing spiritual communities in the deserts of lower Egypt:
“There are those who are called by the law of love which is in their nature, and which original good implanted in them at their first creation. The word of God came to them, and they doubted not at all but followed it readily, like Abraham the Patriarch: for when God saw that it was not from the teaching of men that he had learnt to love God, but from the law implanted in the nature of his first compacting, God appeared to him and said, ‘Get thee out from thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee’ (Gen. 12: 1).
And he went nothing doubting, but was ready for his calling. He is the pattern of this approach, which still persists in those who follow in his footsteps. Toiling and seeking the fear of God in patience and quiet, they achieve the true manner of life, because their souls are ready to follow the love of God. This is the first kind of calling”
Then the pathway:
…Now, as regards those who have entered with all their heart, and have made themselves despise all afflictions of the flesh, valiantly resisting all the warfare that rises against them, until they conquer—I think that first of all, the Spirit calls them, and makes the warfare light for them, and sweetens for them the works of repentance, showing them how they ought to repent in body and soul, until He has taught them how to be converted to God who created them. And He delivers to them works whereby they may constrain their soul and their body, that both may be purified and enter together into their inheritance
2. The implications of this paragraph, without a doubt, challenge the tenor of our therapeutic age, where, it seems, the deeper cure to our maladies may not come primarily from seeking out more and more counselors and directors, but rather, in the words of Anthony and Caussade, simply receiving “in patience and quiet” what “God, the only director of souls, gives us at each moment to do and suffer.”
In later posts, we will examine these concepts further in the Letters of Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), called by some ‘a true Scottish mystic,’ who, like Caussade, gave up the life of academic theology to learn Christ in the pathway of God’s moment-by-moment working—and we should say, suffering. And while/though/precisely/because of the fact that the LORD’s pathway for him brought not only the suffering of his wife ("She is sore tormented night and day.—My life is bitter unto me.”), but also her later death in 1630 together with the loss of their own precious children that same year, something extraordinary, not of this world, happened with Rutherford, the dimensions of which we’ll explore in the next post. And we will, Deo volente, declare with the Apostle,
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Rom 11:33)
Amen and Amen!