Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [54]
Only the recollected man is fully alive
In recollecting ourselves, we empty our soul of all current concerns, and are no longer possessed by the things which fill our life; we escape from the network of those autonomous systems of particular aims into which life’s single situations and tasks erect themselves. We face God directly, and take a new departure from the Alpha and Omega of our being.
Through finding our way to God, we find our way home to ourselves. Thus (and not otherwise), we establish that inward order of our life which makes it possible for us to attend to its details without yielding to the illegitimate pretension of the present as present. So our care for the various concerns and details of life will become legitimate before the face of God. From the center thus secured, everything can be brought to a common denominator, so that we may achieve unity in our life and our personality.
For, mostly, our life implies a continual desertion from the habitare secum. As a rule we incline to lose ourselves in the present situation and to accept the exclusive sovereignty of its immanent logic; to forget the proper and ultimate meaning of our existence. In this dispersed attitude, we are not really and truly alive. We actualize our peripheral being only or fragments of our deeper self at most.
Notwithstanding our intense concentration upon some object, our keen attention to one task or another, in the depth of our being we are asleep; we are not wholly existent, as it were. He only who is recollected is really awake; he alone, therefore, is alive in the full sense of the word.
Recollection is essential to transformation in Christ
The importance of recollection for the process of a transformation in Christ need hardly be pointed out. Without it, there is no full and valid life rooted in the depths and consequently, there can be no genuine, essential, and deeply penetrating transformation.
Without recollection, all good resolutions—all honest endeavors to overcome a defect or to achieve a supernatural transfiguration of natural virtues—are bound to remain impotent and sterile. Without that mobilization of our depths which the act of recollecting ourselves implies, we cannot become marked with the seal of Christ.
Recollecting ourselves vs. being recollected
Obviously, we must distinguish two phases of the attitude of recollection: these are, to put them briefly, the act of recollecting ourselves and the permanent state of being recollected.
The first is the act of recollecting ourselves, of rising towards God and recovering ourselves; of setting ourselves at a distance from all present concerns; of ordering all things before the face of God, and referring everything to the great common denominator, Christ.
And the second phase is the state of being and remaining recollected. This state will have to endure, while we are attending to a concrete task, engaged in a serious conversation or some meaningful work, or performing any other activity. To be sure, we are then no longer empty of all present details or cares; we again divert our vision from God to some concrete creaturely thing, and actualize a partial aspect of our being. Yet, we do not separate ourselves from God; we do not sever connection with the profound and ultimate center of our being. We keep within the divine context; we accord to the theme on hand that place only which it can rightfully claim in the eyes of God; we envisage it from that ultimate point of view; and we remain wakeful and alive in the depth of our being. According to the specific nature of the activity we are engaged in, this attitude can be realized in different ways.
Recollecting ourselves for higher tasks
Suppose we are dealing with some essential task of high rank, which we cannot even approach in an adequate manner unless we are recollected. In this case, it is recollection