They Perceived the Hidden God

In his 2009 letter proclaiming a Year for Priests, Pope Benedict XVI recalled the words of those who had witnessed Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, the famous Curé of Ars, celebrating Mass: “It was not possible to find a finer example of worship… He gazed upon the Host with immense love.” Although more than 150 years have passed since the saint’s death, it is certain that our overstimulated milieu would not distract his loving attention from the little white Host if he were alive today. 

The gaze of the saint of Ars that was branded into the memories of his parishioners–and which roused many of them to conversion–was fixed on a sight that we likewise have the privilege of sharing. What he beheld in his hands at every Mass and what we are invited to see when the priest pronounces the Ecce Agnus Dei (“Behold the Lamb of God”) is one and the same, both in its outward appearance and in the reality that it makes present. For us and for St. Jean-Marie, the Host is plain, white, and apparently unremarkable; yet the gaze of the holy Curé was enough to convince souls that the Host becomes, at the intonation of the words of consecration, God in their midst.  

Saint Jean Vianney’s incisive perception of the presence of God offers a lens through which we can interpret today’s feast. On the day that Mary and Joseph set out to fulfill the precepts of the law regarding the dedication of the firstborn, it is God whom they bring to Jerusalem. He enters His own Temple shrouded in the flesh of a poor Child, carried in the arms of poor parents who must offer the sacrifice of the poor. Even the splendor of His Mother, the Immaculate Conception, is veiled in poverty. Much like the little white Host, there is nothing manifestly remarkable about the Child who arrives in Jerusalem that day. Yet Simeon and Anna, the elderly pair whom the Holy Spirit has summoned to the Temple to greet the Child and His parents, perceive the hidden reality. Prefiguring the role that the Curé would play for the people of Ars so many centuries later, Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and professes that this Child is indeed God-With-Us.  

We must allow the characters of our meditation–Simeon, Anna, and the holy Curé–to awaken us and, perhaps, convict us of our lukewarmness. Saint Jean-Marie’s gaze alone was enough to proclaim that the consecrated Host is the living God, the selfsame Person whom Simeon received in the Temple. Our disquiet in response to these personages, however, is not a summons to sentimentality or emotionalism, nor to a feigned outward piety that has no resonance in the soul. Still, we are corporeal beings, and thus there is a mutual influence between our souls and our bodies, between our interior attitudes and our exterior comportment. If we wish to perceive the hidden God with the same intensity of love with which St. Jean-Marie gazed upon the Host, we must conform ourselves inwardly and outwardly to the reality of His presence. If we wish to be able to say, with Simeon, that we have seen and perceived salvation in our midst, we must, like him, have prepared our hearts to recognize God’s presence.  

Practically, what sort of interior training is required of us if we are to perceive Him? Our three characters offer a program that has proven trustworthy over the centuries. Simeon, Saint Luke tells us, “was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel,” (Lk. 2:25). Similarly, Anna “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day,” (Lk. 2:37). In other words, the two seers longed to see the Messiah, believed beyond doubt that God would fulfill His promise, and waited with admirable patience for Him. Their conduct during the long years of anticipation was not that of the ten foolish virgins who slept when the bridegroom was delayed (cf. Lk. 25:1-13). Instead, Simeon and Anna detached their hearts from superfluous things by prayer and fasting so that, at the time of God’s arrival, they already abided in a spirit of adoration. Likewise, the magnetic influence of St. Jean Vianney was not imputed to him from Heaven without any effort on his part. It was, doubtlessly, God’s gift, but the saint of Ars was capable of receiving it because, as Pope Benedict XVI explains, his life was “a deep personal identification with the Sacrifice of the Cross.” Lent begins exactly a month from now, but even today is not too early to commit ourselves to the program of prayer and fasting by which we will become capable of perceiving the Lord with the penetrating clarity of Simeon, Anna, and St. Jean-Marie.  

As this program gradually refines our souls and makes us more attuned, interiorly, to God’s presence, an exterior transformation begins. This was undoubtedly the case for St. Jean Vianney; his heart was so thoroughly convinced of God’s presence in the Eucharist that he increasingly walked, prayed, breathed, and spoke with the awareness that God was in his midst. If we “cash in” on these initial movements of exterior transformation by cooperating with them, we will be incorporating the effects of our prayer and fasting in such a way that our outward behavior will more and more efficaciously proclaim the hidden reality of the presence of God. (Notably, this is the logic behind any liturgical gestures such as kneeling, bowing, and reverently making the Sign of the Cross.)  

Like St. Jean Vianney, we who are privileged to have met Jesus Christ in the sacraments, and particularly in the Holy Eucharist, must proclaim the reality of His presence with our entire beings. The words of the Psalmist—“the Lord is in His holy temple” (Ps. 11:4)—are no less true today than they were in Jerusalem on the day of the Presentation. Although the mode of His presence may be different, the Lord remains, even in the 21st century, a prisoner of the tabernacle for us. If perhaps we do not feel that we have met Him, we must beg Him for this encounter. But we should not become discouraged. Faith is not a feeling; rather it is the submission of our intellect and will to God (CCC 143). He will meet our feeble efforts with His gifts of grace, so that from the depths of our hearts we will be able to say, “We have seen the Lord,” (Jn. 20:25).