The Mountains and the Divine

Why do I need more?

There is a profound yearning within me when I see such beauty.  There is a profound desire within my soul in the face of such majestic sights.  I want more.  I desire more.  Why isn’t this enough?

The sight of such creation seems to come in the form of an invitation rather than a sense of contentment.  For the beauty in front of me I see.  I touch.  I climb.  I smell.  And yet my senses can’t fill the holes of my desire.  My eyes can’t lessen the deep yearning with that in which I can see.

Creation is inviting my humanity into the mystery of divinity.

Two weeks ago I attended Mass at an old church on the first Sunday of Advent.  It was the day after experiencing my deep desire for more when looking at the beauty of creation.  The Mass was in German.  Therefore the hymns were sung in German.  And yet, despite the language, my desires were met with the mystery of the divine.

Staring at the cross over the Altar and listening to the beautiful voices of the choir, my desires became suspended in time.  My deep yearnings that the beauty of creation couldn’t fulfill were met by a grace that transformed my present reality into a reality that fulfilled my deepest desires.  It was experiencing heaven as I sat here on earth.

Advent is the concentrated time of waiting.  Waiting for a child to be born.  Waiting for my Savior to be born.  Waiting for God to become human.

And yet, this act alone isn’t what calms my soul.  The breaking into the world by the divine isn’t what ultimately calms my yearnings.  For it is both the breaking in of a child who is human and returning to the Father in His Divinity that gives me rest.  It is the child that is born and the man named Jesus who defeated death on the cross that gives me peace.

The beauty that surrounds me daily is breathtaking and magnificent.  Yet the beauty can’t fulfill me.  It isn’t enough.  I will never be fulfilled until I become fully human and then follow Jesus into the divine.

So I wait.  I wait again for this child to be born as a 38 year old husband and father.  I wait again to experience God becoming man, so that I might participate in the divine, and fulfill that in which I desire most.

  “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”

-St. Athanasius