“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their being, the persons that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only they could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: p 158)Through this special contemplative grace, a free gift from God, Merton saw what God sees. This is the unity that pure love experiences unhindered by the divisive consequences of the Fall. This is the goal for all of us. This is the call to Paradise.
The Fall is the reality we experience as the consequence of Original Sin. The Fall is the loss of harmony and unity of Paradise. We find ourselves with a sense of disunity, alienation and profound isolation. We are drawn into a world of illusions and unreality.
Our insights into this original unity are always partial and incomplete. However, each time we forgive, each time we are patient and understanding, each time we are serving the true needs of others we take another step on that journey to original unity, the way it was in Paradise!
In his final days on a trip to the Far East shortly before his death in 1968 Merton wrote in his Asian Journal. “We are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” (p 308)
Merton often used the phrase, The Hidden Ground of Love, to point out our oneness in love with God and one another. In God, The Hidden Ground of Love, we are truly one with one another. Our task is to discover this unity.
Thomas Merton came to these insights about the original unity after a faithful and prayerful life committed to the Gospel. He was gifted with contemplation which in its deeper levels unveils these hidden expressions of our oneness in God. John of the Cross has this perceptive definition of contemplation: “Contemplation is none other than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion of God which, if the soul allows it to happen, infuses a spirit of love. “ Dark Night 3.10.6)
II
Most of us have great skills in being selective and evasive in responding to Jesus’ pervasive call to love another. We all have struggled to forgive. It is hard for us to see how God can see anything worthwhile in that person who aggravates us so!
Likewise, a life of faithful prayer slowly surfaces all kinds of attitudes and actions that are divisive and hurtful but which we embraced in a blind insensitivity. A good example is how we are gradually growing in the understanding of the gay experience. All of us have stories that lead us to say, “O my God, I just was never aware that…” We can each fill in the blank!
Faithfulness to prayer leads to personal transformation. John Main is the Benedictine monk who introduced Christian Mediation to our times. He says praying regularly is going to change us in many positive ways. We will grow in self-transcendence and away from the dominance of the ego. This brings a sense of personal unity that helps our relationships with others. We become less distracted and more one within ourselves. Our awareness of God’s presence increases. We are able to be present and open to others with a new freedom. In other words, we are on the road to that original unity before the Fall. We are slowly beginning to see others as God sees them.
III
The Carmelite tradition states clearly that we are called to union with God as the goal of our full human development. This is the call to Paradise. We achieve this by a process of purification and transformation that begins with our effort to live an authentic and prayerful life. It concludes by the action of God in the state of contemplation. Our true destiny is a return to the original unity. Our Christian life leads us through prayer to the experience of God that purifies and transforms us. It makes us one with God in unity and love. The decisive goal of the Gospel call is union with God. This is the full possession of the original unity.
Teresa of Avila tells us prayer is the key to this journey. However, the true importance of prayer is to lead us to love God and our brothers and sisters.
Teresa offers a program to help us pray. For her, prayer is always to God who transforms and purifies us in contemplation in preparation for unity. To strengthen this prayer Teresa insists on a program based on humility, detachment and charity.
Humility for Teresa is the truth. By this she means that our fundamental reality is that God is the Creator and we are the creature. God is the loving and merciful creator and Savior. We are the sinful creature yet loved and forgiven. Humility lets us embrace the truth of this reality. Merton adds in Contemplative Prayer, “Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of Him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on His saving and merciful knowledge of us.” (pp 103-04)
By detachment Teresa means that we must put all things in their proper perspective. We need to relate to all things in a way that brings us closer to God. Our sinful nature always struggles to avoid short circuiting our pursuit of God. We are driven to make creatures our false idols. Detachment brings clarity to our distorted hearts.
Charity is the proper acceptance others. Love for our sisters and brothers is the index of our spiritual growth. For Teresa the authenticity of our spiritual journey is measured by the quality of our interpersonal relations with others. Love is the essential movement towards the center where God awaits.
The journey to God is an interaction between the three virtues and prayer. This depth of prayer demands that we be humble, that we be detached and that we are loving. To be humble, detached and loving we need to pray. There is a mutual support of both elements in the prayer journey. This process is the work of a lifetime. This is what it means to walk with Jesus.
Teresa has a simple example of how deep this practice is in ordinary life. She says if there is a person we find difficult we should go out of our way to support and help that person. If that individual receives praise, we ought to rejoice as if the praise is for us.
There is no way I could be able to do that for many of my brothers and sisters who I know I do not love as I should, to put it charitably. This is the same for most of us. We have a long way to go. There is a lot of ego that has to go out the window. The problem is that the ego likes to stay at home. Very few of us will ever imitate Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.” (Lk 23:34)
This is where prayer and Teresa’s program of the virtues come in. They support each other leading to contemplation. It is the action of God in contemplation that roots out the final remnants of egoism and self-centeredness, the last and most powerful obstacles that keep us from truly loving our neighbor. The imbedded forces of self-righteousness and being consistently judgmental only give way to the purifying love of God in the fifth and sixth dwelling places of Teresa’s Interior Castle. We can just go so far by ourselves. God alone can close the deal on the love that unveils the fullness of the original unity in seventh and final dwelling places of The Interior Castle.
In Merton’ description of the original unity, human frailty and human faults become totally inconsequential. They disappear from our view. We see God in the individual. We are pulled into the unity. “For all of you were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Someday, hopefully, we will be gifted to encounter this precious reality. We will be enlivened to see the beauty and wonder in all our brothers and sisters and as well as within ourselves.
On the road to that day we need to recognize two things. First it is essential to continue to grow in awareness of how far we are from truly sharing God’s love for our neighbor. This is the truth of humility and the gift of self-knowledge. Secondly, we need to stay in the struggle to be more humble, more detached and more loving in our faithfulness to prayer. This will prepare us for God’s purifying and transforming gift of contemplation.
The Louisville experience of the original unity was particularly powerful in opening Thomas Merton to the social consequences of the Gospel. A description of that enlightenment will follow.
