Divo Barsotti
Faith begins the journey, a journey that no longer knows an end, because to the extent that God gives himself, it arouses in the soul the desire to tend towards him with ever greater strength. Life becomes a journey, a race, a flight towards the Lord. I walk, run, fly, which is nothing more than an exercise in hope. We can wish and hope for something we do not know. Is it possible to know God without desiring him and without loving him? True knowledge of God cannot fail to arouse desire and hope. God is not an abstract notion, but a living entity. This is not only a belief held by Christianity but also by paganism. However, it is Christianity that introduced the idea of a loving God. You would be not a man but a beast if you did not feel love for God. So much so that for Saint Basil the desire and love for God is the fundamental act that necessarily arises in the heart of man. In fact, it is not possible to know God as supreme perfection, as supreme holiness, without the soul immediately aspiring to him.
It was said earlier that the knowledge of God is the revelation of God as the ultimate end of man. It is never an impersonal knowledge that does not engage man; it is always a knowledge that makes man tend to him. With the knowledge of something, the soul enters into a certain possession of that thing.
When God creates Adam and gives him mastery over all of creation, he gives him the power to know things and to name them. Naming things, as Genesis says, means that Adam comes into possession of things through the knowledge he has of them. By knowing them, things become his; by knowing creation, he comes into possession of creation and thus becomes king of creation. This is not possible with God, because if God is infinite, how do you get hold of him. That gift that he gives you of himself does nothing but arouse in you an ever more lively desire for a God who escapes you. To the extent that you possess him, he always seems to distance himself from you.
God is close to you when you do not know him: when you believe you possess him, you have lost him. He is in you, and you possess him to the extent that you seek him, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa says and Biagio Pascal repeats in his thoughts:
“You wouldn’t look for me if you hadn’t found me.” The very fact of having found him is the reason why we seek him, because to the extent that we have found him, he is in us as a living and insatiable desire. Since he is infinite, this desire grows and grows without measure, it grows without leaving us the possibility of stopping on our way to him.
It is precisely this knowledge that God gives us that no longer leaves man in peace, which makes man no longer feel satisfied with himself. When you are satisfied with yourself, you have already lost faith; when you think you have reached your goal and stop, then you have lost everything. You possess God to the extent that you seek him, you possess God to the extent that this force lives in you that pushes you to an impossible achievement. The Christian life is paradoxical and the paradox of the Christian life is determined by the fact that God is infinite. A created thing has limits and, therefore, you can possess it; your intelligence can form an idea of the thing and can fully embrace it. But it would be an absurd presumption to think that the intelligence of man or of an angel, or the intelligence of Our Lady herself, could understand God. If you understand him, God is no longer infinite. Understanding involves defining the object and embracing it. But it is God who embraces you, it is not you who can embrace him. It is God who understands you, it is not you who can understand him. God alone knows God, God alone understands God. Hence this impossible path that knows no end and which is the hope aroused in us by a knowledge that becomes more alive every day and that therefore ignites an ever more ardent desire in us.
Hope, therefore, can only come after faith.
One does not hope for what one does not know, but one desires and hopes more, the more God makes himself known to the soul.
Why does Christian holiness have its end in divine contemplation here on earth? Why is perfection identified with the contemplative life? Because holiness is nothing other than the growth of faith. Not in the sense that you come to have more notions of God, but in the sense that divine revelation becomes brighter for you and, therefore, attracts you more and more invincibly to itself. If the desire for God, if the anxiety to possess him grows in the measure that knowledge grows for you, it follows that contemplation determines the measure of the holiness of a soul because this contemplation is not like the contemplation of Greek philosophy that is only a show you watch. Christian contemplation can be internalized and is transformative, to the extent that you contemplate God, you tend to transform yourself into him. But to the extent that God transforms you into himself, he moves further and further away from you, because he always remains beyond your every will to understand him. Thus the knowledge of God, with desire, provokes hope and begins an endless journey.
Hope comes after faith, but before charity.
Why is hope between faith and charity? Because God, who kindles the desire for self in you, is not only loved, but he also loves you and to the extent that he loves you, he draws you to himself. If he did not love you, a real relationship could never be established between you and God. Precisely for this reason God is impersonal in paganism. But the God of Christianity is a God who loves as well as being an object of love. And precisely because he loves, he reveals himself, and by revealing himself, he attracts you. Divine revelation is free. You cannot expect him to want to unravel his mystery; freely he communicates himself to you so that, provoked by this act of love, you can respond to his love for his sake. On the other hand, if in hope you live a love that tends to the possession of God, the possession of God is love itself and love, in God, is pure gift of self. Therefore, to the extent that you tend to the Lord, hope is transformed into pure love. In fact, as you transform yourself into God, the love of concupiscence fades in you, and in you lives the very love of God which is pure self-giving love. At the end, when you possess charity, you will no longer even remember yourself. God alone will make himself present in you, he who is infinite purity of love.
In other words, the desire to go to heaven is an imperfect desire, because we still want ourselves, we want our salvation. Mind you, we must long for heaven, but it is always an imperfection. We cannot say that this desire is perfection, because something is desired for our own benefit and in this way God is exploited for our happiness. This is a big flaw. Can you say you love? Whoever loves, gives himself, expects nothing, but gives himself. Instead, you want everything from God, and you give him nothing. But here is the hope: to the extent that it transforms you into God, it brings you ever closer to pure love; going more and more towards the Lord, you strip yourself of this love of lust for which you want God to be your happiness, and forgetting yourself, you rejoice that God is God. You will find your joy in knowing that he is infinite bliss and eternal. You will forget about yourself in order to enjoy nothing more than this: that nothing can ever take away from God that he is God. This is our happiness.
(From “Che Dio vi parli,” Chorabooks 2016, translated by Aurelio Porfiri)
(Photo: thiagosnot23 at Pixabay.com)
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