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Since you are God's children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and the Spirit cries out, "Father" [Abba].
*Galatians 4.6, NCV
The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out, "Father."
*Romans 8.15, NCV
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Spirit births into spiritual Life. John 3.6 has: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (KJV). Or, "Humans give life to their children. Yet only God's Spirit can change you into a child of God" (CEV). This is a universal, spiritual law.
This Spirit within continues to affirm our of God status, our participation in spiritual life as persons deriving the new birth from the Spirit: "For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children" (Romans 8.16, NLT).
The "heart" where dwells the "Spirit of his Son," the Son being sent there, I Peter 3.4 refers to as the place of the "hidden person": "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious" (I Peter 3.3-4, ESV).
In this place of the hidden person, a mystery takes place. This mystery is a communion of silence. In the cell of the heart, the Spirit speaks to the Father, our Source. Silence is both setting for the affirmation of our being born of the Spirit and our prayer to the Father. The Spirit of Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, prays, crying out, "Abba," or "Father."
These spiritual truths validate and encourage Silent Prayer, or Contemplation. Mystical Prayer, the Prayer of Silence, flows from our trust that we can enter, by Grace, into the silence of communion already going on in our hearts.
Bernard of Clairvaux refers to the contemplative experience as "sleep" or "death." This sleep, then, is sleeping to the consciousness of what keeps us from loving union with God. This death, then, is a death to what keeps us from living out of the inner person of the heart, where spirit mingles with the Spirit.
This kind of ecstasy ... is alone or principally called contemplation. Not to be gripped during life by material desires is a mark of human virtue; but to gaze without the use of bodily likenesses is a sign of angelic purity. Each, however, is a divine gift, each is a going out of oneself, each a transcending of self, but in one one goes much farther than in the other.
*On the Song of Songs. Trans. Kilian Walsh, Irene Edmonds.
The spiritual Christian will long for an intimacy that goes beyond even the self-transcendence entailed in moral detachment. An even more noble act of love is contemplation. One can never enter the contemplative life without the preparation of moral cleansing and a reordering of inordinate desires.
Sadly, many Christians, indeed, most, fail to surrender into loving intercourse with the Other, wherein Spirit flows into spirit and spirit flows into Spirit in loving conjugality, a unioning in which all lesser goods find their end and purpose.
This Union is the Divine will for us. Many have taught it is only for a few chosen or for when we get to Heaven.
On the journey to the consummation of our love for the Beloved, we may get fortastes of it, which Teresa of Avila called spiritual betrothal; she reserved the designation spiritual marriage for a loving union without interruption. So, let us learn what it is like to be engaged to Love, enjoying conjugality with the Divine, until we can enjoy that intercourse without ceasing. Let us open our hearts and enter the silence, the communion already going on in our Heart of hearts; our Beloved waits for us there. God being Infinity, possibly we will enjoy becoming more intimate with our Beloved eternally.
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*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, and their fish, Hope, in Southwest Florida. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. He advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and the renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons and empathic relating with diverse spiritual traditions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
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