“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.”
—Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Doubleday, 1966), pp. 140-142.
Merton’s mystical experience captures what spiritual friends seek to accomplish, seeing the light of Christ in each other. If only we could see each other as God does. I am reminded of the visit of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to her even more pregnant relative, Elizabeth, in Luke 1:39-56. As Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist, hears Mary’s greeting to her, the baby in her womb leaps for joy. Elizabeth is then filled with the Holy Spirit and greets Mary with the words: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Mary then breaks into the song of praise and thanksgiving that we call The Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” How wonderful, when we meet our neighbor, that the creative part within us, the Christ within us, leaps for joy to perceive the Christ within our neighbor. What does this story tell us occurs in our lives and the lives of our neighbor when this happens? We are filled with the Holy Spirit, and our neighbor is empowered to say or sing or live out The Magnificat.
Some of us are like Mary, just beginning to bear children. Many of us are like Elizabeth, beyond childbearing age. Some of us have never borne children; but this story of these two saints, along with Merton’s story, still speaks to all of us. God is speaking to the birthing, the creative part of us that empowers us to see the Christ in ourselves and the Christ in our neighbor.1
1 Seibert, The Living Church, May 25, 2003.
Joanna . joannaseibert.com
