"Give ear, O Lord, to my words; understand my cry; hearken to the voice of my prayer, O my King and my God." (Psalm 5).
Let us picture to ourselves Moses walking alone up the slope of a mountain. He is going there because God has called him there. Entering into a cloud Moses remained forty days and forty nights. Me too God has invited to climb the mountain of prayer this morning; to enter into a cloud of unknowing, where, at least for this brief period, I can lay aside the multitudinous (many) worries and distractions and focus all the powers of my mind and heart on God, Who is looking, at this moment into the depths of my soul. On the mountain God gave detailed instructions to Moses about the building of the tabernacle. In my prayer God shows me Christ, His divine Son, and explains to me that He is a perfect model by which to shape and rule my conduct. "Look and make it according to the pattern that was shown thee in the mount."
Let us try to know, love and imitate Christ more closely.
All through His life Jesus enjoyed the Beatific Vision (He saw God face to face). As He walked on this earth with other men _ eating, drinking, sleeping and working just like them _ He always saw the unclouded beauty of the face of God. Whether He spoke or kept silence, whether He sought the retirement of Nazareth or the hillside or allowed the crowds to surround Him, He was never "distracted" from the serene (calm) contemplation of that divine countenance. Sometimes He sat and talked with his friends and could be at His ease, where He felt loved and could love; other times He was surrounded by His enemies who tried to trap Him in His speech, but at all times He beheld His Heavenly father.
The Son, He explained cannot do anything without the Father. He said to one of His disciples "Do you not know when you see Me you see the Father also?" Everything that Christ said and did was directed by His heavenly Father, Whom He constantly saw. Even as He hung upon the cross and cried out that He was "forsaken" by His God, He still beheld His Father and followed His commands. Nothing ever came between Him and the Father to obscure this vision.
On the day of my eternal salvation, I will see the Beatific Vision in all Its splendor. I have the firm confidence that "I shall see the divine essence by an intuitive vision and face to face the divine essence showing itself to me immediately, clearly and openly and this intuitive vision face to face, after it has once begun, with all the joy that comes of it, will continue without end or intermission"
Why should I envy Moses on Sinai or Christ's disciples on Thabor? For too long have I been satisfied just to look upon the things in the valley of this earth. Prayer is an invitation to climb the mountain and smell the air of the supernatural. On the mountain I will be able to look down upon the earth and see where everything belongs in the Supernatural order. I will see life as You see it Lord. Please show it to me.
Life begins to look very different when you give yourself to serious prayer. You become preoccupied with God, and all your other interests are seen as mere steppingstones to Him. "Live in this world," writes Saint John of the Cross, "as if God and your soul only were in it, that your heart may be a captive to no earthly thing." To the man of prayer the whole world becomes God's dwelling place. Just as a child will wander through the rooms and halls of him home and every thing he sees will remind him of his parents: pictures, trophies, statues, decorations, souvenirs from trips etc.; so the child of prayer wanders through the earth and everything reminds him of God. He recognizes the reflections of the power and the beauty and the wisdom of God. "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways!"
We live in an age where the majority deny even God's existence. Thousands of others, do not formally deny Him, but go on from day to day and year to year, in habitual forgetfulness of His existence and their duty to obey Him. God is defied; God is ignored; God is forgotten; God is denied; God is ridiculed; God is treated as being of no importance; men and rulers plan and govern without even mentioning God's name, let alone considering His commandments.
In a world such as this it is not easy to keep the proper perspective (the view from the top of the mountain _ God's view). That is why I need prayer. Lord that I may see!