The Pathless Path
Just recently someone came to see me for some spiritual direction. They were feeing very distressed because they felt that they had lost their faith. They describe how the old certainties of their faith now seemed hollow and that even the recitation of the rosary no longer held any attraction to them. Over the years there have been many who have come to me with siilar concerns. But rather than being a loss of faith these experienceis usually manifest a deepening of their relationship with God. In human terms it can be described as a movement from friendship with another person to the profound experience of the intimacy of love. In spiritual terms the transition can be pretty traumatic. Yet we are often so attached to our way of praying that when we have to let it go there is a real sense of loss. When an inability to pray in the nice comfortable way of the past occurs this is often a movement of the Spirit to move into a new path where there is no longer a dependence on words, images or ideas. This is marked by a silent resting in the presence of the living God with a theology where God is best expressed in what God is not rather than on positive assertions that derive from the limitations of our finite mind.
This "via negative" as it is sometimes called is clearly identified in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council which states;
Between the Creator and the creature there cannot be a likeness so great that the unlikeness is not greater. (Canon 2)
In other words it means that any description or image we have of God is more unlike God than like God. There is a long tradition in the life of the church that lies behind this solemn definition. Reaching back to our Jewish roots one of the earliest spiritual writers in the Christian tradition that draws our attention to the way of unknowing is the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa. In his treatise "The life of Moses" he points out that God is incomprehensible. The accounts of Moses seeing God is not a visual or mental seeing because that which is "seen" transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by "a kind of darkness." Gregory describes this as a "luminous darkness" or "a seeing of God by being drawn into God's inexhaustible nature." It was however the sixth century obscure Syrian monk Dionysius who systematized the theology of the apophatic way. His influence was brought to the West largely through the ninth century John Scotus Eriugena. During the middle ages the experience of this deep inner experience, beyond any words, is thoroughly described by Meister Eckhart in the thirteenth century and by the fourteenth century anonymous English author of the "Cloud of Unknowing." We might also note that Gregory's language of light and darkness features significantly in the sixteenth century writings of St. John of the Cross.
All this reminds me of reading autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower who, on her death bed, suffered the thought that there was no God waiting for her. But this experience did not lesser her faith. She died "not knowing" but because o f her simple trust she was definitely not in despair. Her story also recounts how she stopped saying the rosary because she no longer found it helpful. It has been pointed out that:
The rosary here is but a symbol of any form of piety or thought in Christendom. Any cultural expression of faith is itself not faith, let us then not cling to mere expressions of faith since St Therese is not only a saint but a doctor of the church we do well to pay attention and learn from her experience.
The experience of the loss of God is quite common among fervent Christians and it causes great distress for many who without recourse to good spiritual direction simply leave the church. I even believe it was the experience of the human Jesus as he cries out from the Cross, "My God why have you deserted me." (Mark 15:34) This is reflected in the works of Meister Eckhart who instructs his reader to "keep silent and don't gape after God, for by gaping after him you are lying you are committing a sin." Eckhart himself begs God in his prayer, "to relieve him of a God who was simply a product of his own thought and imagination for such a God would disappear as soon as his ability to think of God did." This is worthy of note because John Paul II commended the writings of Meister Eckhart in several of his teachings on prayer.
A contemporary Benedictine monk Fr Willigis Jäger writes encouragingly that it is sufficient to live with the not knowing for a simple waiting on God is the way to grow in a deep union with God. He writes:
It is a decisive step when the individual in contemplation suddenly finds… God vanishing out of sight or simply crumbling to pieces. This experience can at first give rise to great uncertainty. The Father's hand is withdrawn, loneliness and a sense of lostness turn into a kind of abyss.
All in all the experience of words no longer being satisfying are almost always an invitation to move to a wordless, imageless prayer of silence and presence. If you find that your prayer seems empty then you could do no better than find a good spiritual director who will help you to find ways to practise simply resting in God's presence. Above all we should realize that to die and rise with Christ to live the Paschal Mystery in union with Christ is quite enough for any of us.
