The eternal and joyful greeting: "May the Lord be with you." (2/3)

Part II of Florin Callerand’s text

“May the Lord be with you.” Some might say that this isn’t always obvious. We must reply, to ourselves and to others: “If it feels like that it is because of discretion, God does not treat us as if we were objects that have been made. God creates without pressuring or violating anyone or anything! Transcending all things, he knows therefore how to be within everything. Such is “The nobility of love’s highest of standards,” that he could never separate himself from a single one of his creations, no more than any of them could separate themselves from him. He calls himself “The only I am.” There is no being that exists without Him, outside of Him.

To the testimonies of Saint Augustine and Cardinal de Berulle, we could add thousands of other similar testimonies, from men who were docile one day until the secret action of The Only One brings them into existence!

I’m thinking of this woman in Germany, who we have, and rightly so, compared to our poet Claudel, author of “Grandes Odes” in the glory of the Creator, Gertrud Von Le Fort, who, after having tried to explain her own secret to herself, by visiting a host of people who, one after the other had nothing to offer, called out, addressing herself to God who lived within her:

“Du, aber, bist wie eine Stimme mitten in der Seele!”

“But, You, you are like a voice in the centre of the soul!”

Another name comes to mind, emerging from a vast selection, Saint Bernard who engraved on the gate stone of abbeys: "O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo !... O happy solitude, the only true bliss...” A paradoxical cry that he explains by writing: "Nunquam solus, tanquam solus... I am never less alone than when I am believed to be alone!” It is true that, “God’s Presence cannot be silent,” according to the expression by Teilhard de Chardin!

The meaning of interpellation: “May the Lord be with you!” is explained throughout the Bible and the Gospel. The only God, both Creator and Saviour, cannot stop himself from celebrating his Glory when mankind is open to welcoming him, just like a small child would! Even in Islam, we call Abraham God’s Friend, el Khalil, because he listens to the voice and dares to reply! It is clear that Abraham really listens and doesn’t need things to be repeated to engage with the indicated meaning! “And God said... And Abraham replied...” Exchanges like this are frequently found in the Book of Genisis.

Could it be that so many men say they have experienced God’s muteness and that they “Haven’t heard from Him!” because of a lack of spontaneity and docility, of healthy and humble child-like naivety.

Moses, in the scene of the Burning Bush (Exodus 3), discovers rather late that none of the sufferings of the Hebrew people had gone unnoticed by God, that it is exactly this he is talking to him about while saying his name: “I am with you! I saw... I saw....” Without which, Moses would never have dared to leave the Midian desert to confront the mighty Pharoah and organise the fleeing of his people towards the Holy Mountain of Mount Sinai, where the Great Meeting took place.

Much like Elijah and many other prophets, who can only set off on their mission to confront the naysaying forces of a single God, because they see in themselves the voice and the face of the One sending them.

The Old Testament in its entirety is crisscrossed with their cry and its permanent echo: “The God of Israel is living, in the presence of who I hold myself!”

Until mankind has seen in himself, at least a small glimpse of the interest that his Creator has in him and then set off on an Adventure to Infinity to share with him, everything in life risks being seen as marked with incurable nullity, with an absence of true sense or even definitive absurdity. As what use would a candlewick be if it was lit and then burned flamboyantly only to go out because of lack of fuel. One answer is that it could light other flames on other candles but this does not stop all successive flames, one after the other having no final destiny than the darkness of a full night, with a total void of all light... What of my existence today can bring joy and company to my innumerable grandfathers and grandmothers who passed millions of years ago... If God, their God, had not been the Totaliser, the Completer, the Transformer of their lives, this God who is always working inside of them just as he is within me! How, without Him, outside of Him, would they, would we have any hope of finding each other again?

“If the Lord is not with you... If it isn’t Him building the House, then the builders are working in vain...” (Psalm 126). The church, following the biblical and evangelical Revelation, has no more really good news to announce to the world.

As Edgard Morin, sociology teacher, writes in a sarcastic tone, we need to preach the Gospel of loss, to warn all of mankind as soon as possible that their existence has no continuance, there is no question of any other reason for him, that one single thing: getting on as best he can with those like him in this universal situation of absurdity, by taking the total “non-sense” and multiple “false-senses” to reinforce this in passing!

