1. God's personal word to us
2. Meaning of symbolic pictures
3. The essence of the spiritual symbol
4. Importance of symbols in Scripture

The spiritual life of the Christian is nourished by the Word of God in the Scriptures.   Christians of all times and from all traditions agree about that.  However, the Word of God can only become nourishment for our inner life when we accept it as the Word of God that addresses us personally, that awaits our response and through which God truly and actually discloses Godself.  As Christians we live by the revelation of God recorded in human words in the Bible.

Generations of Christians understood this as self evident and needed no further clarification or training.  Just think of the ancient monks or the triumph of the Bible in the Reformation period.  This has fundamentally changed in recent decades.  Interest in the scholarly critical examination of the texts of the Old and New Testaments has been so much in the foreground that many Christians have lost the inner ability to receive the Word of God personally in these texts.  This is a problem we encounter everywhere not only among theologians.  Because many people no longer realize what they have lost, they do not even see this as a problem.  Many groups within the Church seek a solution by simply skipping over all exegetical-scholarly knowledge as liberal.  They have plenty  of examples of how quickly knowledge claimed with great certainty became obsolete after only a few years.  For still others, an inner integrity forbids them from choosing such a simplified approach.  This begs the question: How can Christians accept the Bible as the personal word of God from texts written by humans?

This second question arises from what we have done up to now.  In the first week we sought ways for deepening our ability to receive in order to encounter the world anew as people able to receive.  In the second week we practiced pausing and pondering in order that we might be shaped from within.  What am I to receive?  Through what ways can we allow ourselves to be formed in this intensive way?  By no means can we leave this up to chance.  Therefore, as mature persons we are responsible for not remaining content with things that are unimportant or that are left up to chance.  We must choose what is essential.  "Essential", by the way, is a word repeatedly used by the mystics, those great lovers in the kingdom of God:

„O , human become essential
As the world decays
The accidental fades
the essence stays“        (Angelus Silesius)

But in what wise can I become essential?

Perhaps an answer can be given to both of these important questions from what we have already mentioned many times and established as basic: symbolic thinking must be distinguished from scientific thinking.  Each has its own value and place in life.

After the first exercises of silence and relaxation I usually continue with some form of meditation on symbol.  By "symbol" I mean everything that can be transmitted from the level of the sensate and the lived to a corresponding spiritual level.  Things, daily activities, attributes and situations can in this way all become symbols.  "Path", "sword", "sowing", "making contact", "bitter", "soft", "standing at a crossroads", "building a bridge" are all examples of symbolic pictures that can capture typical experiences of being human.  The list is almost endless.  Another way of saying this is that everything which is experienced can be traced back to such a foundational element.  For example, as we were discussing these things in a small meditation group a woman who ran a dairy store said: "The symbol for my work then would be 'merchant' ".  That is exactly what was meant.

It is the symbol in this wider sense that draws us back to the essentials.  When one quite by chance recognizes a particular thing as a basic and key symbol, the overall life of that person takes on new depth and dimension.  Everything that is symbolic, that is essential, can be transferred to other areas of life.  The secret of the symbol is disclosed only to the one who dwells with it and ponders it.  When we linger in meditation before a symbol which corresponds to something within us that "something" begins to vibrate just as the A-string of a violin resonates when a tuning fork is held against the body of a violin.

In similar ways every genuine symbol causes something to resonate
-  within our heart
-  within personal relationships
-  within contemplating the mystery of God.

Let us clarify what is meant symbolically by the "pitch" (musical key) in which something is being played.  In meditating upon this symbol we can become aware of,
-  how out of pitch, "closed", our hearts often are (the human level)
-  how on pitch, "open", my colleague was yesterday (the social level)
-  how God tunes, "opens up", people to divine mysteries(the spiritual level)

The possibilities for application are unlimited.  Each symbol evokes an inexhaustible richness of opportunities for new understanding.  This applies not only to natural symbols, but even in a deeper way to the many diverse images in the Bible with their symbolic meanings.  In meditative lingering before images in Scripture we wait until something begins to resonate in us.

