The
great intercessor must possess an extreme sensitiveness to the state and needs
of souls and of the world. As those who live very close to nature become tuned
to her rhythm, and can discern in solitary moments all the movements of her
secret life, or as musicians distinguish each separate note in a great symphony
and yet receive the music as a whole; so the intercessor…is sensitised to every
note and cadence in the rich and intricate music of common life. He stretches
out over an ever wider area the filaments of love, and receives and endures in
his own person the anguish of its sorrow, its helplessness, its
confusions, and its sin; suffering again
and again the darkness of Gethsemane and the Cross as the price of redemptive
power. For it is his awful privilege to stand in the gap between the world’s
infinite need and the treasuries of the Divine Love.
Evelyn
Underhill, An Anthology of the Love of God, (Lobndon : Mowbray, 1953),
162-3.
Imaginative, theologically sensitive, a practical mysticism of intercession as love for the other and as redemptive activity. Writing like this is one reason Evelyn Underhill remains a spiritual writer whose work expands our sense of God, and helps us notice His work in our lives.
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