In the light of God
by Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux
Desclée de Brouwer, 212 p., $18.90
Teacher of linguistics at Aix-Marseille University, Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux awakens the reader’s intelligence by returning to the deep meaning of the biblical text, Greek and Hebrew, in the form of a meditation on Christ, “light of the world”.
God, she reminds us, speaks to our intelligence, which is much more than our intellectual capacity. It is about the intelligence of the heart, that of a “open heart”both turned “towards the mystery of God” et “towards others” to enter “what is good and true in them”to understand “both their sufferings and their joys”feel “in agreement with them”.
It is above all a relational intelligence which seeks the truth. This is not an abstract concept. It is an experience of “safety”of “solidity”of “firmness”which characterizes the “fidelity”the ” trust “. In other words, faith in a God who “do not deceive (us), never evade”. This truth, which “remains an essential goal that sustains life”is gradually revealed to the human who is not born complete and who progresses, year after year, towards this resemblance that God has inscribed in him from the beginning.
Towards an interior unification
The author’s meditation becomes burning when she addresses the question of desire. “The only thing that God expects from man is desire, which is the beginning of the movement, of all momentum, towards what we will later call confidence, faith. » Based on the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo, she evokes the “pleasure of encountering God”. A God who comes “disturb our lives” and reaches us through “novelty, surprise, change”. One of the virtues of prayer is to give us the opportunity to “become aware of the desire of our heart”.
The believer’s path leads him towards interior unification, which is strengthened in the relationship (confrontation) with others, called to become our brother, our sister. We must return to Greek to understand the tension that inhabits the human being, torn between his two natures, forming as “front and back” of the same sheet: that of the psyche, “earthly life which includes the breath of God, but which is itself limited”and the zoeour divine nature, the “life in God”. Our existence is a passage, an Easter, from one to the other. Basically, concludes Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux, “intelligence, in the light of God, is (…) the intelligence of joy » to know, from now on, with him, and forever.
