(Today the Daily Episcopalian returns to its regular rotation.)
By Martin Smith
A certain wistfulness can visit spiritual guides as we listen to some of those who come to confide in us and talk about their religious experience, or want of it. We can feel a bit sad though not surprised when we hear experienced Christians who have “borne the burden of the day” as faithful members of a parish, men and women who have worked hard for years in many ministries, sharing the fact that inside they have never felt able to say honestly that they loved God or sensed God loving them. They have no problem with the idea that God is a loving God, or with the commandment to love God. But it is as if in their heart of hearts they experience the face of God to be a blank, or worse, a frown. The wistfulness spiritual guides feel when we hear this is often associated with a hunch that underlying the chill in this inner climate of the soul may lie a story of suffering, especially childhood suffering. And it so often turns out to be the case. In many cases early emotional or physical abuse has seemingly left behind a kind of coating on our hearts, a potent kind of ‘sun block’ that filters out the radiation of God’s tenderness.
That’s why it is important to speak about conversion in the Church, conversion as healing. Not referring to conversion to the Christianity of so called outsiders. Not persuading people that certain things about God and Jesus are true. But conversion within our community of those who have thought along Christian lines for years and have worked hard for God—but have not yet experienced the transformation of their inner alienation from God, their secret fear and estrangement, into actual openness to God’s tenderness and love. In that commitment to conversion within and among longstanding members we realize what a vital resource of realism and encouragement we have in spiritual life stories, published and unpublished. In the autobiographies of saints and spiritual seekers time and again we discover that their inner conversion to freedom to love God only came after many years of practicing Christianity, living faithfully to all appearances while secretly missing out on the experience of God as loving and lovable.
That’s why the published diaries and journals of spiritual seekers are such irreplaceable resources. We discover time and again that people may persevere in being religious for years before the spell is broken that inhibited them from really accepting the utter mercifulness and tenderness of God. Often seekers will date a journal entry very carefully to note the time when some inner barrier broke, some felt sense of God’s love welled up unexpectedly. I love the staccato poetry in which these breakthroughs are often expressed. There is the famous scrap of paper on which Blaise Pascal recorded his breakthrough, found at the end of his life sewn into the lining of his coat. “The year of grace 1654, Monday 23rd of November…Fire. God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not of the philosophers and the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ. My God and your God. Your God will be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel. Grandeur of the human soul. Righteous Father, the world has known you but I have known you. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy…”
I also often turn to this from Victor Hugo: “Thursday, March 8, 1855, at a quarter to ten in the evening. The infinite is only infinite because it is merciful. If one could lose oneself in God, one would rediscover oneself by orientation to the rising of the eternal smile. The firmament is bounded to the north by bounty, to the south by charity, in the east by love, in the west by pity. God is the great jar of perfumes which eternally wash the feet of the creature. He spreads pardon through every pore, exhausts Himself in loving, labors to absolve.”
Of course, these are traces left behind by writers. But ask any spiritual director and she or he will tell you that we hear from the mouths of ordinary spiritual seekers accounts of breakthrough, when the inhibition that has deflected God’s love from their hearts has melted and let the light flood in, that are in their own way every bit as eloquent as these.
Our conversation about priorities as Christian communities should make room for speaking quite openly about the fact that our ministry of healing addresses not only physical illness and injury, mental pain and suffering, but the promise of healing for those whose knowledge of God’s love is a second-hand knowledge, not a first-hand experience. What are the healing arts we should devote ourselves to that address that common condition?
Martin L. Smith is a well-known spiritual writer and priest. He is the senior associate rector at St. Columba’s, D.C.