By Gabriel Khaicy
Very often, I have found myself engaged in discussion, research, or some kind of thinking or enquiry which seems to lack a kind of groundedness.
As a seminarian, my state in life means I am called to study; it is my duty. But how does my study direct my heart to adore Christ my Lord, and not just my mind to know things about him?
This question is important for seminarians. But it is also important for the very many faithful Christians who, out of a desire to know and love Our Lord more deeply, take up study of various kinds to help them deepen their faith.
Many of us have a sense of what St Josemaria Escriva tells us: “If you are to serve God with your mind, to study is a grave obligation for you” (The Way, no. 336). We know it is essential to study.
Yet, St Josemaria also cautions: “It’s good for you to put such determination into your study, as long as you put the same determination into acquiring interior life” (The Way, no. 341).
What that means is that study ought to serve the interior life. It is meant to nourish the soul.
A great danger for many, though, is to get caught up in intellectualisation. We can get into a mode of study which produces nothing but thoughts in our heads. These may be good thoughts, but what meaningful connection do they have to our lives? More importantly, do they really connect us to God?
In many places, St Ephrem warns against using our merely human capacities to imagine, think, or theologise about God.
In Hymn 44 on Faith, he says: “Reprove thine own imagination… Be warned that thou shape not in thy intellect a guess of thine own mind, and the offspring of thine own imagining.”
We human beings are made in such a way that we can think, and imagine. These capacities are gifts from God, and so ought to be used. But St Ephrem warns us that these powers can easily run amok, and so must be “reproved,” lest we fashion for ourselves a “guess” of our minds’ making.
So how do we love God with our minds as we are commanded (Matthew 22:37), if our minds are dangerously prone to undisciplined imagination? The verse from St Ephrem continues, “Let the Offspring of the true One be shadowed forth in thy imagination.”
What he suggests is that we need to keep a humble, receptive disposition. We must be keenly aware of our limitedness. Rather than grasping at truth, even motivated by the good desire to know and love God, we must “let” him reveal himself to us in the way we are actually capable of receiving him.
Hence, Christ is “shadowed forth” in our imagination; not by us, but by his own doing, if we are well disposed. Even then, we do well to recognise that what we are able to receive, in our current earthly state, is still only a “shadow.”
This is an important concept for St Ephrem. In his 17th Hymn on Faith, he says:
“God, seeing that he was ever unsearchable, Put on a body which could be searched.”
Here, St Ephrem first affirms, as he so often does, that God is utterly transcendent, totally beyond our human reach. In this, he recalls Psalm 145:3, which proclaims,
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”
God, desiring our love, however, bridged the chasm between him and us, by “putting on a body” like the one he gave us so that we could know him more intimately.
When Christ came as man, “He did not shrink from the unclean… He did not hold back his footsteps from the sick… He extended his descent to the lowly” (Hymn on the Resurrection 1).
This is the reality of the Incarnation, which we celebrate at this time of the liturgical year. Christ descends to our level. Shouldn’t we, then, in our study, let him meet us at our level, without reaching for what is beyond us?
So, perhaps study finds its proper place as a preparation. Like wax which needs to be softened to receive the impression of a seal, study can prepare our minds for the thoughts and images God wishes to impress. Maybe then our study will nourish our souls, and so bear fruit in love.