Meditation 33
The Pillars and the Spiritual Letters S to W
(S) The capitals. The capitals
were overlaid with silver, “their capitals overlaid with silver” (Ex
38. 19). The silver emphasizes still further the life power which is
revealed to the soul in faith here in the courtyard. The silver refers
to the life power of the Son of Man as the King of Life, “He was
marked out before the world was made, and was revealed at the final
point of time for your sake” (1 Pt 18. 19). The capitals are “the
diadem
with which his mother crowned him” (Sg 3, 11), the crown of life. The
capitals overlaid with silver refers to the crown of life and have been
inscribed by “the name of the city of God, the new Jerusalem” (Rv 3.
12). They carry the golden flower of the high priest in order to
“praises the grace of His glory” (Ep 1. 6). That is why the divine
predestination emphasizes so much the beauty of theses capitals in the
Tabernacle: to reflect the splendor of the sun in the desert. The
capitals are like sixty lighthouses giving seafarers guidance on the
high seas of salvation in order to led them into the harbor of peace:
the warriors of the new and spiritual Israel, the Church!
(T) The silver hooks. The message of the silver hooks is most profitable for the soul's growth in the live of grace. They remind us involuntarily on outstretched hands carrying the silver rods. It is as we see here the outstretched hands of Aaron and his priests when they waited empty handed after their share in the sacred meal after having washed their hands in the pure water of the bronze laver. It is this truth which is revealed by these beautiful silver hooks when we approach God in the right spirit of the peace offering and ask Him to refresh us, “I shall refresh my priests with rich food, and my people will gorge themselves on my lavish gifts” (Jer 31. 14). Under such circumstances all our temptations and trials will be a light burden, “I shall change their mourning into gladness, comfort them, give them joy after their troubles” (v. 13).
(U) The silver rods. The rods reveals this joy which is divine, this super essential beneficence encircling the courtyard as the silver rods actually did. As a matter of fact the Hebrew word rod as used in the Tabernacle means boundless love of the charity, the agape of the Trinitarian mystery. This is how God embraces all His creation in His Gilgal or Tetramorph, reveals that He is enamored in His creation. Souls who have become such silver rods in the Sanctuary of the Living God embrace whole of the creation by their intercession and compassion. And they are also fearless when they face the powers of darkness: “In love there is no room for fear, because fear implies punishment and whoever is afraid has not come to perfection in love” (1 Jn 4. 18)
(V) The stays. It is also this same lovable charity which keeps the pillars immovable on their sockets, as we can see by the two stays which made them unshakable on the sockets. Thus this abundant love is continuously revealed in the courtyard, reveals the boundless love of the Holy Trinity streaming to us from the divine Essence. It is this love which conceals the power of union and assimilation and gives the pillars participation in its own sacrificial will. That is why the pillars fulfill their role in such a sublime way: to carry the shining white curtains of the courtyard. This takes place when the divine and human love attain to harmony and resonance.
(W) The bronze pegs. The pegs were driven down into the desert sand and gave the pillars thus still more strength by fettering them to the sockets. They give us a most precious insight into the nature of the divine love of the charity. When the Vision of the Blessed is fully realized in the illumination of the amethyst – when our hearts become literally speaking burning furnaces of love – this takes place in our impeccable participation in the divine love which is a burning ocean of immeasurable love. We are the embers or sparks in this inscrutability of the fire of the Trinitarian love.
(Z) The holy city Zion. We can maintain that when the souls dwells in the courtyard and scrutinizes its meaning she is gradually lead from “illu-Zion” to reality, to the Zion of the heart from the virtual world of her imagination. Here in the courtyard, in the ice cold winds of the soul's sensuous disposition, God enkindles thus her knowledge by teaching her the spiritual alphabet in order to read His Book of Life. What He intends is to urge the will to proceed still further in the live of grace. This is indeed the meaning concealed in the Latin word intellectus. As a matter of fact the verb intellego is derived from the words inter (inner) and lego (reading). It means to distinguish or discriminate the truth within.
When the soul learns to read The The Book of Life she realizes what the holy fathers implied when they compared God's ordinance to a castle which He build faultless in the beginning of creation, but later one of its walls collapsed by the fall of the first man. The Father had thus sent His Son to earth to collect living stones (1 Pt 2. 5) to repair this wall. These living stones in this wall of redemption are souls who receive the glad tidings in love and are ready to enter into the inheritance of the children of light. It are these souls who are represented by these pillars of the courtyard in the live of grace which stand as a barricade around the holiness of God. Actually they are these 60 warriors of Israel (the place where God reveals His power) who were the prefiguration of the living body of Christ on earth,
What is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, breathing of myrrh and frankincense and every perfume? Here comes Solomon's litter. Around it are sixty champions, the flower of the warriors of Israel; all of them skilled swordsmen, expert in war. Each man has a sword at his side, against alarms by night (Sg 3. 6-8).
These skilled swordsmen of God and experts in war stand around the Blessed Virgin “breathing of myrrh and frankincense” in her Immaculate heart as the First Living Ark of the New Covenant or litter. As we become more fluent in this super essential reading in the Book of Life we realize how needful it really was to learn this alphabet of the live in grace, a fact which Abba Isaac emphasized formerly when he instructed John Cassian and his friend Germanus in the desert,
Wherefore in accordance with that system, which you admirably compared to teaching children (who can only take in the first lessons on the alphabet and recognize the shapes of the letters, and trace out their characters with a steady hand if they have, by means of some copies and shapes carefully impressed on wax, got accustomed to express their figures, by constantly looking at them and imitating them daily), we must give you also the form of this spiritual contemplation, on which you may always fix your gaze with the utmost steadiness, and both learn to consider it to your profit in unbroken continuance, and also manage by the practice of it and by meditation to climb to a still loftier insight. [1]
When the soul has learnt these fiery runes of the Spirit “by constantly looking at them” in the prayer of outer recollection and “imitating them daily” in her daily meditations and prayers she is able to “climb to still loftier insight” into the mysteries of our heavenly Father.
