Divine Indwelling-Intro

Gregg’s Reflection

In four decades of sitting in pews most every week and listening to sermons, I’ve never heard a sermon on Divine Indwelling, also called Immanence. I was in my 60’s before I came to believe there was a divine spark within me.

Much of the preaching I’ve heard made it sound like the story started with Genesis 3, the fall. I could believe I was flawed, that I was broken, that I was not good enough. Divine Spark? No way. I was just glad the Holy Spirit could use me as a broken person. The gradual dawning of the idea that I was made in the image of God, and had a spark of the divine within, brought me great relief, and some measure of joy.

In a Living School Symposium, I got the chance to ask Richard Rohr a question. “Why have I never heard a sermon on Divine Indwelling or Theosis?” These were frequent topics of our reading. “I’m not surprised,” Father Richard replied, “Theosis was lost to the West for 1000 years. They never lost it in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.”

So, wade into this treasure. Savor it. Linger to reflect on it over time. Chew on it until you can digest the idea. Find the rest of this post here.

Journaling Prompts

How would your outlook on life change if you truly believed there was a spark of God deeply within? How hard is it for you to believe you are the beloved of God? Ever heard a sermon on Diving Indwellin? If, not, ask your pastor why.

Scripture

God is my counselor, and at night my innermost being instructs me.

Psalm 16:7

Indeed, you delight in truth deep within me, and would have me know wisdom deep within.

Psalm 51:6

I will put my spirit within you.

Ezekiel 36: 28

God’s Spirit has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given.

Romans 5:36

Do you not know that you are God‘s temple and that God‘s Spirit dwells in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?

2 Corinthians 13:5

It is Christ who is growing in us, rather than we who are growing in Christ. Christ is formed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we respond to his ever-present Grace in our lives. This occurs in daily, ordinary life as we “practice the presence of God” (as Brother Lawrence taught us in his book of the same name) in our work, our play, our relationships and all of life. Steadily, gradually, Christ looms larger and larger within us. We find ourselves thinking, feeling, believing, serving, and living more like him.  Spiritual formation is being formed by the Spirit into the image of Christ. It is the Spirit's work, in the Spirit's way, and in the Spirit's time. The Spirit keeps us free and fruitful. When we draw your life and strength from the Spirit, we are free from the sinful desires that arise from him and weakness (5:16). When we are led by the Spirit we are free from the need to earn and perform (5:18) we are even freed from trying to be virtuous by the guarantee of fruitfulness (5:22)

RENOVARE Bible notes on Galatians, NT p. 324-325

Ancient Writings

Look at the animals roaming the forest: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God’s spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God’s spirit dwells within them. . . . Look too at the great trees of the forest; look at the wild flowers and the grass in the fields; look even at your crops. God’s spirit is present within all plants as well. The presence of God’s spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God’s eyes, nothing on the earth is ugly.

The Letters of Pelagius: Celtic Soul Friend, ed. Robert Van de Weyer, p.36.

Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.  Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity. 

Nicholas of Cusa

God said to Mechtilde, “I who am Divine am truly in you. I can never be sundered from you; however far we may be parted, never can we be separated. I am in you and you are in Me. We could not be any closer. We two are fused into one, poured into a single mold; thus unwearied, we shall remain forever.”

Mechthilde of Magdeburg, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 65

God is in all things as giving them being, power and operation. One can say that God is more closely united to each thing than the thing is to itself.

Thomas Aquinas, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 101

There is in the soul a something in which God dwells, and there is in the soul a something in which the soul dwells in God.

Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality, p. 126

God is nearer to us than our own soul.

Julian of Norwich, Doyle, Meditations with Julian, p. 95

Give me the grace to recollect myself in the little heaven of my soul where You have established Your dwelling. There You let me find You, there I feel that You are closer to me than anywhere else, and there You prepare my soul quickly to enter into intimacy with You … Help me O Lord, to withdraw my senses from exterior things, make them docile to the commands of my will, so that when I want to converse with You, they will retire at once, like bees shutting themselves up in the hive in order to make honey.

St. Teresa of Ávila

Modern Writings

I know from experience that the kingdom of God is within you. Jesus has no need of books or teachers to instruct souls. He teaches me without the noise of words, Never have I heard him speak, but I feel He is within me at each moment; He is guiding and inspiring me with what I must say and do.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, p. 179

The deeper I descend into myself, the more I find God at the heart of my being.

Teilhard de Chardin, Writings in the Time of War, p. 61.

As incarnations of the Son of God, we allow God to experience what it is like to be human in each one of us.”

Thomas Keating, Reflections on the Unknowable

Perhaps once we can see God in plants and animals, we might learn to see God in our neighbors. And then we might learn to love the world. And then, when all of that loving has taken place, when all of that seeing has happened, when such people come to me and tell me they love Jesus, I’ll believe it! They’re capable of loving Jesus. The soul is prepared. The soul is freed, and it’s learned how to see and how to receive and how to move in and how to move out from itself. Such individuals might well understand how to love God.

Richard Rohr, “Christianity and the Creation: A Franciscan Speaks to Franciscans,” in Embracing Earth: Catholic Approaches to Ecology, p. 130–131.

Jesus was the guarantee that divinity can indeed reside within humanity, which is always our great doubt and denial.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 12/25/19

Spirit is forever captured in matter, and matter is the place where Spirit shows itself.

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 214

Jesus had a fundamental vision—faith that all people are “children of God. He taught that each person has an uncreated soul that is actually a continuation of the Divine Life itself. When he met a person, therefore, he really believed that God was somehow present in that person, so he looked for that presence through all the overlying contradictions to it, until he found it. Then he addressed himself to that point in the person. When anyone does that, it tends to awaken the divine in the other, who is thus invited to speak from that place in return.

Beatrice Bruteau, Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 5/6/20

The creation story (Gen 1:26) states, “Let us make humans in our image.” The secret is somehow planted within you and slowly reveals itself. Your DNA is divine, and the divine indwelling is never earned by any behavior or any ritual, but only recognized and realized (see Rom 11:6, Eph 2:8-10) and fallen in love with. You will know you are standing under the same waterfall of mercy as everyone else and receiving an undeserved radical grace, which gets to the root of your own soul. Without that underlying experience of God as both abyss and ground, it is almost impossible to live in the now, warts and all, and almost impossible to experience the Presence that always fills the abyss and shakes the ground.

Richard Rohr, Yes, And, p. 67

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God. This little point of nothingness is the pure glory of God in us. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions points of light coming together in the face and blaze of the sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 140

The spiritual life is nothing more or less than to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where his glory can manifest itself. In your meditation you can ask yourself, ‘Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?’ "

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 5/10/20

Jesus’ power rests on his ability to awaken that which lies at the core of my own being. There is something deep and pristinely clear in each of us that has the capacity to recognize wisdom when we meet it, and it is the nature of wisdom teaching to call this something forth. Until that spark of recognition goes off, wisdom remains invisible.

Cynthia Bourgeault Wisdom Way of Knowing, p.14

As we journey toward the God who causes us to seek, may we discover our own grounding silence and awake in God who has found us from all eternity. 

Martin Laird, An Ocean of Light, p. xvi