"Today, listen to the voice of the Lord," the psalmist says, and then proceeds to tell us what God is saying to us:
"Do not grow stubborn as your fathers did in the wilderness,
when...they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works....
Forty years I endured that generation...They are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not know my ways...."
When we pray, God listens. When we listen, God talks. God's words to us are always a variation on the same theme: "TRUST ME! Don't be stubborn and turn away from me, out of anger or bitterness or grief or wanting your own way, because then you will lose your way. Your hearts will leave mine and go astray. You will forget my ways of peace, justice, understanding, compassion, and mercy. And what will be the end result? You will not enter into or discover what it means to rest in me. To trustfully lay your head on my chest. To feel my fingers gently drying your tears. To know eternal joy."
Why should we trust God? Why should we listen to Him? Earlier in Psalm 95, the psalmist explains why:
"The Lord is God, the mighty God,
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands."
God holds in his hands the depths of the earth which is your body; he knows every inch of your skin, every organ, muscle, tendon, and vein; he hears the beating of your heart, the electrical impulses of your brain. His fingers stroke and anoint your hands with their unique imprint and caresses. His hands bless your feet as they go about your journeys.
God holds in his hands the highest mountains of your emotions, understanding them all. God holds in his hands the wide, unfathomable sea of your soul, whose depths you haven't even begun to penetrate, but there is where God lives and rests - in you.
Do you believe that? Do you allow yourself to experience that mystery and miracle, that God lives in your soul and is one with you? Every minute of every day, God unfolds this marvelous mystery to us. Every day God asks us to go trustfully deeper into that oneness.
These words of the psalmist promise us that "He is our God and we are his people, the flock he shepherds."
God loves us! That's why God tells us to listen to him. He asks us to trust him BECAUSE God loves us, lives in us, holds us in his hands, knows us through and through, accepts who we are and where we are. God loves us so much that he plans to lead us on our journey so that we can spiritually continue to travel. To grow. To deepen. So our hearts won't go astray. So we will not lose sight of God's ways. So that we will always be His people, radiating his justice, peace, mercy, understanding, and compassion. So, inwardly we can always rest in him, in his peace, even when outwardly our lives are in turmoil.
"Do not grow stubborn as your fathers did in the wilderness," says God to us. This is a reference to the ways in which our fathers and mothers in faith, the Israelites, while fleeing into the desert on their escape from Egypt, complained about God when they were hungry or thirsty. God always eventually fed them and gave them water to drink. But, ungrateful, the people wanted everything on their time schedule. They turned from his ways and fell into disunity and sin.
How often are we stubborn and we complain to God because we are in our own wilderness, a wilderness of grief, or physical, emotional, or spiritual pain, or we are captured by the terror of the unknown before us, or are confused. God may seem very far away, indifferent to us in our own darkness. Yet, these are the times when the best thing we can do is bow down and worship. Repeat to God that we trust God, the mighty God. After all, who else is there whom we can turn to? If we believe that we are truly God's people and belong to God, we have the consolation of knowing that God will never desert us or leave us on our own. God never turns away from us. We are the ones who, every now and then, choose to turn away from him. Turn away from his Presence in our souls. Act as if he doesn't exist...... Fall into disunity with others and into sin.
Yet, the moment we turn back to God, we discover that God is waiting, his love for us as passionately warm and present as sunlight. We don't deserve this. But, we believe that God's forgiving love is real.
Ask yourself: How real is Psalm 95 for you? How real is God for you? Are you a mystic? Maybe you've never thought of yourself as being a mystic. But if you pray and understand this psalm, you are a mystic. Every Christian should be one. A mystic is someone who has really experienced the Presence of God within his heart/soul and God's Power in her life.
There are many ways of experiencing being a mystic. It may be that, from time to time, you experience a tiny spark of love or peace or joy inside you, which you know is supernatural, has come from "beyond" you. Or you have a moment of insight into the reality of the Real Presence in the Eucharist or the loving Community of the Trinity. Perhaps you humbly realize that only God can and does give you the power to change your life and forgive someone. A mystic knows, really knows, how important it is to pray. A mystic believes that when she talks to God, that God listens. A mystic knows that God's Spirit is always at work in the world, because he pays attention to how people grow, change, and overcome turmoil and disaster, and he thanks God for God's grace.
Every Christian, as he or she grows in the faith, should discover that being a Christian is far more than belonging to the institution of the Church. Being a Christian is far more than believing dogmas and doctrines or obeying rules. Being a Christian is being a man or woman who discovers that God is real, always at work in the world, and that God wants an intimate relationship with each of us, and talks to us. Once you discover, both through prayer and life experience, that God is real, that God lives within you, that God is actually one with you, then you are a mystic.
A mature Christian gradually opens himself to the presence of God within. A mature Christian discovers that we are one with God and so, through the gift of God's Spirit, we can grow in understanding of how to think with the mind of God, and how to love with the heart of God, to embrace God's Ways. We are called to embrace this divine awareness and way of being. As Christ is both God and human, we humans are given the gift, through Christ, of becoming also divine, which is, simply, knowing and living out God's sublime Ways of loving and forgiving and accepting everyone as God's children. Yes, accepting everyone! Even those who frighten us. Who live on the street. Who are in prison. Who smell. Who talk dirty. God lives in every one of them, hungering to be found by them.
A mystic believes that Christ invites us to the same kind of union with God that he has. That is why he invites us to call God "OUR" Father. We have the same Father that Christ does. Are we conscious of how life-changing this can be? Are we open to receiving the consciousness of Christ as our own consciousness?
Fr. Richard Rohr tells us:
"Until people have had some mystical, inner spiritual experience, there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideals of Jesus or to really understand religious beliefs beyond the level of formula. At most, such moral ideals and doctrinal affirmations are only a source of deeper anxiety because we don’t have the power to follow any of Jesus’ major teachings about forgiveness, love of enemies, nonviolence, humble use of power, a simple lifestyle, and so on, except in and through radical union with God. Further, doctrines like the Trinity, the Real Presence, and the significance of the Indwelling Spirit have little active power. They are just 'believed' at the rational level, but never experienced." (from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, July 14.)
Only mystics spiritually travel from simple belief in God to experiencing God as a Living Force of Love in their lives. Only mystics, putting on the mind and heart of Christ, have the power to really love and forgive in an enduring way, to accept people who are radically different from themselves, to accept the responsibility of loving and healing this planet, because they know that everyone and everything created belongs to God and is loved by God - to the death. Only mystics realize that generations of people have abused power, settled their problems through violence, and think that humility is weakness, and yet they choose to be different, to walk the narrow way of being a disciple of the Christ. Oh, yes, mystics are in the minority among those who call themselves Christians.
The psalmist cries out, "Listen to the Voice of God!" Do we realize that God's Voice is coming from INSIDE ourselves?! Do we hear God's Voice in our souls counseling us to not be stubborn as generations of people have been before us and around us, and, instead, to trust Him? Can we accept our union with God and consciously choose God's Ways of Life instead of the world's ways of violence, adoration of power, and spiritual death?
If we can embrace the discipline of daily prayer, deeply listen to God, and respond to God's Power of Love within us, then we are true mystics. We have traveled from simply belonging to an institution to belonging instead only to God and God's call to us. Then, and only then, can God talk to us and be heard, can daily be at work in us and change our lives. Then, and only then, can we grow beyond thinking only of our own spiritual salvation, and put on the mind and heart of Christ to work for the salvation of the world.