God, we are told, was accustomed to walk with Adam and Eve in paradise in the afternoon air. The language is suggestive of the closeness of the friendship existing between God and our First Parents. This presence of God with them might be compared with what He has already shown me in my prayer. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." God is in His creation, and in me and with me, by His presence seeing me, by His power ordering my life towards its appointed end, by His essence sustaining me in being.
All this is the sheer truth, and frequent prayerful reflection on it cannot but deepen my spiritual life. But there is still another mode by which God is everywhere, or at least in every soul possessed of sanctifying grace. The Three divine Persons are not only "in" the midst of the creation round about me; they are not only "in" myself by their essence, sustaining me as they sustain in essence a tree or a flower. God is present further, in my soul, supernaturally by sanctifying grace.
This special indwelling of God within me constitutes between God and myself a friendship and a bond of union that is a foretaste of the love of Him I shall have in heaven. If I save my soul, I shall merely continue to abide in this union begun here by grace, and perfected when I attain to glory in heaven.
Our Lord has had much to say about this marvelous truth _ that grace makes me His living tabernacle _ for this is, in fact, the apex of the spiritual life here and hereafter. It is God's plan that the soul should more and more increase in an experimental knowledge of this divine indwelling. Such a knowledge of God transcends what is learned of Him in books as much as the joy of meeting a friend surpasses that of merely receiving a letter from him _ as much, or, rather, immeasurably more.
That is why the saints, who know from their own personal experience what a marvelous exuberance and what a new significance to life is to be found in this knowledge and friendship, are never tired of urging us to take God's word for it, to trust Him, and sacrifice all to reach Him. Jacob, on waking up out of his sleep, exclaimed: "Indeed the Lord is in this place and I knew it not." The saints too have wakened up; they have touched reality; they see that anything less than God and this friendship is only base imitation.
Most people spend their time looking out, never seeing the treasure of incomparable splendor which they have within; and, because not seeing it, not realizing it; and, because not realizing it, missing the very kernel and core that lies at the heart of all spiritual striving.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, all three living at this moment within my soul by grace. O adorable Trinity, let me, with utmost reverence, open out wide the doors of this inner tabernacle and look inside, and feed my eyes and my heart and my mind on this reality of Your presence, not merely by my side, as with Adam in paradise, but within me, making me Your dwellingplace, setting up heaven in the poor house, of my soul.