Status Updates From Contemplation and the Cross...

Aquinas notes that there is a new presence of God made available to spiritual creatures, both angels and human beings, in virtue of the communication of grace, so that we can know God not merely as the omnipresent creator but also in a new way through friendship with God in spiritual communion with the Holy Trinity that is unveiled to our mind and heart, in faith, hope, and love.

What is new in the mystery of grace is that the God who is already present in the inner core and heart of our being, hidden from us, now makes himself known, without doing any violence to our person, by liberating us from within so as to know him and love him, giving us to discover him personally in his transcendence and in the darkness of faith.

Becoming a follower of Christ and a contemplative means relinquishing the hollow goals of the immanent frame, that is to say, of a society that protects itself from transcendence. It means instead falling into the hands of the living God, with its risks and vulnerabilities of finding God, and becoming an unconditional servant of God.