The Great Weaver From Kashmir (30 page)

Father, are you there? Hear your child!

Is it true that in the beginning you created the world and made man in your image? And is it true that afterward man directed his will toward things that are of less worth than you? Is it true that man's will is inclined toward things that are at variance with your will? Is it true that sin exists, and that sin is a revolt against your will? Is it true? If the opposite is true, that man's will is in complete unity with your holy will, then tell me so, my God, because I cannot endure this uncertainty.

Only this, and I will start a new life. Is it true that you are displeased when a man turns his longing toward the created, but that you find it most pleasing when he bends all the energies of his being toward his Creator, the eternal reality behind the created world? Is it true that the man who pushes God away and dedicates his life to delusions is eternally lost; and that he who dedicates his spirit to his Creator and fetters his physical desires with asceticism celebrates eternal life? Is it true that he who lives according to nature is on the road to perdition, but that he who lives according to the demands of the spirit shall see your glory? Is it true? If it is true then I shall, from this moment on, live according to the demands of the spirit, for I long only to behold your glory.

Take uncertainty from me. Does this Church tell the truth? Is it true that there once lived a man named Jesus Christ? Is it true that he was the envoy of perfection, the Adam of the highest humanity, as your wise men say? Is it true that Jesus Christ is raised over all creation?

I have never asked such huge questions before; now I ask in childish earnestness; I know that you hear the expectation of a child in my voice when I ask. Is it true, my God: was it you? Was Jesus Christ, this son of sorrow, this homeless child among men, this outcast from everything, whom they spat on and scourged – was he you? Is it true that you have taken upon yourself man's tatters in order to conquer man; that you have clothed yourself in man's weakness in order to teach man to conquer the world? Or is the opposite true, that you have always hidden yourself in your Heaven and that it is not possible for man to know you, not even whether you exist? What is true, what is false?

Who was this Jesus Christ if he was something other than you? I do not understand Jesus Christ if he was something other than you. And if he was not you, then I beg you to teach me to understand Jesus Christ.

I have read the Gospels in one sitting; read them time and again without intermission; read them backward and forward and yet have not dared to trust, in any way, the one conclusion that I felt could be drawn from them: that Jesus Christ was you. For the longest time I have shunned placing any faith in such a glorious message. Imagine
what disappointment I would have felt if I had later realized that I had been mistaken.

I have tried to convince myself that Jesus Christ was a liar. I have read all of the Gospels under the presupposition that he was a false prophet. But how unfortunate is the liar who lets himself be crucified for his lies! When has that ever been done before? In spite of all of my prudent attempts to convince myself that it must be a lie that he and you were one, no sooner had I finished my reading of the Gospels when this conclusion cleared all the rest out of the way: yes, he and the Father are one. It is not possible to read the Gospels otherwise; one must come to this conclusion. The beginning of the New Testament and the end are precisely this: he and the Father are one. What a joyous message if it is true.

I have read all of the Gospels with the presupposition that he was insane; that he was a megalomaniac; that he was psychotic; that the idea of his own divinity was a schizophrenic obsession; that he was not The Way at all; that he was neither the Truth nor the Life. But I always found myself forced to ask, during times of trouble, how can an insane man have done all this? And on the other hand: how can it be justified that the New Testament, the book in which the wise men of the world descry the pinnacle of perfection, is all about a lunatic? In order to do this, all ideals built on sound reasoning would have to be turned inside out. In order to do this, new criteria would have to be formulated, and that deemed lowest which everyone believes to be highest, that most imperfect which everyone believes to be most perfect. Then the most perfect thing known to the soul of man could be considered madness and delusion, and the beast a paragon. Sound reasoning could never justify considering Jesus
Christ a lunatic. Quite the contrary: sound reasoning can comprehend the perfection of Jesus Christ only when it realizes that he and the Father are one, can worship his teachings only when it sees the perfection of God in Christ himself. Human wisdom cannot separate God and Christ.

