There’s Something about Nothingness

It’s inspiring--and unnerving.

I’ve been slowly making my way through The Grace of “Nothingness”: Navigating the Spiritual Life with Blessed Columba Marmion, by Fr Cassian Koenemann, OSB.  It’s a book steeped in Catholic spirituality, but I can’t think of a passage that wouldn’t resonate with most Christians.

Well, resonate is not quite the word.  Other verbs that come to mind are inspire, challenge, and even frighten.  Such are the effects of books that take us further in the spiritual journey.  Every once in a while, I am shaken out of my therapeutic faith--one that is designed to make me feel good “all the time, all the time.” Those are moments when I recognize that I have yet to abandon myself completely to God. I sometimes say Charles de Foucauld’s “Prayer of Abandonment”:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures--
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Yet most days I’m frankly afraid of completely abandoning myself to God.  This is silly, shortsighted, and just plain stupid.  God is the supreme good and full of unbounded love for us.  But such is the state of this sorry heart that it holds back because, if I did so, who knows what would happen?!

Abandonment is closely related to the theme of the book above. The book mostly explores what it means to consider ourselves “nothing” in relation to God, as in: “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6:3).  This is a powerful way to ponder humility, and many of the great saints have considered nothingness in this context. Mother Teresa would be a recent example:

In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.

In an age when we’re catechized to feel good about ourselves, realizing our “nothingness” is abhorrent. But of course, a deeper understanding of this nothingness has nothing to do with low self-esteem and everything to do with grasping God’s esteem of us, which is the foundation of a rock-solid self-esteem.

At any rate, for paying subscribers, I’m planning on working through this book, sharing some of its insights. Columba Marmion was a Benedictine monk whose writings, especially about nothingness, have inspired many a saint, including Mother Teresa. That was enough to make me want to know more about this man and this theme of “nothingness.” Fr. Koenemann’s express purpose is to explore what he calls “evangelical nothingness” in church history and in the writings of Marmion. One quote from Marmion presents another angle on this idea:

… the inner life becomes very simple from the moment we understand that it consists entirely in losing oneself in Jesus Christ, making only one heart, one soul, one will with His own. This is not done once and for all, “one buries oneself more and more in this holy will…”

“Very simple” perhaps. But “entirely losing oneself”? Very unnerving.

Grace and peace,

Mark

Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash