What we find ravishing in a small child is his transparency. He attracts us without our focusing on ourselves. In some way, he makes an infinite presence tangible to us and binds us again to the divine Source like a sacrament of light. For how many fathers were the tears welling up in their eyes in the presence of their grace-filled child the divine dew that made prayer rise in their heart.At certain times, the child, in truth, enlightens and purifies us by making us permeable to this mysterious flux which invades the being in a state of openness. Works of art, in their own way, produce a similar effect, like everything that is truly transparent here below.
The proud hurt us because they are opaque. They lock up everything within themselves and imprison us within their own limitations.
Saints free us by allowing a divine light to shine within themselves. In each one of us there is a mystical vocation, most of the time unaware of itself. Our personal self crushes us and we need to be “healed” of ourselves. We are truly happy only when we lose sight of ourselves and disappear into what is beyond ourselves. We would like to have our bondage point in someone else. We are obscurely worked upon by this aspiration which drives saints to identify themselves with God by placing their true self in Him: “And now, it is no longer I who live, God is the one who lives in me.” That is, basically the motto for all of them and it is also ours inasmuch as we discover again this childlike quality of the soul beatified in the Gospel.
Father Maurice Zundel
(+1975) Swiss mystic, poet, philosopher, liturgist and author
http://www.annesigier.qc.ca/zundel/biographie.html
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