Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who
do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but
others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who
do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living
God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and
blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will
be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he
sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. -Matthew 16:13-
20
Throughout the span of our lives, you and I might traverse the breadth of the world looking for
traces of the Divine. All this activity, effort, and time is necessary somehow, even though you
know how futile the quest is right from the outset. But the core of every story, myth, and fairy
tale is about this: the journey that takes you home.
One day, in the most mundane way, the question comes suddenly from a hidden and unexplored
depth of soul.
Who do you say that I am?
You! I know you! You are the Christ! It’s been You all along.
When this moment of consciousness comes, this utterly surprising breakthrough, you are given
the keys to the kingdom.
“You must descend from
your head into your heart.
At present your thoughts of God
are in your head. And God Himself is,
as it were, outside you, and
so your prayer and other spiritual
exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still
in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but
will always be whirling about, like snow
in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in summer.”
-St. Theopan the Recluse 1815-1894
quoted from For Lovers of God Everywhere, Roger Housden
“The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the
wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate
which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through
all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said ‘Here art thou!’
The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world
with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’”
-Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941
Gitanjali
“O Lord my God,
teach my heart where and how to seek you,
where and how to find you.
Lord, if you are not here but absent,
where shall I seek you?
But you are everywhere, so you must be here,
why then do I not seek you?…
Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height,
for my understanding is in no way equal to that,
but I do desire to understand a little of your truth
which my heart already believes and loves.
I do not seek to understand so that I may believe,
but I believe so that I may understand;
and what is more,
I believe that unless I do believe I shall not understand.”
-St. Anselm of Canterbury c.1033-1109
Proslogion
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, Yours are
the eyes through which to look out Christ’s compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with
which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless…”
-attributed to St. Teresa of Avila 1515-1582
“He alone can make himself known as he really is. But we go on searching in philosophy and
science, preferring, it seems, a poor copy to the original that God himself paints in the depths of
our souls.”-Brother Lawrence c.1614-1691
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