Contemplative Resistance

Against materialistic forces, a certain amount of spiritual resistance is required, The dominant culture enslaved to irrational impulses goes around in constant circles from one extreme to the next. Spiritual resistance comes out of being rooted in the truth. Truth is not a sponge to the exigency of the moment or the whim of the heart. The truth is a rock on which one can stand above the unexpected current that would otherwise sweep one off his feet. To contemplate the truth, this is a matter of opening the eyes of the heart to what is truly essential and to choose to believe in all that is good, holy and true even if in the moment it seems so hidden.

Jesus opens up our eyes to this horizon, the horizon of what is not seen or felt, but that nonetheless holds it altogether. This is the horizon of the Holy Trinity and this mystery circumscribes human existence without ever having to assert itself. Whoever accepts this mystery of love by faith is rooted in it.

This is the resistance of heaven on earth, a resistance that sees, that contemplates what the world cannot see. Faith resists because such seeing is more than informative, but performative. More than merely assenting, faith is in act because the Great Mystery it beholds is in undying act while always remaining the same. To be rooted in this rock, this is to stand firm in the sacred promises one has made in life and to trust that, no matter the cost or apparent failure, God is bringing to perfection his secret purposes. A soul rooted in contemplation of the Trinity, a soul that lives in contemplative resistance to the world, wonders over all that God is accomplishing with the deep conviction that an unseen grandeur triumphs all the more, the more hidden it is from the world.

If contemplative resistance is rooted in the Trinity, this rock is not barren, sterile or static. When our eyes are open to the wonder of God's blessings in this world, when we discover how to stand in our rightful place in the order of things, a new dynamic takes hold of the heart. One finds himself pulled evermore deeply into meaningful and fulfilling mysteries, secrets so deep and rich that no words are found to express them, and one's own heart aches to make them known. Time and space is too small and words too frail to utter all that should be said. The Word of the Father moves in the substance of the soul and when He moves there, one's whole humanity is caught up in a dance of wonder and glory as to make all things new. To behold He who is truly beautiful and to embrace this Word with the fullness of one's own being, this is to know a new fecundity of goodness springing up, surging forth and being unleashed through the heart into the drama of humanity - and this catching force draws from darkness to light, from death to life, from despair to hope.

All of this remains unseen by those who live in self-protective lies. Cleaving to societal myths and superstitions, they have found a way to avoid dealing with their own hearts. In the enchantment of the present age, they swim in currents of self-contradiction with little awareness of the tragedy they make of themselves. These destructive waters carry them away from hearth and home, from the sacred bonds in which a whole community trusted, from the promise of a meaningful existence that could have been theirs had they held fast. (If they would but come to their senses, I know someone who is ready to run to them with robes, sandals and rings at the first sign of their coming home.) One loses a sense of standing when such unexamined currents, those a man thinks he can handle on his own, displace him from all that he once held as sacred. The inconstancy of one's own whims and unmet needs is not firm enough to bear the weight of the heart.

The spirit of the age is more than the sum total of the broken individuals who are caught up in it. Just as happens for the man who has lost his way, so to with whole socieities. The spirit of the world is generated from the communal whims and unmet needs that are seen without the light of God. Driven by demonic forces that social forces cannot contain, it always goes toward darkness, despair and death - and does not know why. Unexamined hubris raises up towers of Babel, and these towers always fall to crush the most vulnerable. Without the truth, a whole people comes under the doom of heartless cruelty.

Then there is the contemplative who by faith will not conform himself to this age, but seeks. to live a transformed life through the renewal of his mind in Christ. His life resists what passes away because he has tasted what is eternal and nourishes himself on the pledge of future glory. He has learned to offer his whole body as a spiritual sacrifice and knows the strength that comes from true worship. He resists going round and round in circles of the latest fad because he has found the still-point around which the whole world turns. Over shadowed by cruciform love, he chooses to take his stand here, no matter the cost, his chin set to the Father's House. To the chaotic waters of the times, such men and women are rocks not spunges. The mores flow around, not through them, for they have been emplaced by the merciful Father whose firm purpose will never be thwarted.