Expectation

Olivier Clément writes In the battle of ascesis and the offering of creatures to God…our will must cooperate with divine grace. But the ultimate knowledge…takes hold of us by grace alone. We prepare for it by a stripping away of our being until we become nothing but expectation.

Easter is a time of expectation. We hope because we believe. It is an expectation toward re-creation by the spirit. God draws, God enlightens, God transforms. It has to be God. Otherwise, our efforts are aimed at purely human transformation, which does not lead us toward Light but toward a greater immersion into ourselves.

And we do not need to understand or know, because God is “irreducible.” And yet we continue toward that unknowing, because it holds the pearl of great price. Again, Clément: The unknowing is not simply negative theology: it is a soaring of the personality towards that personal God who was led by love to assume the condition of a slave and to die on the cross.