(T) The silver hooks. The message of the silver hooks is most profitable for the soul's growth in the live of grace. They remind us involuntarily on outstretched hands carrying the silver rods. It is as we see here the outstretched hands of Aaron and his priests when they waited empty handed after their share in the sacred meal after having washed their hands in the pure water of the bronze laver. It is this truth which is revealed by these beautiful silver hooks when we approach God in the right spirit of the peace offering and ask Him to refresh us, “I shall refresh my priests with rich food, and my people will gorge themselves on my lavish gifts” (Jer 31. 14). Under such circumstances all our temptations and trials will be a light burden, “I shall change their mourning into gladness, comfort them, give them joy after their troubles” (v. 13).
(U) The silver rods. The rods reveals this joy which is divine, this super essential beneficence encircling the courtyard as the silver rods actually did. As a matter of fact the Hebrew word rod as used in the Tabernacle means boundless love of the charity, the agape of the Trinitarian mystery. This is how God embraces all His creation in His Gilgal or Tetramorph, reveals that He is enamored in His creation. Souls who have become such silver rods in the Sanctuary of the Living God embrace whole of the creation by their intercession and compassion. And they are also fearless when they face the powers of darkness: “In love there is no room for fear, because fear implies punishment and whoever is afraid has not come to perfection in love” (1 Jn 4. 18)
(V) The stays. It is also this same lovable charity which keeps the pillars immovable on their sockets, as we can see by the two stays which made them unshakable on the sockets. Thus this abundant love is continuously revealed in the courtyard, reveals the boundless love of the Holy Trinity streaming to us from the divine Essence. It is this love which conceals the power of union and assimilation and gives the pillars participation in its own sacrificial will. That is why the pillars fulfill their role in such a sublime way: to carry the shining white curtains of the courtyard. This takes place when the divine and human love attain to harmony and resonance.
(W) The bronze pegs. The pegs were driven down into the desert sand and gave the pillars thus still more strength by fettering them to the sockets. They give us a most precious insight into the nature of the divine love of the charity. When the Vision of the Blessed is fully realized in the illumination of the amethyst – when our hearts become literally speaking burning furnaces of love – this takes place in our impeccable participation in the divine love which is a burning ocean of immeasurable love. We are the embers or sparks in this inscrutability of the fire of the Trinitarian love.
(Z) The holy city Zion. We can maintain that when the souls dwells in the courtyard and scrutinizes its meaning she is gradually lead from “illu-Zion” to reality, to the Zion of the heart from the virtual world of her imagination. Here in the courtyard, in the ice cold winds of the soul's sensuous disposition, God enkindles thus her knowledge by teaching her the spiritual alphabet in order to read His Book of Life. What He intends is to urge the will to proceed still further in the live of grace. This is indeed the meaning concealed in the Latin word intellectus. As a matter of fact the verb intellego is derived from the words inter (inner) and lego (reading). It means to distinguish or discriminate the truth within.
When the soul learns to read The The Book of Life she realizes what the holy fathers implied when they compared God's ordinance to a castle which He build faultless in the beginning of creation, but later one of its walls collapsed by the fall of the first man. The Father had thus sent His Son to earth to collect living stones (1 Pt 2. 5) to repair this wall. These living stones in this wall of redemption are souls who receive the glad tidings in love and are ready to enter into the inheritance of the children of light. It are these souls who are represented by these pillars of the courtyard in the live of grace which stand as a barricade around the holiness of God. Actually they are these 60 warriors of Israel (the place where God reveals His power) who were the prefiguration of the living body of Christ on earth,
What is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, breathing of myrrh and frankincense and every perfume? Here comes Solomon's litter. Around it are sixty champions, the flower of the warriors of Israel; all of them skilled swordsmen, expert in war. Each man has a sword at his side, against alarms by night (Sg 3. 6-8).
These skilled swordsmen of God and experts in war stand around the Blessed Virgin “breathing of myrrh and frankincense” in her Immaculate heart as the First Living Ark of the New Covenant or litter. As we become more fluent in this super essential reading in the Book of Life we realize how needful it really was to learn this alphabet of the live in grace, a fact which Abba Isaac emphasized formerly when he instructed John Cassian and his friend Germanus in the desert,
Wherefore in accordance with that system, which you admirably compared to teaching children (who can only take in the first lessons on the alphabet and recognize the shapes of the letters, and trace out their characters with a steady hand if they have, by means of some copies and shapes carefully impressed on wax, got accustomed to express their figures, by constantly looking at them and imitating them daily), we must give you also the form of this spiritual contemplation, on which you may always fix your gaze with the utmost steadiness, and both learn to consider it to your profit in unbroken continuance, and also manage by the practice of it and by meditation to climb to a still loftier insight. [1]
When the soul has learnt these fiery runes of the Spirit “by constantly looking at them” in the prayer of outer recollection and “imitating them daily” in her daily meditations and prayers she is able to “climb to still loftier insight” into the mysteries of our heavenly Father.
