"... no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him..." -- I Corinthians 2:9 (RSV)
In recent years, I've joked with friends that I've developed "Adult-Onset Attention Deficit Disorder," referring to my seeming inability as I get older to maintain focus the way I used to. :-) In light of my "AOADD", I don't know why I thought I'd be able to maintain focus on a single topic like Elijah-Elisha for several weeks! I've interrupted it once already, and I'm going to do it again. Yes, I'm planning to get back to it at some point, but right now I have other thoughts pushing to the front of my brain, so I'm going to try to get some of them down first.
This week at my parish we had an excellent guest speaker, Fr. Michael Keating, a professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. He opened a new series at our parish on the Catholic World View. By the time this post goes up, the talk should be up on our parish's audio Web site, ctkcc.libsyn.com. It would be well worth taking the time to listen to it.
One of the many things that Fr. Michael mentioned that really struck me was his observation that our society has lost a "sacramental vision" of the world, that is, that all of creation is a mingling of the visible and the invisible, what is seen and unseen. Just as a sacrament is, among other things, a visible sign of an invisible reality, so for the Catholic mind the whole universe is sacramental, everything that is visible reveals something deeper.
His remarks brought to mind an image that I first started thinking about more seriously several years ago when I read the excellent book Midwife for Souls by hospice nurse Kathy Kalina. As implied in the title, she compares the process of dying to the birth process.
This started me thinking about the pre-born child in her mother's womb. Does that baby have any idea that she is surrounded by an entire world beyond her imagination? Yes, she can hear her mother's heartbeat and probably some other sounds; she may even have experiences of her mother's or father's hand caressing her through the wall of the womb. But does she have any idea that there is light and space and people surrounding her, loving her, eagerly awaiting her arrival in the "other world" beyond the womb? Truly her eye has not seen, her ear has not heard and her heart cannot conceive of what God has prepared for her.
I think we are much like that child in the womb. We are surrounded by the spiritual world, by "a great cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1), full of beings--human, angelic, and divine--who love us beyond imagining. This world is not visible to our physical eyes, but it is close, very close, as close as a family is to their child/sibling in the womb. If we have a "sacramental vision," we can see the signs pointing to this great reality and let that reality transform our lives.
Dear Lord, open the eyes of our hearts and spirits to see the cloud of witnesses surrounding us. May the knowledge that we are surrounded by such a world of love transform our approach to this world and to those who share this world with us. Amen.
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