Hagia Sophia
I.
Dawn. The Hour of Lauds.
There is in
all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness,
a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the
Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all things
an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and
joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the
unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with
indescribable humility. This is at once my own being, my own nature, and
the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia,
speaking as my sister, Wisdom.
I am
awakened, I am born again at the voice of this my Sister, sent to me from the
depths of the divine fecundity.
Let us
suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital. I am indeed this man lying
asleep. It is July the second, the Feast of Our Lady’s Visitation.
A Feast of Wisdom.
At
five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very quiet room when a soft voice
awakens me from my dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the
dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the world. It is like
the One Christ awakening in all the separate selves that ever were separate and
isolated and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds
coming back together into awareness from all distractions, cross-purposes and
confusions, into unity of love. It is like the first morning of the world
(when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her),
and like the Last Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will
return from death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.
Such is the
awakening of one man, one morning, at the voice of a nurse in the
hospital. Awakening out of languor and darkness, out of
helplessness, out of sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be
gentleness.
It is like
being awakened by Eve. It is like being awakened by the Blessed
Virgin. It is like coming forth from primordial nothingness and standing
in clarity, in Paradise.
In the cool
hand of the nurse there is the touch of all life, the touch of Spirit.
Thus Wisdom
cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia clamitat in plateis) and
she cries out particularly to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.
Who is more
little, who is more poor than the helpless man who lies asleep in his bed
without awareness and without defense? Who is more trusting than he who
must entrust himself each night to sleep? What is the reward of his
trust? Gentleness comes to him when he is most helpless and awakens him,
refreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him by the hand, and
opens to him the doors of another life, another day.
(But he who
has defended himself, fought for himself in sickness, planned for
himself, guarded himself, loved himself alone and watched over his own life all
night, is killed at last by exhaustion. For him there is no
newness. Everything is stale and old.)
When the
helpless one awakens strong at the voice of mercy, it is as if Life his Sister,
as if the Blessed Virgin, (his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made
wise by God’s Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and invite him with
unutterable sweetness to be awake and to live. This is what is means to
recognize Hagia Sophia.
II.
Early Morning. The Hour of Prime.
O blessed,
silent one, who speaks everywhere!
We do not
hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the merciful and feminine.
We do not
hear mercy, or yielding love, or nonresistance, or non-reprisal. In her
there are no reasons and no answers. Yet she is the candor of God’s
light, the expression of His simplicity.
We do not
hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows down the innocent visages of flowers to
the dewy earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all the
people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for though they have bound her,
she cannot be a prisoner. Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply
that she does not understand imprisonment.
The
helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the gentle one will awake: Sophia.
All that is
sweet in her tenderness will speak to him on all sides in everything, without
ceasing, and he will never be the same again. He will have awakened not
to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable pure simplicity of One
consciousness in all and through all: one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one
Sister.
The stars
rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of the Sun. The heavenly
lights rejoice in the going forth of one man to make a new world in the
morning, because he has come out of the confused primordial dark night into
consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence of Sophia in his own
heart. He has become eternal.
III.
High Morning. The Hour of Tierce.
The Sun
burns in the sky like the Face of God, but we do not know his countenance as
terrible. His light is diffused in the air and the light of God is
diffused by Hagia Sophia.
We do not
see the Blinding One in black emptiness. He speaks to us gently in ten
thousand things, in which His light is one fullness and one Wisdom.
Thus He
shines not on them but from within them. Such is the loving-kindness of
Wisdom.
All the
perfections of created things are also in God; and therefore He is at once
Father and Mother. As Father He stands in solitary might surrounded by
darkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing all His creatures
with merciful tenderness and light. The Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia
Sophia. We call her His “glory.” In Sophia His power is experienced
only as mercy and as love.
(When the
recluses of fourteenth-century England heard their Church Bells and looked out
upon the wolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their hearts to “Jesus
our Mother.” It was Sophia that had awakened in their childlike hearts.)
Perhaps in
a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is the unknown, the dark, the nameless
Ousia. Perhaps she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest, not even
waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know. Out of the
silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see it until it is spoken.
In the
Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was the Light. We have not seen
this Beginning. I do not know where she is, in this Beginning. I do
not speak of her as a Beginning, but as a manifestation.
Now the
Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching from “end to end mightily.”
She wills to be also the unseen pivot of all nature, the center and
significance of all the light that is in all and for all.
That which is poorest and humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is
nevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it is their own self
that stands before us, naked and without care.
Sophia, the
feminine child, is playing in the world, obvious and unseen, playing at all
times before the Creator. Her delights are to be with the children of
men. She is their sister. The core of life that exists in all
things is tenderness, mercy, virginity, the Light, the Life considered as
passive, as received, as given, as taken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift
of God. Sophia is Gift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is
God-given and God Himself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to
Nothing: inexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit
semetipsum. Humility as the source of unfailing light.
Hagia
Sophia in all things is the Divine Life reflected in them, considered as a
spontaneous participation, as their invitation to the Wedding Feast.
Sophia is
God’s sharing of Himself with creatures. His outpouring, and the Love by
which He is given, and known, held and loved.
She is in
all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her they
prosper. In her they glorify God. In her they rejoice to reflect
Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between
them. She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion,
life as thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.
Because she
receives perfectly there is in her no stain. She is love without blemish,
and gratitude without self-complacency. All things praise her by being
themselves and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the
Feast and the Wedding.
The
feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source of creative
realizations of the Father’s glory. She is His manifestation in radiant
splendor! But she remains unseen, glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes
there are none who know her at all.
Sophia is
the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness with which the infinitely
mysterious power of pardon turns the darkness of our sins into the light of
grace. She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would almost
seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us a greater work than
that of Creation: the work of new being in grace, the work of pardon, the work
of transformation from brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini
Spiritu. She is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the
power, justice, and creative dynamism of the Father.
IV.
Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina.
Now the
Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being who enacts and shows forth in her
life all that is hidden in Sophia. Because of this she can be said to be
a personal manifestation of Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather
than Person.
Natura in Mary becomes pure Mother.
In her, Natura is as she was from the origin from her divine
birth. In Mary Natura is all wise and is manifested as
an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person: not a Creator, and not a Redeemer,
but perfect Creature, perfectly Redeemed, the fruit of all God’s great power,
the perfect expression of wisdom in mercy.
It is she,
it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness of what she
is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown which is His Human
Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of
history, to the Word of God.
God enters
into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient
understanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters without
publicity into the city of rapacious men.
She crowns
Him not with what is glorious, but with what is greater than glory: the one
thing greater than glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.
She sends
the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth as poor and helpless, in His mission
of inexpressible mercy, to die for us on the Cross.
The shadows
fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep. Night
embraces the silent half of the earth.
A vagrant,
a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A
homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without identification,
without even a number, a frail expendable exile lies down in desolation under
the sweet stars of the world and entrusts Himself to sleep.
Thomas Merton (Prades, 1915 - Tailandia, 1968)