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FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY

For Reflection

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) became a practising member of the Church of England in 1921, the year when she published the first of her great books, Mysticism. She was widely sought after as a spiritual director and conductor of retreats.

Here Am I! Send Me!

Making our everyday actions harmonise with a spiritual outlook is not always easy. It means trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity: and dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social and national obligations…

The prevalent notion that spirituality and politics have nothing to do with one another is the exact opposite of the truth. Once it is accepted in a realistic sense, the Spiritual Life has everything to do with politics. It means that certain convictions about God and the world become the moral and spiritual imperatives of our life; and this must be decisive for the way we choose to behave about that bit of the world over which we have been given a limited control.

Consider the story of the call of Isaiah. It is a story so well known that we easily take it for granted, and so fail to realise it as one of the most magnificent and significant in the world; for it shows us the awakening of a human being to his true situation over against Reality, and the true object of his fugitive life. There are three stages in it. First, the sudden disclosure of the Divine Splendour; the mysterious and daunting beauty of Holiness, on which even the seraphs dare not look. The veil is lifted, and the Reality which is always there is revealed. And at once the young man sees, by contrast, his own dreadful imperfection. ‘Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips!’ The vision of perfection, if it is genuine, always brings shame, penitence, and therefore purification. That is the second stage. What is the third? The faulty human creature, who yet possesses amazing power of saying Yes or No to the Eternal God, is asked for his services, and instantly responds, ‘Who will go for us?’ ‘Here am I! Send me!’ There the very essence of the spiritual life is gathered and presented in a point: first the vision of the Perfect, and the sense of imperfection and unworthiness over against the Perfect, and then because of the vision, and in spite of the imperfection, action in the interests of the Perfect – co-operation with God.

HEAVEN A DANCE: AN EVELYN UNDERHILL ANTHOLOGY COMPILED BY BRENDA AND STUART BLANCH

Scripture Reading

ISAIAH 6:1–8

‘“Here am I; send me!”’

Prayer

My dearest Lord,

be thou a bright flame before me

be thou my guiding star above me

be thou the smooth path beneath me

be thou a kindly shepherd behind me

today and evermore.

ST COLUMBA (521–597)