Entering the Wilderness

As we gather for this retreat, let us agree right away on the spirit in which we would like to live these few days. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we want to do our best to enter into the mystery of Jesus, the mystery of the Lamb, in order to discover what Jesus Himself wants to say to us, what He wants to share with us: how He sees the Father; how He gives us the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit leads us to Jesus and Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit); how He sees Mary, the Church... and how He sees us, each of us. A retreat is something we make in the presence of Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we may discover what our Christian life is.

We aspire to this as long as we live here on earth. We seek to discover the meaning of our Christian life-and of our human life, which is assumed and transformed by our Christian life. And the latter makes sense only to the extent that we discover our relationship with Christ, and insofar as we accept the words of John in the Apocalypse-words to which we must constantly refer during these days-"follow the Lamb wherever He goes..."[1]

To try to understand what this means, we will, like "Tom Thumb," discover the signs that the Lamb leaves for us.... Yes, Jesus always goes before us and He asks us "to run after Him." Let us hope that during this retreat we can run faster than we normally do. Usually we lag behind.... But a retreat is just the time to "catch up with" the Lamb. It is a time to come closer to Him, to really follow Him, and to meet His gaze.... It is obvious that when we only follow Jesus from afar, we follow Him without really knowing why.... But if we are quite near to Him, if we follow the Lamb very closely, He turns around and looks at us [2].
Jesus' eyes resting on us...! This retreat is a time of searching for the Lamb whose gaze rests upon us, so that we may come to a deeper understanding of His love, of His relationship with us, a mysterious relationship of faith, hope, and love. These theological virtues-which usually run the risk of becoming somewhat abstract and distant-must become something living and concrete in us. Faith is a relationship of light with Jesus, a relationship that gives us the Light of Christ Himself. Hope binds us to Jesus by allowing us to rely on Him. Love is the very deep bond that unites our hearts with the Heart of Christ, a bond that we must discover more and more. The retreat is not intended for any other purpose.

Our relationship with Jesus is realized in many different ways. It is really something we must seek in faith-and thus in darkness. We will try to explain what the "darkness of faith" is and how faith is both a trial and a gift. How strange: both a trial and a gift! And yet it is. Faith is a gift of God and a trial; hope is a gift of God and a trial.... Only love is a pure gift without being a trial in itself; yet because of faith and hope, even love can occasionally be a trial. It is really hard to love without seeing, without possessing! Hence we need special moments in our Christian life when we set aside time to be with Jesus to regain our strength. Is not this the purpose of a retreat...?

That is why we keep silent during a retreat, since it is silence that stops our habitual chatter. We would be really amazed if some evening we were to count the number of useless words that we have spoken during that day, and the number of words that we have heard from others that did not mean much either-since useless words are spoken by others as well.... Thus we need silence, to allow us a bit of separation.

This is not a private retreat, with each of us in our own cabin, our own little little hermitage, surrounded by a great wilderness... That would be wonderful, but some would not be able to stand it. At the end of the first day they would say, "Quick, hurry up, let us get out of here!" And they would leave because spending an entire day in the desert is not an easy thing. If you ever have the chance to experience the desert, I would recommend that you take the opportunity, even if it is only for a few days. It does not have to be a desert like the Sahara, but a place of total silence. This is likely to be difficult, for we are sometimes afraid of silence, accustomed as we are to hearing constant chatter around us.

We certainly do not seek silence for the sake of silence. That would not make any sense at all. We seek silence only to set ourselves at a distance, to withdraw, to hide ourselves in an "interior cell" which silence hollows out in us. When we do this, others will bother us much less, and they may be less disturbed as well. Being next to someone who is silent leads us to silence. And then this silence does not bother us at all, especially if we know that it is expected of everyone. Of course, if you do not know this beforehand, you might find it rather uncomfortable to be in the presence of someone who is silent. You might even ask yourself, "Is he mad at me? He does not say a word. What is the matter with him..."? and you might not know how to react.... But we know that everyone is asked to be silent on retreat, so everyone can be at ease.

We need to understand that silence is absolutely essential for a retreat. A retreat always implies a certain separation, a distancing of oneself, an interior desert where we go to adore God. To try to understand this, let us go back to the beautiful passage in the Old Testament which shows us the calling of Moses [3]. God asks Moses to go to His people and lead them on a three days' journey into the desert, where the people of Israel can worship and rediscover the sense of their vocation. The Israelites in those days were oppressed under the yoke of Pharaoh and were subjected to forced labor on the pyramids, enormous construction projects in today's terms we might think of the building of highways or something similar.... Yes, we are all, to some extent, under the yoke of Pharaoh, an anonymous Pharaoh. We are all so busy with work, with programs, with everything we have to do... and after a while we do not have a moment left for prayer.

