Continual Living in the Presence

Keeping the Flame Alive

Sep 1, 2006

Saying For Today: ... this relationship of Love with Christ will enrich all other close relationships, only making them deeper and richer.

Scripture

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (II Peter 3.18, ESV)

Comments

Writes Isaac of Nineveh (7th Century), a bishop, then resigned to be a solitary monk, later joined a community of religious in the mountains:

Familiarity with people comes about through physical presence. Familiarity with God, by contrast, is built on meditation and self-abandonment to him during prayer.

Those who would see the Lord should purify their hearts with the continual remembrance of God. They will reach the contemplation of God in every moment, and within him will all be light.

--Philocalia

What is this seeing of God, this "contemplation of God" in every moment? When you dearly love someone, say a spouse or friend, do you think of that person always when sharing physical proximity? No. The relationship grows to sharing a space unselfconsciously. The idea of subject and object ceases in union.

Likewise, with Christ and you. To live in love with Christ Jesus, one does not need to think of Christ always. Through the ancient practice of "remembrance of God," one grows to have an unselfconscious awareness of God. She does not have to think of this at all. However, if she is cut off from the union, for any reason, she is aware of this loss of union, and she practices remembrance of God, like someone breathing on embers to reignite them into flame.

This continual living in the Presence of God must be sustained, or it like the flame will slowly die out. I begin each day with one to two hours of spiritual reading, meditation, and contemplation. I pray through the day in varied situations. I read, pray, and meditate before going to sleep at night. I read from the great saints of the Church, daily, especially from the early centuries. I choose to live this loving union daily, nightly. I know that union is a process of continual nurture, and I know the despair of living apart from that union, while I know the unshakable bliss of living that union.

You may say, "I don't have time for this life of remembrance of God." If you say that, it only shows how far you are from truly and desperately longing for it, as well as valuing its profit for now and forever. Indeed, you have time for all else you do. Then, what do you say when you say, "For remembrance of God, I have no time"?

There is no short cut to this seeing and remembering of God. However, the journey is joyful and the reward is to know an intimacy that the opposites of life and death cannot touch, and an intimacy with Love that will follow us through and beyond death. Likewise, this relationship of Love with Christ will enrich all other close relationships, only making them deeper and richer.

Spiritual Exercise