Out of Our Depth

Gregory describes a kind of vertigo, and it is the vertigo of faith itself. He hears Jesus say, blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God, and his soul lifts toward it. Then he remembers the other thing Scripture says just as plainly. No one has seen God. No one can see God and live. Hold both at once and your head spins. He pictures a man standing on a sheer cliff above the sea, looking down, dizzy. That, he says, is the mind trying to get hold of God. God is a smooth, steep rock, and the intellect can find nothing to grip, no ledge, no handhold. Every effort to climb up to him slides off. If you have ever felt that faith asks you to reach something your mind simply cannot grasp, Gregory has been there, and he is not embarrassed by it. But the homily does not end stranded on the cliff. It turns. God does not leave us flailing in deep water. The hands of the Word of God, Gregory writes, are stretched out to us when we are out of our depth. He remembers Peter sinking, and the hand that caught him and made the sea solid underfoot. That is the move. We do not climb the rock. We do not see God by being clever enough. We get grasped. When you are most out of your depth, that is precisely where the hand reaches.