Creighton Daily Reflection

Present to the Presence - Schola Ministries

07/14/2011: Present to the Presence

We have been blessed this week to have Sister Kathleen Deignan, CND, as the presenter for our annual parish mission. Sister Kathleen is a teacher of theology at Iona College, a stellar Merton scholar, a psalmist and accomplished composer, and the newly elected president of the International Thomas Merton Society.

Sister Kathleen has focused the mission on our relationship with the Creator. Creation is the first revelation of the Godhead. She has taught us through lecture and song how to be present to the Presence which is God manifest in creation through the Cosmic Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are to be present to the Presence as Creation groans and struggles toward the Omega Point—completion in the Cosmic Christ. The Cosmic Christ is fully incarnate—present—in every element of creation. We are all coming forth from the stardust which flares forth from the Creator at every moment. The Cosmic Christ is also up ahead calling us to be what we are—people created in the very image and likeness of God. The Cosmic Christ is present in the depths of our souls propelling us toward that which we are meant to be. The Cosmic Christ is ahead of us and, in Merton’s words, calling us to become our true selves. Merton was fond of saying that Christ became human so that we might become divine. Here the new cosmology meets the new theology.

From the very beginning of the Bible we see stories, shaped in the folklore of their time, which speak of being present to the Presence. Today’s reading from Exodus is a perfect example. Moses is performing the routine probably somewhat humdrum duty of tending the sheep; however, Moses is a person who is open to the presence of the Presence. A mindless, non-grounded shepherd would have walked by the burning bush. Moses did not. Here again light, the pervasive cosmic force, is used as a symbol for divinity. Moses sees the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—his forebears—present in a burning bush on a mountain. In Moses day, God the Creator was always present on mountains—the epitome of creation’s magnificence.

Moses was practicing what Elise Garcia calls “ Creatio Divina century would be a mystic or not be at all. Mystics take time to place themselves in the present where God can manifest. Mystics simply show up. They show up open to the gift of the present moment as God comes to them disguised as their lives.