Seeing Jesus by breaking through all things

Et quaerebat videre Jesum quis esset, etc. (Luke 19): "And he sought to see Jesus, who he was." Saint Luke tells us that when our Lord walked on earth in human nature there was a rich man who sought to see him, and could not because of the crowd, for he was small of stature. According to a holy man, only the one who has plenty of God and virtue is truly rich. To be well off in goods and poor in God makes a person poor, not rich, for things are nothing compared to God. This is why that lord protested when his retainers praised him for his power and his wealth. He said, 'I think they do not praise me at all, since they have forgotten my strongest claim to praise, which is my power over my own body, to demand of it whatever I will.' This man who sought to see Jesus ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up into a tree so that he could see him. And Jesus said, 'Hurry and come down, for today I am staying at your house.' Whoever wants to see Jesus must outrun all things. What does it mean when someone does not hurry past things? It means he has not tasted God. If he had tasted God he would hurry to pass by all things, and not merely pass by them but break through all created things. What his love is ready to leave behind, he breaks through. If we fail to see God, this is as much because of our weak desire as because of the crowd of created things pressing in. Aim high, be high. Seeing God calls for high aspiration. Understand this: burning desire together with deep humility works wonders. I say God is all-powerful, but he has no power to resist the humble soul that reaches high. And wherever I cannot master God and bend him to my will, that is because I am lacking either in will or in humility. I say, and I would stake my life on it, that by will a person could break through a wall of steel. This is why we read of Saint Peter that on catching sight of Jesus he walked on the water, so eager was he to come to him.

Notice this: a thing that grows only by being filled will never become full. Take a vessel, a jug. If you pour into it and it stretches as it fills, then it will never be full. It is the same with the soul. The more she asks for, the more she is given, and the more she receives, the bigger she grows. Who is Jesus? He has no name. Where do we see God? Where there is no yesterday and no tomorrow, where it is now and today, there we see God. What is God? One master says, 'If I had to say something about God, I would say that God is something no mind can reach or grasp, and that is all I know about him.' Another master says, 'The one who knows that God is unknowable, that person knows God.' Then there is Saint Augustine's saying, 'God is something supreme and sovereign, common to all who share in him.' What he means is that God is something in which every creature must exist, for if a creature falls out of the hand of God's mercy, it falls back into the hand of God's justice. It must always remain in him. A person must have his being in God, and must have his enjoyment in God too, in God himself, if he is willing. But whoever does not find lasting satisfaction and enjoyment in God himself must look for it in things, things that are base, far beneath his own feet. Yet every creature without exception gets its being from God, even the damned in hell go on existing by some share in his being. Though they do not dwell in him in blessedness, they must still go on without him, against their will, in damnation. What folly it is to refuse to be with the one we cannot exist without!

Saint Augustine says, 'What is God? He is something we cannot imagine anything better than.' But I say, God is better than anything we can imagine. I say God is something, I do not know what, truly I do not know. He is pure being far more than not-being, he exists far more than he does not exist. Our highest aspirations are poor, groveling things that fall hopelessly short of God. He is beyond the heart's desire. When I preached in Paris I said, and I would say it again now, that no one in Paris, with all his learning, can grasp what God is even in the smallest creature, not even in a fly. And I will say more, the whole world is powerless to grasp it.

What God is in himself, no one can say, unless he is caught up into the light that God himself is. What God is in the angels is very far beyond us, and no one knows it. What God is in the soul that loves God, no soul knows except the soul he dwells in. What God is in these lower things, I know a little, but very little. The moment God comes within our understanding, our natural powers fail. May we be caught up into the light that is God himself, and there be blessed forever. So help us God. Amen.