ADVENT WITH EVELYN UNDERHILL: The Vision Of Love

From The School of Charity

When we look out towards this Love that moves the stars and stirs in the child’s heart, and claims our total allegiance and remember that this alone is Reality and we are only real so far as we conform to its demands, we see our human situation from a fresh angle; and perceive that it is both more humble and dependent, and more splendid, than we had dreamed.  We are surrounded and penetrated by great spiritual forces, of which we hardly know anything.  Yet the outward events of our life cannot be understood, except in their relation to that unseen and intensely living world, the Infinite Charity which penetrates and supports us, the God whom we resist and yet for whom we thirst; who is ever at work, transforming the self-centered desire of the natural creature into the wide-spreading, outpouring love of the citizen of Heaven.

If the Reality of God were small enough to be grasped, it would not be great enough to be adored; and so our holiest privilege would go, I count not myself to have grasped; but as one that has been grasped, I press on, says Saint Paul.  But if all real knowledge here is a humbly delighted knowledge of our own ignorance – if, as the dying artist said, The word we shall use most when we get to Heaven will be “Oh!” – still we can realize something of what it means, to consider our world from this point-of-view.  It means that everything we are given to deal with – including ourselves and our psychological material, however intractable – is the result of the creative action of a personal Love, who despises nothing that he has made.  We, then, cannot take the risk of despising anything; and any temptation to do so must be attributed to our ignorance, stupidity, or self-love, and recognized as something which distorts our vision of Reality.

Save