Christmas 2014
What could be the best Christmas of your life? One where you clearly notice God’s presence. What is God’s presence? It encompasses so many things that all the books in the world would not be enough to describe it. But among all these things, there is one I know for certain. It may be a modest part of the whole picture, but to me, it holds the utmost importance because it is the only thing I know with the absolute certainty of firsthand experience.
I will attempt to summarize it. I hope you enjoy this Christmas present.
When you talk to someone, you do not simply throw words around; instead, you direct your words towards a specific person about whom you know something. Talking with God is not different from that.
You should address Him as a specific person, not an elusive entity who is nowhere to be found. You should connect with something about God that you know with certainty and speak to this something as if it were wholly God. It is obviously not, but God does not care about that. When we speak to human beings, we do the same thing. You talk to a person at a specific place and time, as if you were speaking to the whole person, addressing their entire life. You know that is not the case, but somehow, what you say to this part of the person resonates with their whole being.
God knows me better than I know myself, and there is nothing I can reveal about myself that will be news to Him. On the contrary, I tell Him a piece of the story, and He shows me the rest.
There is only one problem: Do you really want to know that much about yourself? If you lack the resolution to firmly accept your picture as God shows it, with all the pleasant and unpleasant surprises He has to show you, He won't reveal anything to you.
Sometimes we want to confess our sins to God. However, how can we do that if it is the Holy Spirit Itself that reveals to us what these sins are? Sometimes we might misidentify our sins, we think our sin is one when it is another altogether. A beneficial practice is to ask God to reveal our true sins, enabling us to confess them. In the next few days, you may recall many sins that had been forgotten or never considered initially.
But it is obvious that what I am saying does not refer to sin alone. You can ask God to reveal your true self. However, if He shows you everything all at once, it will probably exceed your attention span. Therefore, ask Him to reveal, out of everything you are, only what He deems crucial for you to know at this stage of your life.
We all talk about ourselves using the word “self.” The “self” is the central and conscious agent that tries to steer our acts and thoughts amid a gigantic turmoil that comes from our subconscious, from our social environment, from snippets of conversations, from television, and from the devil. All this turmoil exists within each one of us and in some way contributes to our identity, yet it is not our “self.” This means that each one of us is a “self” only in a partial and imperfect way. We are imperfectly personalized. There are many parts in us that are strange and anonymous. Parts of us that are things, not a person.
Animals and objects do not have a "self.” They cannot talk to themselves or have the inner life characteristic of someone who perceives themselves as the central agent of their existence—aware and accountable, at least to some extent, for their past and future decisions.
Of all the beings and things, only humans possess a “self,” albeit incomplete and imperfect. God, on the other hand, has a complete and perfect Self. Through Moses, He taught us His Name, and that name is “I Am.” In that Name, there are no elements that are unknown to Him. In God, there is no changeability.
However, if God’s Self is complete and perfect, and ours is partial, fragmented, and imperfect, that means that we have a self only by the Grace of God. He has bestowed upon us, to the extent of our possibilities, a capability that in principle only He possesses.
It was in that sense that the poet Paul Claudel said: “God is Someone in me who is more myself than I am.”
Therefore, God not only knows more about you, but it is from Him that comes your ability to speak to yourself (and to Him). This capability allows for an “intimacy” that no thing, and no animal will ever have.
That is why another poet, Antonio Machado, said: “Whoever talks to himself hopes to one day talk to God.”
One day? When? You will jump from a solitary conversation to talking to God the moment you realize that: (a) you are talking to Someone who knows you better than you know yourself; (b) you are talking to Someone who is the most intimate source of your capability of self-knowledge and your capability to speak with your "self.” This Someone is more you than you are yourself. Then you will realize that He has always been there and that the only thing that separated you from Him was what separated you from yourself.
From that moment on, talking to yourself in prayer becomes a gateway to endless discoveries. It deepens your understanding of your "self,” your consciousness, and your presence before yourself, others, the world, and even God Himself. Discover this joy this Christmas and be happy.
Olavo de Carvalho, published on the weekly newspaper Diario do Comercio, on December 25, 2014. Translated by Pedro de Carvalho and edited by The Olavo de Carvalho Academy.