I remember a remark made by someone who had travelled to India. When he returned, I asked him what had impressed him most. He said to me quite simply, "In Europe (or in America, it would be the same thing) when someone is told that he must pray, the following reply is typical, 'Oh no! I do not have time, I have too much work....' Over there I heard the marvelous observation, 'I do not have any more time to work, as I pray constantly.'" This could, of course, be carried too far, but it is clear what he meant to say. It is certainly true that all of us are very busy with our work. The predominant vice of our time is not laziness. This may occur, but it is not predominant. No, I think neglecting prayer is, much more than anything else, the typical vice of our time. We forget to pray.

Once we become accustomed to it, work is extremely pleasant because through our work we can grow, become more intelligent, and learn so many things. Work is wonderful! Especially intellectual work-even if it is difficult at times. What is really extraordinary with intellectual work is that the more you work, the more intelligent you become, and the more you like to work-so it is a constant progression. But there is also the danger of letting ourselves be carried away by our work, and of thinking that we have discovered the meaning of our Christian life in it. No. Our Christian life requires work, this is true, and it is important to consider its significance in a Christian vision. But our Christian life requires much more than work: it requires that we meet God. The Christian life is a relationship with God. Now, when we work we are not relating to God, but to realities inferior to us, such as matter, wood, earth... or books, and we transform these realities. We work with them to realize a work of art. Work, then, concerns our relationship to the world, to the universe. That is why we cannot find our finality, the meaning of our life, in work. We can only find this if we discover God. But how do we discover God?

The people of Israel had to begin with a three days' journey into the desert. We will go a bit faster, since we are Christians (and no longer people of the Old Testament) and the characteristic of a Christian is haste in love. That is why we must, immediately-beginning tomorrow-discover the meaning of adoration... a three days' journey into the desert to worship. The purpose of this retreat is for us to discover this first meeting with God, which is adoration. This is something we forget all too frequently. If each of you were asked to take a piece of paper and jot down what adoration is and whether this is something you know by experience, there would probably be some astonishing responses. What is adoration of God? Is it something we really know by experience, or can we only give an answer we have learned by rote?

To adore God is to place ourselves in His presence. Basically, adoration is a gesture of politeness towards God. We acknowledge that God our Creator is here, present, that He loves us, that He is creating our soul now, at this very moment; and we surrender ourselves into His hands, we want to place ourselves in His presence. We cannot enter God's presence without adoring. When we adore we return to the source.

Péguy [4] says that philosophy consists in returning to the source. We no longer know what philosophy really is. Well, philosophy is something very great, as it consists in rediscovering what is deepest in man with regard to his human nature. During this retreat, then, there will be occasional allusions to philosophy to help us become more intelligent, to love more. And philosophy will serve our faith in this way: it will make us more intelligent for God and for our neighbor [5]. Regarding your neighbor, this will be relatively easy during the retreat: keep silent. And being intelligent for God consists above all in making an effort to adore, to pray.

Indeed, a retreat must teach us to pray; it must teach us to use our intelligence for God, for Christ. And I think what Péguy says concerning philosophy can be applied to a retreat. He says, "Most people float along with the current. Even a corpse floats with the current...." It is quite clear that you do not even need to be alive, as natural buoyancy is sufficient. Floating with the current.... It is the spirituality of "going with the flow"! When you ask someone why he does such and such a thing and he answers, "Everyone does it," that is the spirituality of "floating"! You just go with the flow, follow the crowd. It does not matter, everyone does it....

We must "go back to the source," and going back to the source is difficult. Of course, we must not do this just for the fun of going against the current, of being reactionary. No, the purpose must be to go to the source. Of course, there are people who would rather be reactionary than go to the source, but that is something different. That is not a particular "spirituality"; it is simply a difficult temperament that is always reactionary just for the pleasure of being reactionary. That is not what we seek. We want to return to the source. However, in the words of Péguy, "not many people go back to the source." To return to the source, we sometimes have to accept being alone.

We must have great strength in our Christian life in order to go back to the source and not to flow with the current as "everyone else does." Now, we return to the source in and through adoration. We can go back to the source only through adoration. Adoration requires an effort on our part. We do not adore in the way that we breathe or that we smell a flower, saying, "This smells good"! No, we do not adore God like that. There are people who say, "Prayer is simply being ourselves." Wait a moment, that depends! What does that mean, "being ourselves"? We can "be ourselves" in many ways: when we relax, when we look in the mirror, when we listen to others... and we can be ourselves in our inmost being.

