Meditation 63
The Golden Altar of Incense

The seventh step of the ladder gives it an ardent boldness. At this stage love neither profits by the judgment to wait nor makes use of the counsel to retreat, neither can it be curbed through same. For the favor God now gives it imparts an ardent daring. Hence the Apostle says: Charity believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things [1 Cor 13.7]. Moses spoke from this step when he besought God to forgive the people or else strike his name out of the Book of Life [Ex 32.32]. These souls obtain from God what, with pleasure, they ask of him. David accordingly declares: Delight in God, and he will grant you the petition of your heart [Ps 37.4]. [1]

Here in front of the golden altar in the Holy of the Tabernacle of our heart we ask by the help of the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph's, the Community of the Church, St. Michael the Archangel (our favored saint) and the Celestial Choir of the Thrones, that the Holy Spirit infuses into our hearts the virtue of the silence of the Cross in order to be able to  intercede on behalf of the Church in our growing participation in Christ like humility on our walk along the Sacred Way in the grace of our Royal Image of Glory. Amen. 

The seventh “memorial stone” which the soul picks out of the river of death to make a garland or a Gilgal (circle) around the Tabernacle of her heart is the chrysophrasus which belongs to the southern quarter of the Tetramorph. The chrysophrasus which refers to the seventh step in this Ladder of Love gives a golden radiance with a mixture of green and blue implying participation in the Holy Humanity and the Divine Nature  of Christ. That is exactly what the Greek word means: a golden glow of maturity. In the live of grace the chrysophrasus refers thus to the radiant glory of our Lord and immeasurable mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus consuming our sinful hearts in the blazing fire of His bounteous love.
  
It is not necessary to give a detailed description of the golden altar as we have already seen its horns, ledge, shafts and rings when we learnt to recognize the first five letters of the spiritual alphabet at the altar of burnt offerings (Med. 29) and this lesson was repeated in front of the golden table of loaves  (Med. 51). At first glance it seems strange that God’s intentional plan of salvation demanded that two altars were placed in His Sanctuary of everlasting life. But the importance of the golden altar was such that it was placed in front of the curtain into the Holy of holies in order to emphasize the truth, that only through its efficient grace the soul is able to enter into the life of glory in the fullness of the twelve fruits of the Spirit. The altar of burnt offerings and the golden altar are thus the antipodes or antithetical  poles of the Christification and actually revealing the same truth as the stem of the lamp stand resting on its stand – the token of the All Holy Trinity (see Med. 60) – this fluctuation between the immanence and transcendence of the divine presence in the human heart discussed above (Med. 45). This is the continuous movement in the prayer of the heart from the most sublime exaltation to the depths humility

It was Gregory bishop of Nyssa who shed a new light on the movement of the prayer of the heart. He defined this movement both as a standstill and movement simultaneously. This he did in his commentary on one of the verses of Exodus, “You will stand on the rock” (Ex 33. 22). In this context he wrote,
Here we are facing a great paradox: the movement and the rest is one and the same thing. It is obvious that he who walks is not standing still and the one standing still is not moving on. But here he [Moses] walks indeed while he is standing still. This means that a man strains still further forward on the Way of perfection, exactly because he is standing steadfastly without  moving in the goodness. A man is unable to fly to the heights of the virtues if he wafers and does not stand steadfastly in the virtues, but is driven hither and thither, as the apostle says (Ep 4. 14), tossed one way or another in his unsteadiness and making erroneous ideas of reality. Such men can be compared to those trying to climb a sand hill. It come to little although they use all their effort, all their endeavor comes to nothing. They slide always downwards with the sand in spite of their effort and make no proceeding. When someone draws his feet from the mud of the mire and makes his footsteps firm on the rock, as the psalmist says (Ps 40. 2) – and the rock is Christ who is Himself the perfection – the firm One standing steadfastly in the goodness. And thus he reaches his goal in his running race according to the words of St. Paul. His perseverance becomes his wings in his flight to heaven. His heart is endowed with wings because of his steadfastness in charity. [2]

What Gregory was hinting at is that soul’s rest or standstill, the moment of passing time, consist in a possibility of change – metamorphose (transformation) – of Christification, that God actually meets the human being in the standstill of the moment of passing time or in the now. On the Sacrificial Hill of the Cross the procession of human history itself comes to a standstill in the birth pangs of an new era, the Age of Christ. We enter a moment where all activity in the soul comes also to standstill in passivity in the moment of passing time and all the prayer life and all spiritual endeavor of the soul’s straining forward in love are means to this silence that is a rest in God’s presence where the eternal birth of the Son takes place when the Father speaks the Word,
The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, and this Word he speaks always in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul. [3]

And the words of St. Augustine are as an echo in the silence over the depth of the ages, “O Truth Who art Eternity! and Love Who art Truth! and Eternity Who art Love. Thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight.” And the Word of God exclaimed in the abyss of abysmal peace,

I am the food of grown; grow, and thou shalt feed Me; nor shalt thou convert Me, like the food of thy flesh into thee, but thou shalt be converted into Me. [4]
 
Spiritual awareness of being in God’s presence is the final aim of the prayer life and from that awareness all else flows forth and returns to its origin because this is the only movement of the Sacred Heart,
My Beloved, the mountains,
and lonely wooded valleys,
strange islands,
and resounding rivers,
the whistle of love-stirring breezes.

the tranquil night
at the time of the rising dawn,
silent music,
sounding solitude,
the supper that refreshes,
and deepens love. [5]

This is the hesychia of the Greek fathers – the silence of a human heart in a tranquil night – when Jesus renders the human heart into His own in the You-me relationship of everlasting love. This tranquil and silent music of a sounding solitude amazed Teresa of Avila as it awakes wonder and awe in our own hearts,

Every way in which the Lord helps the soul here, and all He teaches it, takes place with such a quiet and so noiselessly that, seemingly to me, the work resembles the building of Solomon’s temple where no sound was heard. So in this temple of God, in this His dwelling place, He alone and the soul rejoice together in deep silence. [6]

And just one another quotation from the treasure house of Isaac the Syrian,

When the High Priest once a year, during the dread time of prayer, entered the Holy of holies and cast himself down upon his face,... At this time, when we make our petitions and our supplications to God, and we speak with him, a human being forcefully gathers together all the movements and deliberations of his soul and converses with God alone, and his  heart is abundantly filled with God. [7]
[1]. The Dark Night, II. 20, 2.
[2]. Patrologia Greace, 44. 405 A-D.
[3]. John of the Cross, The Sayings of Light and Love, 100.
[4]. Confessions, 7. 10.
[5]. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, stanzas 13 and 14.
[6]. Interior Castle, 7. 3, 11.
[7]. Isaac the Syrian, Homilies, 1.23.