My dear brothers and sisters, hear these words: “In our religion, and in the worship which is the expression of our religion, we look out towards Eternity.” These are words of Evelyn Underhill. Evelyn Underhill was an Anglican spiritual writer. She lived in England, and died in 1941. Her writing was so powerful and voluminous that it is right to speak of her as a genuine spiritual mother. These words of hers richly express a mysterious truth about Christianity: “In our religion, and in the worship which is the expression of our religion, we look out towards Eternity.” They are taken from her book, The Mystery of Sacrifice,” which is a reflection on the Liturgy. She goes on to write: “Bit by bit, in various ways and degrees, we discover in ourselves a certain capacity for Eternity–and more than this, a deep thirst for the Unchanging, a need for God.”
We hear this deep thirty for the Unchanging God even from David. David, who is called by God to face Goliath truly thirsts for God. David knows that without God, he does not stand a chance against this giant. But because David thirsts for God, because David needs God, and knows that he needs God, David is able to say, “The Lord Who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” David knows that this faith is stronger than any human armor. Only a person thirsty for God, knowing of his need for God, could have such courage. Even to later say directly to Goliath: “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. . . . This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. . . . that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel . . . that the Lord saves not with sword and spear.”
My dear brothers and sisters, David’s God is our God. Christ saves not by Himself wielding sword and spear, but by receiving them: by Himself taking to Himself such wounds on the Cross. Each of the nails is a sword, and out of His side which the spear cut flows the Church and her Sacraments of Life. Just as David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, because Christ was with him and in him and David was with Christ and in Christ, we are able to prevail over our demons, even the giant ones, for His strength is perfected through our weakness, and Christ our King has trampled down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.
All of this points to two contrasting facts about God. One the one hand, His otherness (His radical otherness beyond the conditions of time and space). And on the other hand, His nearness (for He fills all things, and is present everywhere around us and within us). The God Who is infinitely beyond our understanding reveals Himself to us as a living Person: And God called to David and David answered Him, God calls us each by our name, and we answer Him. He is available to us in any and all times of need. He is infinitely beyond our understanding, and yet He is also the Good Shepherd, Who leaves 99 sheep to go and find the lost one of them. He is like a woman who rejoices over finding a lost coin, which is us, yet He can not be fully known in this life, but only wondered at. Wonderment is the beginning of wisdom, of knowing God through holy fear.
The holy fear of the Lord arises when we recognize and truly see God’s mystery: not that we fully comprehend it, but that we apprehend it and are aware that mystery is part of Who and What God is. Apprehending God means knowing of His mystery, including His mystery as revealed in Christ, certainly the mystery of Christ Himself, as well as the mystery of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father. Also the mystery of Christ in us, and the mystery of Christ in the Church and in the Sacraments. Indeed the mystery of Christ’s ability to save us from our adversary the devil, as Saint Peter teaches, who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Only by this mysterious Christ are we able to resist him, firm in our faith, that Christ can defeat the giant lion.
Mystery is everywhere when it comes to God. Mystery is so pervasive in the Christian faith that it must be the case the recognizing this pervasive mystery of God and all its facets opens the eyes of our heart to behold more of Christ’s transfiguring, invisible Light. It must be the case therefore that the mystery of God is not to be avoided or ignored, but embraced. It must be the case that perhaps what was lost about the one sheep was the ability to see with the eyes of his heart; that the sheep was blinded by its own sin, and could not locate his Shepherd. The necessity of embracing the mystery of God is what Saint Paul was after to Saint Timothy when he wrote, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
And it is because of God’s mystery that we, in the words of Evelyn Underhill, look out toward Eternity, and discover in ourselves a certain capacity for Eternity, which is the capacity to know and love God in this life, and more than this, a deep thirst for the Unchanging, a need for God. This God Who reveals Himself fully and definitively through Jesus Christ alone, through He Who loves us, in Whose image we by grace are able to achieve, Jesus Christ Himself, our Savior and our King, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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