Returning to the source requires an act of the will. I believe that it is even the most fundamental act of the will; so much so that if we are lacking in willpower, it is because we do not worship any more. That may surprise you, but it is a profound truth. Anyone who no longer worships is off course, and thus, by a lack of will, will inevitably let himself be carried away by the current. Whoever wants to return to the source must will to do so. We must will an act of adoration. That is why we must try, during this retreat, to make acts of adoration. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to teach us, as it is He who teaches us adoration. The retreat master points you in the right direction, but when we do it ourselves, it is the Holy Spirit who will be there to teach us to worship, to teach us this elementary act. Adoration is the starting point, the foundation, of our Christian life.

Let us recall the words of our Lord, "If a man wants to build a house (and all of us are building a house, for we are the Temple of God [6]) he does not build it on quicksand on which it cannot stand. But he discovers and builds on a rock" [7]. Adoration is discovering the rock, discovering that profound contact with God, that intimate point whereby and wherein we depend upon Him. Adoration is discovering the presence of the Creator in the very depth of our being. According to the powerful expression of Saint Augustine, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves [8]. And this is true, because God takes hold of us from within; there is no distance between God and us. Thus, it is a question of discovering this presence, of discovering this Source... the "wellspring" [9], for God is the primary source from which all light and all love spring forth, and every being originates.

Discovering the Source...! We can only do this in the loving attitude of adoration. An act of adoration is really an act of love, but of a very particular love; it is a radical love that dwells in us and enables us to place ourselves in the hands of God. We know that we come from God and we return to Him. We place ourselves in the presence of God (that is why I said that an act of adoration is really a gesture of politeness towards God). We acknowledge that God is present; and since God is present, we assume the normal attitude of a creature who wants to acknowledge this marvelous presence of his Creator. God is present in the depths of our heart; He is present in the depths of our spirit. And we acknowledge this fact.

We worship together with Jesus, together with Mary- always. We cannot worship without Christ. "Apart from Me you can do nothing" [10]. And the first thing that Jesus teaches us is adoration. This is what He came to teach. Thus whenever we worship, we worship with Him. And Mary is always present....

It is very important to understand that only with Jesus can we really worship, for it is a question of worshipping "in spirit and truth" [11] of worshipping in love. We love to be close to God, because we know that He loves us, and we want to discover this First Love who loves us in a very special way. And we respond to this unique love by adoration, by this very particular, very personal, gesture. We all worship in our own way and we love in our own way; this is what makes us truly original. When we only seek external originality, this means we have not understood that true originality is interior. Once we have understood this, the exterior does not concern us; it is secondary! What is important is this profound originality in our manner of returning to the Source, of rediscovering God's presence, of adoring Him. Nobody worships God in exactly the same way as his neighbor. People often say that no two leaves are exactly alike-and this is true. No two living beings are the same. Well, our manner of living, of breathing deeply as human beings, as spirit bound to matter is adoration. Is not adoration the most profoundly natural act of the human person? The human person is fully human only when he worships God. If he no longer worships, this proves that he has forgotten what characterizes him-and this is terrible! He will then quickly become lost in anonymity. Why are so many people lost in the crowd? Why are there so many people who let themselves be deceived by the latest trends in political, sociological, and psychological programs? Because they have forgotten the deepest meaning of their being and their human life, something that can be discovered only in and through adoration.

Fundamentally, adoration is the human being's most personal act. It is the first priority in education. The Holy Spirit cannot educate us if we do not worship. When someone claims to be moved by the Holy Spirit, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, yet responds to the question, "Are you drawn to adoration"? with "I do not know what that is," you can be sure it this is not from the Holy Spirit. It is his imagination, not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can work in us only if we worship. Thus it is very important to discover the act of adoration-and this is the purpose of this retreat.

Notes

1. Rev. 14:4.
2. Cf. Jn. 1:38.
3. Ex. 3.
4. Charles Péguy (1873-1914), French poet.
5. Concerning the relation between faith and intelligence, see Appendix, question 1.
6. Cf. 1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21-22.
7. Cf. Mt. 7:24-27, Lk. 6:47-49.
8. See Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, VI, 11: "While following the flesh, it is You whom I sought, but You Yourself were closer to me than my inmost self and higher than the high-point of myself (interior intimo meo et superior summo meo)." See below, XIII, note 10.
9. Cf. Jn. 4:14.
10. Jn. 15:5.
11. Jn. 4:23.