Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [53]
Yet, every kind of withdrawal from the peripheries towards the depths may not amount to recollecting ourselves. Concentration on a philosophical or artistic work necessarily implies a direction towards the depth, but it need not imply a state of being recollected. One may even be deeply touched by the beauty of nature or of great works of art, without positing an act of true recollection.
We may better understand this by visualizing some moment in which we are attempting to recollect ourselves. An important decision or a task of great dignity is ahead of us. We do not feel equal to it, as things are; we say we must first recollect ourselves. Withdrawing from all direct contact with the concern that occupies us, we try to forget whatever is on our hands, to escape the pressure of what is incumbent upon us, and to recover ourselves. To that end, we should remember the last things; and, from the whirlpool of the great and the small things of life, emerge towards God, the Cause and the Goal of all being. We return to what is truly and unchangingly omnipresent: the ultimate meaning of our life, our eternal destiny, our supreme goal.
Then only, when all else fades away for a moment, when we recover our deepest, unique direction towards God, when we stand before Christ, saying: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), do we actually recover ourselves and resume identity with our innermost selves. Thus alone can man attain to a real habitare secum (dwelling with oneself), as the Rule of St. Benedict calls it. For, as we have already seen, God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. In His perspective alone can we see every finite object in its proper place in creation, revealing, in the light of the supreme truth, its particular meaning and value.
And thus alone do we secure the necessary distance which guards us from being submerged in the immanent logic of a task or a situation; a distance not calculated to destroy our living contact with the object of our vision, but on the contrary, enabling us to penetrate its essence more truly than would exclusive attention to that object.
We must proceed to the depth in order to gain a full and adequate awareness of things, hearkening to God’s call from the depths of our being, and bringing our most intimate selves to full actuality. Until we meet the demands of life on a plane provided by such a primarily unpragmatic and nonfunctional attitude (that is, ultimately, by our relationship to God), we are unable to actualize ourselves except in a partial and distorted way. Our experience of things is otherwise still affected with incidental admixtures; it lacks the full sanction of personality.
Recollection may be voluntary or involuntary
However, recollection is not always a result of a voluntary act of recollecting oneself. Without a deliberate act in this sense, a high value that seizes out heart may lead us into the presence of God and so render us recollected. This process (which, to be sure, is not provoked by every value experience, however genuine) even constitutes a deeper and more organic form of recollection than the method of recollecting ourselves by a voluntary act.
Nevertheless, it would be an error merely to wait for the gift of such a recollecting influence to guide us towards awareness of God and of the true meaning of our life. Again and again we should voluntarily relinquish the turmoil of our current occupations, the pursuit of this or that concrete aim, and return to the essential that is proper to our inmost self.
Thus, the Divine Office is preceded by the prayer Aperi, which represents not only a prayer for the grace of true piety but an express act of recollection. In