You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
~C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.
~ Announcing the New Covenant in Ezekiel 36
Oh beloved, it is true.
We run from it. It just seems too hard to believe. We look at the clunky world around us. We see its decay and we feel the edge of death descending on us, even in our years only a little past our childhood. We are dying, and the world around us is dying. And, before the dying we are trying to gather a little bit of bits and pieces of something before we stop breathing and rot.
We are dead. Stone. Cold. Dead.
However, there is this sound that we think is in the distance. But, it is actually our deaf and untuned ears that misunderstand the signal. The sound is actually closer than we know. It is the very Heart of G_d, that is pursuing us. We begin to hear the beat, but we try to ignore it.
However, something tells us that maybe, just maybe (no… certainly) there has to be SomeThing more.
I have learned that most impartial travelers who undertake this journey, rarely remain so.
~ Dr. Alexander Metherell
Can we see it?
Everything in creation actually points to a Creator. Super-symmetry and the encoding of space-time. The wrapping of our four sensed dimensions in at least five more. The phenomenally complex coding that goes into each cell’s DNA. Our consciousness that enables us to see and feel, and judge value and beauty…
And then, there is something more. It is as though this physical infrastructure and encoding is more of a bootstrap program to interface with something much higher than another physical hardware abstraction layer. No, now who we are is actually tapping into information… Into the “stuff” that we know is there, but we cannot measure by volume – the ever shrinking media upon which information “sits” shows us that it is ephemeral.
We get to information, and that “stuff” takes us even further, up into motivation. Why? Why in the world, or solar system, or universe are we even here? What is the purpose?
Suddenly, something shifts. That sound we have been hearing since our childhood grows louder. It is a HeartBeat.
Encoded existence, to sentience, to Facts, to Information, to Truth, to Purpose… to Love.
Oh my G_d! It’s You! It’s been You all the time!!!! You Love me!!! Your Life is my Life. You have Designed me, made me, informed me, motivated me, and booted me up into a place where i can begin to understand…. That,
This is all about Love. Everything is all about being the friend of a Creator Who simply desires to share His Heart with others.
Oh my G_d!
And my Friend.
Tonight is your night beloved. Come on up through the layers. He is there. You do not need to live in the dead machine of your body alone. Allow Him to join His heart to yours. It will change everything.
Forever.
By showing us his heart, wounded by the sins of each of us, he shows us that the words of Aquinas apply to him first of all, namely, “He does not even know how to live without the thing He loves.” That is, he lives for love of us, and his physical and now glorious heart burns with love for the Father and for us, and so for our sake fulfills the commandment of love.
~Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.