And yet if I persuade myself that all of the humility and equanimity that he displayed to his revilers and tormenters was a type of arrogant madness, I would certainly be forced to halt at this final question: how could any man be resurrected from death, even if he did have delusions of grandeur? Because no matter how I consider the New Testament, it is not at all possible for me to ignore that astonishing event, which turns all of the science of the world into vain prattle.

I have read all of the Gospels under the presumption that they are works of fiction; that Jesus Christ never existed. But then I always arrive at this question: who wrote this work of fiction? My God, will you lead me to the person who has made up this story about Jesus Christ? And if many others have helped in doing so, will you lead me to them? I am sufficiently experienced to know that it is impossible to fictionalize about anything except for oneself. It is impossible to make poetry more beautiful than a man is himself. It is impossible to describe a man better than oneself, or, in fact, a man worse than oneself. Only someone who was as great as Jesus Christ himself could have written the story of Jesus Christ. If you tell me that I may not believe in Jesus Christ, then I will believe in whomever wrote the story of Jesus Christ. The one who wrote the story of Jesus Christ has revealed to mankind your perfection. And I believe in your perfection. After I had rattled off to myself all the
videtur ut non
⁹¹
about
the divinity of Jesus Christ and finally thought that I could celebrate my victory over this man from Galilee, I discovered that this song of praise echoed stronger in my soul than at any other time:

My skepticism could not defeat the man from Galilee.

My God, help me. He persecutes me. I cannot negotiate with this man from Galilee. I am like a cotton-grass wick in his hands.

I believe in Jesus Christ. I cannot help but believe in Jesus Christ. Everything is worthless to me except for Jesus Christ. I will die if I am not allowed to believe in Jesus Christ.

And I think that I can hear you calling to me to believe in him. Stop me if I am on the wrong path! Are you not telling me that it was for Jesus Christ that your saints were blessed? Are you not telling me that in his name mankind is forgiven its sins? Are you not telling me that no one comes to you except through Jesus Christ? And are you not commanding me to lift my cross to my shoulders and follow him?

“Si quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum, quam pati, fuisset, Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset,”
says the Master.
⁹³
“If there were anything better or more useful for man than suffering, Christ would have taught it to us by his words and examples.”

Finally I have come before your eyes to ask you to open to me the
way that leads to unity with you, the way that Christ has marked out, the way that all the saints and holy men have trodden since time immemorial,
regia via sanctæ crucis
.
⁹⁴
And I have come to ask you to place the cross on my shoulders. I pray to you and nothing but you and grant myself no refreshment except in you. You alone are my hope, my health, and my freedom. And the way to you is the way of the cross. I know that wherever I go and wherever I search I will find no road higher or more secure than the
regia via sanctæ crucis
. There is no other road to life, to life in you, than the king's road of the holy cross. The cross – the scandal and the foolishness – it has now become my only hope, because without it I would never be able to shun myself, and now I ask you for the grace to be able to bear it.

I pray for the grace to be able to die to myself so that I might be allowed to begin to live in you. You have led me out into the darkness, and have filled my soul with forebodings of my perdition, to reveal to me that there is nothing within the limits of existence that could possibly comfort me while I have not yet denied myself. You have led my soul into great darkness in order to make me lose all faith in my own power and to find you. You have allowed my pride to sink into the waywardness of waywardness so that I might find the footprints of Jesus Christ,
hanc regiam viam quæ est via crucis
,
⁹⁵
the bloody trail of the cross on the hard frozen ground. And now I know that you will lead my soul into great light. A man finds no solution to the riddles of his soul before he has thrown himself down to the ground and fallen onto his face before the cross. In the cross is good fortune, says the Master; in the cross life, in the cross protection against enemies. In the cross is the infusion of heavenly blessings; in the cross the most sublime bliss; the cross is the condensing lens of all true virtue;
our souls derive their strength from the cross; in the cross and nowhere else is perfection.
⁹⁶

O crux, ave, spes unica!

“
Factus sum omnibus humillimus et infimus, ut tuam superbiam mea humilitate vinceris
,” says the voice of the man from Galilee. He shouldered his cross for me and allowed himself to be crucified for me so that I might learn to shoulder my cross and die to myself upon the cross. If I die with him, I will live with him. And if I share in his suffering, I will also be granted a share of his glory.