Thus, nearly every section of the Bible that unveils something of ourselves, can address us regarding a personal relationship and allow us to experience a bit of God's revelation.  All this happens, however, only when we listen with our heart and linger long enough.  For that reason, the exercises assigned for the first two weeks appropriately belong at the beginning.

A number of theologians have stimulated ideas today on the important function of symbolic pictures by taking up an old Christian tradition which goes back to the time before Augustine.  This tradition recognized that when it comes to speaking about religious matters we are always dependent on symbolic language.  That is demonstrated in all of human history.  The Bible shows this very clearly.  From beginning to end Scripture speaks through pictures and symbols not only because the Palestinians of that time usually thought and spoke in images more than Europeans today, but because symbolic language is the only appropriate way of expressing spiritual truths.

Symbolic words and pictures draw on reality as it is experienced with the senses pointing us to what otherwise would not be "able to be grasped".

It hardly registers with us anymore how many words in biblical language are symbolic images.  Almost every word in the Lord's Prayer is in this sense symbolic: "Father", "heaven", "name", "kingdom", "will", "bread", "sin".   Also when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he does so with nothing but parables and metaphors.  In the final analysis it is not possible to speak of these matters in any other way.  Therefore, the human aptitude for symbolic understanding becomes an important predisposition for understanding the Bible the way it was originally intended.  How can we as rationally formed twentieth century people be able to understand symbols again?  How can we handle the symbolic language of the Bible?

The answer is simple.  Just as a mathematical task requires concentrated thinking, so the appropriate way of dealing with symbols is meditation.  A symbol reveals itself through meditation.  It doesn't have to happen only in an intentional meditation exercise.  The symbol also speaks to untrained people and awakens and evokes a response at the meditative level of their being making it resonate like the strings of a violin.  That completes the circle.  What grows out of experience in our spiritual life becomes a symbolic image itself and is then passed on to others.  Only those who meditate can understand what this means.

There are five important aspects which characterize a genuine spiritual symbol :

- First - a spiritual symbol makes available to the ones meditating dimensions of their   being which opens the way through which God fulfills them.

- Second - a spiritual symbol is a true and genuine aspect of the reality to which it refers   symbolically and communicates that in a way that allows the one meditating to share   in this reality.

- Third - a spiritual symbol points far beyond itself: the reality to which the symbol visibly refers (with images) far transcends other symbols.

- Fourth - every symbol is in danger of becoming demonically distorted when it is   stripped of its function of referring to something beyond itself and instead is   absolutized.

- Fifth - spiritual reality on the other hand is always in danger of fading into an    abstract principle leading persons to believe they can get along without symbolic   images.

Let me clarify these aspects which we will encounter again and again during our exercises with a story from the New Testament.  In the story of the miraculous multiplying of bread in John 6 we find all the aspects of a spiritual symbol.  The whole chapter centers its meditation on this miraculous account.

- First, a spiritual symbol makes available to the one meditating dimensions that open them to the fullness of God.  What is addressed here is hunger, an archetypal symbol of the human condition.  For what are humans hungry?  For what am I especially hungry?  When I meditate on this image, I experience how it illuminates different areas of life.  What do humans need in order to live, in order to live a truly human life?  How great is the "hunger" of many today, indeed of all humanity, and not only for bread!   In such a meditation the deeper we pursue our own "hunger" (our deepest yearnings) and the more we lay them open before God, the more receptive we become to Christ's promise, "I am the Bread of Life" (John 6: 35).

- Second, a  spiritual symbol communicates an essential aspect of the reality to which it refers.  In looking at Jesus we take into ourselves the essential and genuine "real presence" of the word: "I am the bread of life.  Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life." (Jn.6: 48 , 47)

- Third, a spiritual symbol points far beyond itself.  It is an illustrated reference to something infinitely beyond itself.   This bread is far more than bodily nourishment.  This is what the meditation of this whole chapter encompasses. This becomes clear on three levels:

- On the first level Jesus has in mind the "prophetic symbol" of the Old Testament miracle of   the manna in the wilderness: the "Bread from Heaven".  "Manna in the desert" was   Sacred History's "pre-view" already then pointing to its fulfillment through Jesus as the   "Bread of Life".  Such Old Testament "prophetic symbols" paint messages for us in   a once-for-all-time tangible way that can be grasped and thereby help us to a    deeper "experience" of that which is intended (John 6:32).