When we get to this point of thinking, the true “Good News” of the revelation presents itself, the true Gospel, that of the Church, repeated endlessly for every man:

“God is Love in Himself and in all of his Creation”

This means that God, who needs Himself, also needs every man. God cannot remain God, if mankind, called into existence by Him, does not become God with him!

Remember Saint Irene’s cry, this Bishop of Lyon we called the earliest of theologians of the Church:

"Cur Deus homo? Ut homo fieret Deus ..."

But, why does God become man?

Because man becomes God!”

God does not love in a platonic, external way with no contact between one being at its core and another. He is more within us than we can even be within ourselves, as it is He who endlessly starts us from within, just as a spring starts its stream with innumerable droplets of water.

How can he make himself known, reveal the secret founder of every one of us? Of course, we’ve already said it, via the mysterious sound of his Voice, deep within our hearts. But especially, in this moment of the History of the World that Saint Paul called “The plenitude of time,” by the rising in our flesh and human condition of his own eternal Son. This is why it helps to see the Incarnation of God as a very sensitive, visible and audible supreme attempt of the great Mystery of God’s relationship with the world. Jesus, the Son, himself says and repeats: “Whoever sees me sees the Father.” As, what we see at every instant of Jesus’ life on earth, in each of his acts or actions, in every one of his words, is the Apparition of the invisible father. The person who focuses his eyes on contemplating the scenes in the Gospel with the same perception as the Virgin Mary and Saint John will find constant and transparent incidences of the Father within the Son, permanently supporting and inspiring him. The eternal “One within the Other” appears. We could never meet a divine person on their own, but always one within the other, without confusion but with no separation. The great lesson of the Gospel which is to reveal to us the God-Trinity in perfect unity sheds light on the Mystery of the Creation. God does not create at a distance to him, at the end of his finger-tips, but by radiating light, by engaging all of himself. Of course, the created world is not God, but God creates it with his intimate presence. Similarity attenuated, comparable with what happens in the intimacy of exchanges and communication between them and the divine Persons in their unity. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is always an intimate loving embrace between God and the Universe. God loves... God loves all of mankind because they exist through him! We do not see often enough that the essential message of the Gospel is to show us through the humanity taken by the Son in the womb of the Virgin Mary how divine People are united, meaning one within the other. “The father never leaves me alone, said Jesus, the Father and I are one. The father always works and I also work with him...”etc. The Holy Spirit is not an external spectator of fraternal, filial tenderness... He is this same tenderness, and we only find it in the Unity of the Father and his Son.

It is not about pushing the similarity as far as total resemblance with the intimacy of external divine relations, but as a way of illustrating the mystery of the existence of the Universe, and of each human creature, in its uniqueness, we could say that God is within him and that if he exists, in the singular and the plural, it is because God is already communicating “As if making you participate within Him,” says Thomas D’Aquin:

“For in him we Live and Move and have our Being.

We are of his race!” (Words used by Saint Paul. Acts 17)

Whatever the more or less advanced degree of his evolution, or his dis-engagement with what we call evil!

“God needs mankind, so he needs me.” This phrase is still found in the Gospel, where Jesus says, “He can no longer do anything that he does not see happening through the Father!” We could also add: as the Father needs his son to reveal him, in the same way, Jesus, the Son, needs Humanity and the Cosmos to become his Church for his full revelation. (St Paul, Colossians and Ephesians). The God from within the Trinty is the same in his creative action outside of it, as some theologists paradoxically state. When he is then confirmed to us: “May the Lord be with you,” this is the invitation for us to realise, once again that we ourselves receive within, the breath of the creator, according to what has already been written in the Song of Songs: “He will kiss me with a kiss from his mouth!” These revelatory words underline the way we come into existence and now more and more than ever! A little, we could say, like the Father is within the Son and the Son within the Father.

So we know that despite all life's contradictions, these will only every be exterior and the Essential, this breath from God the creator will always be safe, current and on its way to make us come to the Plenitude of God (The Pleroma, see Paul to the Colossians 2,9).

This feeling of Faith is at the basis of the New Life: you will never be alone or abandoned like a piece of wood buffeting on the uncertain waves; you will always be with your Lord!

Florin Callerand

La Roche d'Or, 2nd and 4th October 1995

On the celebration of Theresa the Child of Jesus

and of Francis of Assisi

Part 2/3

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon