Читать книгу Listen My Son - Dwight Longenecker - Страница 14

Let us then at last arouse ourselves, even as Scripture incites us in the words, ‘Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep.’ Let us, then, open our eyes to the divine light, and hear with our ears the divine voice as it cries out to us daily. ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts,’ and again, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches.’ And what does the Spirit say? ‘Come, my sons, listen to me; I shall teach you the fear of the Lord.’ ‘Run while you have the light of life lest the darkness of death overwhelm you.’

Benedict calls us from spiritual inertia to spiritual initiative; from complacency to action. But there is more here than the summons to a life of faithful good works. Benedict's call to holiness is an alarm – a wake-up call. Like St Paul, Benedict is calling us to rise out of sleep (Rom. 13.11).

All the spiritual traditions teach that the unenlightened state is like being asleep. It has never been more true than in contemporary Western society. Sometimes it seems that the whole modern world is conspiring to weave a magical spell over us. Television, advertising, and all the tools of popular culture continually bombard us with seductive and hypnotic false images. If we are not careful, this false culture can dull our senses and lull us into a kind of trance, and we begin to exist in a nether world of attractive lies and half-truths.

Benedict calls us to awake out of this dozy world and face reality. Beginning the spiritual journey means we must wake up and see ourselves and our world for the first time. We must listen intently to the divine voice which cries out daily (Ps. 95.8). This profound openness to God's voice and God's way of seeing requires a radical transformation in our whole viewpoint. It is like seeing in colour when once we saw in black and white.

To live in this wakeful state is the work of a lifetime, and for the first time Benedict says we must ‘run’ in this path. Run, while you have the light, he says, lest the darkness of death overtake you (John 12.35). Running is an apt metaphor for the spiritual life because running is a discipline which is both exhausting and exhilarating. To run in Benedict's way is to practise the difficult art of contemplation – the art of being spiritually awake and alert.

This sounds the stuff of mystical retreats in caves, but the alert state of mind is most simply cultivated through daily prayer and thankfulness (Col. 4.2). A moment of genuine gratitude to God is a moment of contemplation because in that moment, as in contemplation, we look beyond ourselves in love. As Julian of Norwich writes, ‘Thanksgiving is the deep inward certainty which moves us with reverent and loving fear to turn with all our strength to the work which God stirs us, giving thanks and praise from the depth of our hearts.’

So as we nurture a thankful spirit in ourselves and in our homes, we lay the foundations for the contemplative life. Therefore, the child's first prayer ought to be the simple prayer of thanks. And as we grow to thank God for the small things, it is not long before our awareness grows and we are able to contemplate his mighty hand in all his works.