Great Is the Lord Who Delights in the Peace of His Servant

Despite additional physical suffering, the maidservant of the Handmaid of the Lord, the hermit here at Agnus Dei, experiences the Lord's peace. Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord's peace! Great is the Lord Who delights in the peace of His servant!

This from Psalm 35, in Office of Readings. And, for the young priest assignee, and for the hermit as well, comes this quote from St. Augustine which helps describe the indescribable mysterium tremendum for which the soul's heart yearns:

"Certainly we do not know something if we cannot think of it as it really is; whatever comes to mind we reject, repudiate, find fault with; we know that this is not what we are seeking, eve if we do not yet know what kind of thing it really is....

"Scripture says: He pleads for the saints because he moves the saints to plead, just as it says: The Lord your God tests you, to know if you love him, in this sense, that he does it to enable you to know. So the Spirit moves the saints to plead with sighs too deep for words by inspiring in them a desire for the great and as yet unkonwn reality that we look forward to with patience. How can words express what we desire when it remians unknown? If we were entirely ignorant of it we would not desire it; again, we would not desire it or seek it with sighs, if we were able to see it." (St. Augustine, in a letter to Proba)

The hermit commented to the Spiritual Da the other day that it is when a soul loses the reality of the mysterium tremendum that the soul turns out into the world. This is the case with the young priest who experiences sadness, loneliness and desires now intimacy with a woman.

Destiny is born forth from the mysterium tremendum, at the moment of conception when God implants the soul into temporal substance. To diverge from one's destiny brings confusion and loss of reality. What seems real, such as carnal love or even beautiful human intimacy, is untrue for a soul destined for union with God alone. For one destined otherwise, for married love, the soul would be in confusion if divergent from this God-will destiny.

Knowing one's destiny is crucial, no matter how long it takes to ascertain. All souls' destinies ought lead to Heaven; but the path on earth is unique to each soul, as each soul is created uniquely by God and for God.

When the sense of the numinous is suppressed in the Church, in souls, and discouraged in clerics and laity from fear that matters will get out of hand, the reality of the mysterium tremendum faces annihilation, suffocation. Temptation comes to fill the void with the temporal, good as some of the temporal may be.

But temporal is only temporal and only ever will be temporal.

Far better to deal with too much exuberance, with a few false mystics occasionally sparking from the fire of mysterium tremendum than to keep smoldering wicks ever smoldering, bruised reeds ever bruised.

Is it a lack of faith when those who lead souls fear the fire? Do they fear that fervor will burn out of control? Do they not have faith that God is in control of souls, of fires in souls, and that Jesus came to earth to set it on fire--and oh, how he wished it were burning already?

One's destiny is found amidst the burning flames. One must cast out into the deep, must throw oneself into the flickering flames of the numinous and burn within the mysterium tremendum of God. Only then will the soul meld with the One.

The soul is subsumed in the Divine Will, anihilated of self and all temporal sledge. The soul ignites with the Fire of Holy Trinity, burns and shines now and forever. Destiny exists in this eternal flame of union with God.

To remain outside the flame, or to simply smolder--to disembark from one's God-willed destiny, whatever that is for the individual soul--is to deny the purity of God's unseen, indescript, tremendous mystery.