Closeness

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all – and more amusing.” (C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”).

Christ Teaching at Capernaum (Maurycy Gottlieb)

Imagine a world where I am close to God.  God is – after all – perfect LOVE.  And His perfect love is directed at me.  My weak and miserable and sinful soul is the object of the love of the GREATEST BEING in existence.  God Himself has turned His attention to me.

Now, remember that this is not something for me to imagine.  After all, I am actually weak and miserable and even despite this God is not far away from me.  Rather, He is inside my very heart.  He lives inside my soul.  God the Son suffered and died for love of me so that God the Holy Spirit could be even closer to me that God the Son ever could be.  God made room for me by removing Himself physically from the world and replacing His physical presence with the Spiritual Prescence of His Perfect Love…

This Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity would take a lifetime for me to understand…

And yet, when Christ explained things to people He measured their closeness to God by their ability and willingness to understand the Message of God…

 “And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’  And the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that he is one, and there is no other but he; and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to ask him any question.” (Mark 12:28-34).

Here, Christ praised the scribe for being close to God simply because the scribe listened to Him and understood the message…

The Christian writer and philosopher, C.S. Lewis, wrote the satirical and philosophical writing, “The Screwtape Letters”.  In this, the fictional letters written between the senior demon and the junior demon discuss how to gain the soul of a Christian.  In it they discuss certain strategies and affects.  One of the things that they discuss is that in order to bring a soul to hell, the soul should be convinced to moderate their religion and to adopt “moderation in all things” to convince the soul that “religion is all very well up to a point”.  The senior and advising demon concludes, “A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all – and more amusing.”

And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about my Beloved.  For it seems to me that there is a closeness missing in my relationship with God – and it has nothing to do with Him…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.