THE LITTLE ONES

Why does God reveal the mysteries of the Kingdom precisely to the little ones? A book from the 1300s, The Cloud of Unknowing, helps us understand this. It answers a question: how can we encounter God beyond thought, beyond images, beyond ourselves? The text arises from a context of profound reflection, of a strong need for interiority. We read: “Nothing that the mind can grasp truly leads to God. Only a naked act of love can transcend every concept and open a passage to the invisible.” It is necessary, then, to leave behind the exuberance of thought and slip into that part of the soul where knowledge gives way to humility and humility transforms into pure desire. Here the cloud is the symbol where everything dissolves and the soul learns detachment. In a time like ours (where everything is analyzed), it makes us understand that knowledge is not nourished by concepts but by presence. The cloud aspires to God, who cannot be depicted but only loved. To understand is not to possess but to allow oneself to be touched and transformed. In the cloud, the word becomes soft, the intellect light, and love an instrument of knowledge. The author educates us in this very dispossession and, through trust, teaches us to walk toward peace. The human being does not grow through imposition but through attraction, and spiritual progress arises from freedom, not from duty. The book has a curious structure. There is a cloud of non-knowledge (separating the soul from God) and a cloud of oblivion (separating from everything that is not God). In between lies the act of the disciple’s subtraction. The first makes it clear that the God of thought is not the living God; concepts are for theology, not for spiritual aspiration. This helps maintain the distance between God and man, the infinite and the finite. The second, the cloud of oblivion, helps the soul to limit itself in the face of itself. The author speaks of apophatism, of God beyond God. God can never be reached through the concept but only through emptying. Where man makes himself small, He reveals Himself. And Jesus raises his hymn of praise to the Father, contemplating the wonders He performs in the heart of those who open a passage for Him, a simple crack through which light enters, making life sing.

Commentary by d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italia)