MEDITATION OF THE DAY
Stretching Out Our Hands to the Divine
In contemplation, it is God who is perceived, through the medium, it is true, of our more or less pure finite being, just as when we touch an object, it is really the object which is perceived through the medium of a more or less sensitive hand.
God is perceived as Love because he attracts and unites, makes one suffer, or gives one joy, reveals himself to the soul as its end, its repose, its beatitude. He is perceived as someone who touches us and not as someone who is seen.
The soul touched by God leaps to the search for vision and union, but though its impulse of love sweeps it towards God, it does not see him whom it touches, and its experience is blind.
It experiences God’s love for it, and the love with which it responds is itself like the shadow of the divine love in it; and, in a sense, these two so different loves are only one love, as two spirits that cleave to each other are one spirit: But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (1 Cor 6:17).
Here are my pebbles drawn from the water; they seem awfully colorless to me. What will you make of them, my dear brother! Never mind. It was good to talk to you about God, and as a result you will have prayed still another time for your sister.
Raïssa Maritain
Raïssa Maritain († 1960) was born in Russia. She was a convert to Catholicism and the wife of philosopher Jacques Maritain. [From Raïssa’s Journal, presented by Jacques Maritain. © 1974, Magi Books, Inc., Albany, NY. All rights reserved.]
