[I heard a Chinese proverb once.] The proverb says this: “When there is a finger pointing at the moon, a fool looks at the finger.” . . .
I think it is no exaggeration to say that everything that exists or ever has existed, all of creation as we know it on earth, is nothing else but a finger pointing not to the moon, nor the sun, but to God. If God’s purpose is not only to be the origin of everything, but that everything should return to Him, then it is obvious that the instruction of St. Paul about keeping our eyes on the things that are above and not on the things of this earth could be seen as an attempt to stop us from looking at the means whereby we are to get to God as if they were our goal. . . .
We are a pilgrim people on earth, and the Church on earth is a pilgrim Church, and a pilgrim is someone who goes somewhere, who is making for a distant goal. His eyes are not on the present reality except to use it as a means to move him forward. . .
St. Paul, like an athlete, kept his eyes on the goal, the prize to which he was running. He did not look back to see how well he had run in the past. . .
Absolutely everything that exists, all we see and know about, all that is, in any way, is not only God’s personal property, but He made it out of nothing for His own purposes, the purposes of divine love. Each of us as a person is an entire universe, is so valuable to God that He sent His Son to live and die for us. He wants us to be with Him in this life and in the next. It is an implicit insult to God to consider oneself unimportant to God, and if you are important to God, what else could possibly matter?
We ought to kneel in prayer with the most firm and calm and happy consciousness that we belong to God, that He claims us, that He cares for us, that He loves us to remember Him and be with Him by faith. We ought to be very pleased to rest in peace with Him, to rest in silence and pregnant inactivity as He gives us new life in the depths of our spirit. So sure of God we ought to be that even if we do not seem able to pray at all, we can just rest in faith, rest without feeling, adoring God not in words or sentiments or ideas and images, but in spirit and in truth, that is to say in firm and effortless faith.
When there is a finger pointing at the moon, only a fool looks at the finger. The whole of creation points to God, and so, very deeply, does your own reality as the person you are, with all your history and all your upsets, and all your joys. Do not look at yourself. Look at God. After all, He is looking at you, looking for you, looking after you. Lord, here I am!
