ŠubHō la.bō wal.brō wal.rou.Hō d.qoud.šō; men hō.šō wa3.da.mō l.3ō.lam 3ōl.meen Ameen
Glory be to the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit from now, and unto the age of ages, amen.
In previous posts we have seen that mysticism can be understood as the consciousness of the presence of God, and that the Old Testament indicated that the heart, when cleansed and made into a “heart of flesh” is the instrument by which we become aware of God. We shall now briefly look at the Gospels, and see how they carry this forward.
At the outset, the Maronite tradition completely rejected the idea that we can perform a sort of anatomy on the New Testament and the books of the New Testament. We have always accepted the venerable tradition of the Church that the Gospels were in fact authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Perhaps I shall examine the idea of communities and so-called schools which supposedly produced the Gospels, but for now, I wish only to plainly state that I believe and shall proceed upon the traditional basis.
Second, I am profoundly sceptical of the dating of the Gospels by modern Western scholars. I consider that there is no objective evidence whatsoever for the proposition that the earliest documents in the New Testament are the epistles of St Paul. Neither do I accept the Q hypothesis. A Maronite, if true to tradition, can only read the New Testament as a consistent and coherent whole.
Read that way, the Gospels and the epistles tell a powerful and persuasive story of the God-Man, His teaching, and the pertinent aspects of His life. But above all, they show Our Lord in deep prayer, a prayer which we could fairly call “contemplative,” Our Lord always urges us to the practice of prayer and of good works; together with the deepening of our faith. In the final analysis, there is no distinction between prayer and contemplation, or more precisely, at their highest levels, contemplation and prayer amount to the same reality: standing wordless before the presence of God. The worship of God in the Divine Liturgy requires of us something related, but nonetheless slightly different: we might call it dynamic prayer, or contemplation-in-motion.
When we open the first page of the Gospels, we find the genealogy of St Matthew, which leads us to the birth of the boy child who was named “God is with us;” in Greek, meth’hēmōn. At the end of the Gospel, the apostles go to an appointed mountain in Galilee where they meet the Risen Lord and worship him. Of course, only God can be worshipped, and so that we do not miss the message that the Gospel is about how God is with us, the very final words of the Gospel are “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” In Greek, with you is meth’humōn, another sign that He is God.
If we are taught, at the clear insistence of the apostle and evangelist, that God is with us, then how could we not wish to have some sense of his presence? And this awareness, as we have seen, is the essence of mysticism.
When we turn to the Gospel of St Mark, which according to the ancient tradition was the Gospel as preached by St Peter, and the earliest of the four, it opens with the declaration that this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and tells how St John the Baptist prepared the way for Him, in accordance with the prophecy of Isaiah. It closes, in both the short and the long endings, by declaring that He worked with through the apostles as they preached. That is, He remained with them even if not physically present. St Luke’s Gospel, which is in fact part one of a two part series ending with the Acts of the Apostles was written for a different reason, to show how Judaism (represented by Zechariah in the Temple) was fulfilled and superseded by Christ, His apostles and the new faith they proclaimed.
The Gospel of St John, however, which according to the tradition was written as a more spiritual Gospel, and after the other three to complete them, is above all the Gospel of the abiding presence of God. First, it brings the message that Christ is the eternal Word of God made flesh, through whom all life has come. He made His dwelling among us, and reveals God to us. In chapter 6 we have the famous Bread of Life discourse which reveals that we must eat the Bread of Heaven, which is Christ Himself, in order to have eternal life. Of course, what one eats becomes part of one, but here, rather, it is we who become joined to what we have consumed, because the Bread of Life is divine. In chapter 9, the man whose blindness had been cured when he washed in the Pool of Siloam, worshipped Christ when the Lord told Him that He (Christ) was the Son of Man; and thus St John makes clear that the epithet “Son of Man” which appears throughout the Synoptic Gospels was a statement of His true divinity.
As the Gospel of St John moves to its climax, the Lord declares that he will send the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth to remain with us always; and that He Himself would be within the disciples. In chapter 14, love is presented as the key which leads to obedience, and teaches that the Father and Christ will come and dwell with that one who loves and obeys. In chapter 15, the Lord compares the unity between Himself and the disciples to that of a vine and its branches; and in chapter 17 He prays that the disciples may be one as the Father and He are one.
Once more, if those who love Christ and prove their love by following His commandments are one with Him, may not we, who try to love and to obey, seek for a taste of that unity, to confirm and strengthen us?
I am aware that the many books written about prayer and mysticism in the Gospels take quite a different approach, but this is, I think the most direct; and also the most true to the Maronite heritage, which traditionally proceeded by a straightforward reading of the Gospels, and perhaps especially the Gospel of St John. It is funny how, these days among educated people, an obvious reading of the plain sense of Sacred Scripture seems not to be so very obvious. Yet, as we have seen, the teaching that God is with us is fundamental to the faith.
There are four main ways in which the presence of God has been approached in the Maronite tradition: through Divine Liturgy, through prayer and contemplation; through acts of faith hope and love; and through revelation of His Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.
That being so, let us approach His presence through contemplation, now, and that may strengthen our desire for the Divine Liturgy, it may increase our fervour in prayer, fit us for good works, and to see Him in His hidden glory.
