Shattering

"One of the keys to real religious experience is the shattering realization that no matter how hateful we are to ourselves, we are not hateful to God. This realization helps us to understand the difference between our love and His. Our love is a need, His is a gift. We need to see good in ourselves in order to love ourselves. He does not. He loves us not because we are good, but because He is... The free and confident access of a soul that stands face to face with God and understand His mercy and is not consumed with self-hatred because of sins which, it knows, have already been consumed by His mercy--this is the parrhesia  which is ours since the 'goodness and kindness of God our Savior appeared.'" -Thomas Merton

In this passage Merton talks about God's infinite love and mercy in a way that I have not heard before. Merton notes that we need to see some good in ourselves to be able to love ourselves, God does not. God loves us in spite of our sin and wretchedness. His mercy envelops our sin and consumes it. I am reminded of the lyrics of Wholly Yours, "But the harder I try, the more clearly can I feel the depth of our fall and the weight of it all." The sin we find ourselves in not only reminds us of how weak we are, but it allows us to intimately feel the love of God.

Jesus says in Luke 7:47, "the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." The depths of my fallen humanity have forced me to see my own hatefulness, but that seems to be where my reflection ends. It should also illuminate to me the immensity of the Divine Love. The depth of our fall should not simply point out how weak and sinful we are, because if that was it who would want to be a Christian? The weight of it all is not only found in how depraved we are, but in how immense God's love is. St. Paul understood this paradox of our hatefulness and His love. He wrote in his letter to the Romans, "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." Why else would the Church proclaim that the fall was the felix culpa, the happy fault, if it did not bring us ultimately into the depths of God's love?

Merton also talks about the soul that truly understands the mercy and depth of God's love and is not consumed with self-hatred can truly partake in the parrhesia, that is, free speech. In the original state, Adam talked to God without fear and, in some sense, almost as an equal. God wants us to partake in this freedom of speech with Him. Rob Bell said once, "God can handle what you're thinking. God can handle how you're feeling. God can handle what you're saying. Prayer, if it's anything, is truth. It's being honest with your Maker." So, here we stand, broken, in need of God's hand. Only the soul who really understands God's infinite mercy and how it consumes all of our guilt that can cast aside the temptation to let guilt come between us and our relationship with God. He wishes to be united to us, He wishes to help make us like Himself, but if we continue to wallow in our shameful existence then how can we ever come to love? This life is a battle between the "old self" and the "new self" that God wishes to transform us into, far too often the "old self" continues to impose its guilt on us. We have to own the fact that despite our hatefulness, we are not hateful to Him.