Longing To See

So, welcome to our next and tenth session as we go through the Spiritual Exercises.

Before we turn to the Scripture, I'd like to quote from the journal of Thomas Merton. This is in 1949, and it is December 23, so it's the day before the Vigil of Christmas, and he is very alive to the approach of Christmas. He has received from a friend a postcard with that famous painting of Fra Angelico of the Annunciation, where the angel and Mary are depicted, and he's looking at it in the silence of his room in the afternoon, and he writes this: "Fra Angelico's Annunciation on a Postcard, the quiet of the afternoon is filled with an altogether different tonality than the activity of the morning. The sun has moved altogether around and the room is darker."

It is serious. I take time out to pray and I look at the angelical picture, feeling like the end of Advent, which is today. For about eight minutes, I stayed silent and didn't move and listened to the watch and wondered if perhaps I might not understand something of the work Our Lady is preparing. It is an hour of tremendous expectation. I remember my weariness, my fears, my lack of understanding, my dimness, my sin of overactivity.

What is she preparing? What is coming up? She loves me. Her love shapes worlds, shapes history, gives birth to the City of God. I look at the serene, severe porch where Angelico's angel speaks to her.

Angelico knew how to paint her. She is thin, immeasurably noble, and she does not rise to meet the angel. Mother, make me as sincere as the picture, all the way down into my soul—sincere, sincere. Let me have no thought that could not kneel before you in that picture, no image, no shadow. I believe you.

I am silent. I will act like the picture. It is the end of Advent, and the afternoon is vivid with expectancy. Now, I quote that because there's a passage in this brief selection which illustrates very beautifully something that Saint Ignatius speaks about in prayer. It happens so naturally that you don't even really notice it, but let's highlight it now.

There's a passage at a certain point from imaginative activity. So this is really along the lines of imaginative contemplation. Merton looks at the painting of Fra Angelico. He looks at the figure of Mary, of the Angel, their various postures, and so forth. And all of this speaks to him of the mystery of the Annunciation and the Incarnation.

But at a certain point, there's a shift from the imaginative activity to direct address. So, Angelico knew how to paint her. She is thin, immeasurably noble, and she does not rise to meet the angel. So, this is imaginative activity. He's just drinking in the image of Mary and the angel, but now he shifts from the imaginative activity to speaking directly, in this case, to Mary.

"Mother, make me as sincere as the picture, all the way down into my soul—sincere, sincere. Let me have no thoughts, and so forth." Now, when we pray, that will happen at times. We'll be reflecting meditatively on a passage or imaginatively contemplating a passage, and at a certain point, just spontaneously, our heart begins to speak to the Lord. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Lord, help me to live that. When we move from the reflective or imaginative activity to direct address, speaking to Jesus, to the Trinity, to Mary, let's say Saint Peter's in the passage, we speak to him. Then we have entered into what Ignatius calls the colloquy, as we said before, where our heart is simply speaking. At this point, God has spoken His word to us, and we are speaking our word in response to Him. Whenever that happens in your prayer, privilege that space. Never be in a hurry to move beyond it as long as your heart desires to speak to the Lord, because we are at the deep point of the prayer when that happens.

Ignatius invites us, in any case, to dedicate just a brief time at the end of every time of meditation or contemplation just for colloquy, just to let our hearts speak freely to the Lord.

Now, what I'd like to propose as a Scripture for this session is the encounter of Jesus with Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. This is a beautiful illustration of Jesus entering into a broken life, a life beset by sinfulness and weakness, far from God, and yet a heart that longs in some way to encounter the Lord.

If you notice, Zacchaeus hopes for the least encounter with the Lord of any Gospel figure. It's not for healing. It's not even to get close to Him, let alone touch His garment as the woman with the hemorrhage and so forth. It's only to see Jesus from a distance. But that desire is all Jesus needs, and his life will be made anew.

So let's let our hearts rest, slow down, and simply be aware of the Lord. Or as Saint Anselm said, let our hearts just make a little time for God and rest a while in Him.

And aware of the love in the Lord's eyes as He looks upon us, let's let Him say these words to our hearts.

He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, and heard about Jesus. He was seeking to see who Jesus was, but he could not see Him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When He reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received Him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord. Now, after the encounter with the Lord, he's transformed.

Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor. And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over. And then Jesus says these beautiful words to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham."

Jesus restores to him the whole dignity that he had thought was lost. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.

So with reverence, we're on holy ground here. This is what we're asking of the Lord at this stage in the Spiritual Exercises: this kind of transformation. The courage, and I would say the hope, to bring our weakness—that part of ourselves that weighs on us, that burden that we never seem to be able to free ourselves from, that falling again and again, that lack of progress, that sense of being too self-centered, or whatever it might be. The invitation now is to bring that to the Lord and allow the Lord to respond, as Jesus shows us He always responds to that kind of sincere desire. He is present. He stays with us. He transforms us. He restores our full dignity and opens the path to holiness for us.

Now, rather than further commentary on this passage, what I want to do here is to share an experience. I'm going to call him Richard. Again, I'm grateful to Richard for allowing me to share this—an experience of actually praying with this passage.

So he writes, "I was at Sunday Mass and the Gospel reading was the encounter of Jesus with Zacchaeus. The homily moved me when the priest spoke about Jesus' desire to be with Zacchaeus. It touched something in me, and I knew that I would pray the next day with this Gospel." That's a very sure spiritual instinct there. If you are at Mass and a reading speaks to your heart, or something is said in the homily, or you're doing some spiritual reading or listening to a podcast and something speaks to you in a way that you know is a source of grace for you, it is very helpful to do what Richard does here.

He knows instinctively there's grace for him in this passage, so he knows he's going to go back to it in his personal prayer, which he does with great fruit. Don't just go by those moments when something speaks to your heart, because God is offering a grace. So he prays with it the next day. "When I did, I took the place of Zacchaeus." So this is pure imaginative contemplation. He becomes Zacchaeus. He's there in the tree.

"I was there in the tree waiting for Jesus to pass by. When I imagine the Gospel, I don't see things in great detail. I just had a sense of being in the tree waiting for Jesus to come."

That's the longing in the hearts of all of us for Jesus to fill the places that are too empty or the burdens that oppress us. I just had a sense of being in the tree, waiting for Jesus to come. Then He did come, and He stopped. I sensed that for Him at that moment, I was all that mattered. He was giving me His entire attention, and that was where the prayer stopped.

Jesus, looking at me with His whole attention—with warmth, with desire to be with me—and my looking at Him in response. And with a sure spiritual instinct again, Richard knows that there's no need to be anywhere else in his prayer right now. Just right here: the mutual gaze that is so healing for him. It was quiet and happy. It lightened my worry and self-doubt.

I knew that Jesus wanted to be with Zacchaeus regardless of Zacchaeus' sinfulness, and that by being with him—simply by letting him know that he was loved—Zacchaeus would be transformed. I felt that Jesus was with me in the same way, so heart is speaking to heart now. Then I heard Jesus say, "Richard, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And we were together in the house without many words, just together."

So again, with reverence, because it's very holy ground here.

At this point, you can see that heart is really speaking to heart, as we've just said, and that another step in this man's transformation and growth toward God is taking place. What if we prayed like that every day? Ten minutes, fifteen, whatever we have. What if we did that every day? What would happen in our spiritual lives?

And what would we become for others as we bring Christ to them? Well, that's the next step that lies ahead now on our journey through the Exercises, and we'll pick this up in our next session. Amen.