Over the gate of the royal road stand the words that reveal the key to the forecourt:

Nothing to you is worthy of pursuit or admiration, and nothing to you of value but for God alone and that which belongs to God.

The comforts granted to the created are to you worthless chaff.

The soul that loves God despises all that is inferior to God.

God alone is eternal and unchangeable, fills all, is the comfort of the soul and the true joy of the heart.

The flowers here in the monastery garden smell best on days after rain. There stands the rosebush with three hundred and fifty roses. Behold the beds with the huge multicolored blossoms! Those in the middle are called Georgias, because they come from Georgia, a
land that lies on the other side of the Earth. Aren't they delightful, the paths between the young trees? The leaves tickle your cheeks. At the western end stands the fountain in a glade, with beautifully green, mown grass all around. At the eastern end is a little grove. And in the grove stands the Virgin Mary, who nurtured the Lord for us. The Virgin Mary is blessed among women, as it says in the angel's greeting:
“Ad Christum per Mariam.”
We love this image of Mary in the grove; it is well made; supple ivy covers the pedestal upon which it stands. Notice how the linen falls about her head and shoulders. The same comeliness shines also from the boy's mantle: the swathes are almost transparent; behold the Lamb of God! There is something wondrously human in this image of the child; his face just like any other infant at the breast; you see here not a trace of the elated air of divinity which so many portrait artists have taken to putting on his face. The child of Mary is like every other child, and so is Jesus Christ in his mature years: we think of him as we do every other man.
“Homo factus est,”
says the profession of faith, short and sweet. He himself was so conscious of his humanity that when he was called good he answered, “No one is good but God alone.” The merits of our Lord Jesus Christ are to us most richly comforting because he came to us as a man, lived as a man, died as a man. In his veins streamed blood, just as in your veins and mine. This is how God chose to teach mankind to overcome the world: he himself came to us as a man and overcame the world as a man. For the only way that we are able to shoulder our crosses bravely is because the man Jesus Christ carried his before us. Think not upon your sorrows, but entrust everything to the Lord, past and future; the Lord calms the wind and the sea. You have been led to a holy
place, but the Lord directed the journey; allow his mercy to trickle over your soul. Remember that man is nothing without the mercy of God, and look around you: around you reigns
Pax Benedictina,
the Benedictine peace. Yesterday it was windy and rainy. Last night it cleared up, and this morning is full of promises. God's world spreads itself out before your eyes beautifully, as in the first light of the sun. Imagine that you are a new man, that you were created last night and saw the sun for the first time when it appeared over the edge of the forest this morning. Greet this world in which we stand not as a child of Adam, but rather as a son of God, limbs on the body of Christ, the re-created man, who does not live according to nature, but rather is above nature. Reason no longer according to your own understanding, but rather be certain according to the revelations of God. Drink no longer from the salty well of philosophy, but rather strive for purity of heart. A pure heart sees through Heaven and Hell.

I told you last evening that God loves you. I tell you the same thing today. I will tell you the same thing tomorrow: God loves you. I will not stop saying this to you until you have come to the understanding that it is the most precious of all the things that have been said in the world, the kernel of all joyous tidings. God himself, the Almighty, the Creator: he loves you. He loves you so much that he cannot think of losing sight of you for a single moment. His eyes follow you wherever you go. His ears have heard the falling of every tear from your eyes. He has loved you ever since you were an infant. Yes, he loved you before you came into being, has loved you since the creation of the world, and created you to allow you to revel in his glory. And he has descended from his Heaven in order to make your path to his glory
more passable, has become the lowest and smallest of all. He let himself be nailed to the cross for you, precisely as if no other person existed on Earth except for you, so that you would not have to suffer the consequences of your apathy toward his love and your revolts against his will. It is he who protected your steps while you roamed throughout the world, friendless, wayward, and disturbed, watched over you like a mother at the foot of her suffering child's bed. And now he has led you here to us, his wretched, unworthy servants, so that we might serve you.