- On the second level Jesus has in mind the "sacramental symbol" of the Eucharistic bread.    In that Jesus sees the complete fulfillment and at the same time the transcendence of the   bread symbol.  Here both are united: the essential aspect that is contained in and    communicated by the symbol and the reality which at the same time far surpasses any   sensate image.

- Finally, on the third level the fulfillment, which can always be experienced physically and with  profound meaning is transcended in an eschatological symbol: "whoever eats of this   bread will have eternal life" (vs. 51).  This final fulfillment can not be grasped by the   senses.  The deepest meaning to which this symbol points is yet to come.  The image of the   "Heavenly Marriage Feast" is something about which we can only speak in symbols.

Comment:  We experience here the great plan of God's Sacred history which through the centuries is God's way with God's people.  Here is great unity and continuity.  And yet, this way is offered on ever new levels and in ever new ways which qualitatively surpass the old ways.  This continuity of sacred history which is always played out between the "old" and the "new" in Christ and in the "yet remaining" time is totally new in the final fulfillment by God.  This eschatological perspective shapes the whole of biblical thinking in a way that is often overlooked .

- Fourth, If a symbol is denied its function of pointing to something beyond itself and is absolutized, it becomes a demonic distortion.  Here lies the root of what the Bible condemns as idolatry.  The people were well fed and satisfied and wanted to make Jesus the "Bread King".  But he steps away from that.  "One lives not from bread alone, but from every word which proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4)

- Fifth, in order that the spiritual reality, the abundance which God offers people, is not blown up into abstract principles, Jesus introduces the sacramental symbol of the bread of the Eucharist and does so with words that cannot but stir up a scandal as recorded in verse 53, "Unless you eat (literally "chew") this flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in me".

Spiritual symbols in the sense that we have observed here, will be encountered again and again throughout this book.  Therefore, it is important at this point to have a detailed introduction to the spiritual meaning of symbol.

- Not every story in the Bible nor every biblical image reveals all the dimensions of a spiritual symbol in the same way as happened in the multiplying of bread.  Sometimes the accent will be placed in one place and sometimes in another.  That does not depend only on the biblical material but also on our own situation.  Meditating on a biblical story today can bring to deeper consciousness the gift of God's grace while the same text a short time later will bring to light an inner struggle of faith which we were not aware of earlier.  This is exactly the secret of the symbols, that they effect in each person meditating what at that moment is important for them.  Therefore, a Christian is never finished with the Bible even when one exposes her/himself again and again to the same text.

- Furthermore, those who use the symbolic way of thinking in dealing with biblical literature will gain a new understanding of scholarly exegesis.  The question of establishing historical facts should be raised by the scholars and answered according to the state of current research.  However, when we meditate on a biblical story in the light of its symbolic expression where it speaks to us personally about the secret of the sacred history of God with the people, there we can operate just as well with the supposition that the account is to be taken as an historical truth as well as with the assumption that it was the faith of the early Christians that made them aware of the symbolic forms in which their experiences of the reality of God were made understandable.

- Finally, it is important that we open ourselves to the Bible not only with our intellect but with our meditative abilities which are addressed through symbols.  The Word of God does not speak only to our intellect but it also addresses the deepest level of our being.  The Bible refers to this level simply with the word, "heart."  "But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Luke 2:19 RSV).  However, the Good News Bible  translates it, "Mary noted this exactly and thought about it again and again".  These are not just different words but different worlds!  Let us ponder the Scripture with our heart.
In the third week, we will be preparing the basic building materials and excavating the foundation.  For this we will use the Gospel story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus of Jericho to discover the many possibilities for meditation and prayer to be found in a passage of Scripture.