With Face Unveiled: An Exploration of the Joy of Intimacy with God - Paperback

by Joshua Elzner (Author)

Within these pages are contained a variety of reflections centered upon the beautiful reality at the heart of our existence, sending its light and warmth-its very heartbeat-throughout all things: the immeasurable love of God for each one of us, and his tender and ardent desire to unite us to himself in an intimacy of mutual belonging and reciprocal gift, all bathed in wonder-filled awe and lighthearted playfulness. We explore this reality from many different angels, and indeed let its clarity "distill" into countless other aspects of our life, from the true beauty of prayer and the gratuity of love to correcting mistaken notions that threaten to steal the joy and the expansiveness of the life of faith and relationship with God. Light is hopefully shed on the experience of growth in holiness and the journey of entering ever deeper into God in prayerful intimacy, even to the consummate communion of the spiritual marriage in this life and to the glory of the new creation in the life to come. So too are addressed things such as the value of silence and solitude, the proper role of structure and discipline in the service of freedom, and even more the freedom that surpasses the law while fulfilling it in the liberty of the filial heart sharing in the play of the eternal Son of God, in which we are granted to become a living "eucharist" in the Eucharist of Jesus, whose existence radiates with the unspeakable beauty of eternal love and breathes forth the fragrance of God. In him each one of us finds our own unique song, and in him God wants to receive from us-from me-the tender kiss of love that is singularly my own, and in which he delights.

This book, while it stands alone in its own right, can be understood as a kind of sequel to the collection From Glory Unto Glory: A Foundational Vision of Our Transformation in the Trinity - A Spiritual Theology, which gathers together much of what I have written up to this point and arranges it to be a kind of "primer," or a "companion on the way," for our journey to wholeness and holiness in communion with God, with others, and with the entire creation, bathed in the light of his redeeming and cherishing love. This book, therefore, in some way jumps into the "deep end" from the beginning, and presupposes something of the foundations laid in my other writings. In fact I began writing this book while gathering that compilation together, and the first handful of reflections in this book actually found their way into that one-so there is a small bit of overlap-even as this one then follows the trail of thought and contemplation further, to touch upon and to abide with topics not as thoroughly explored in the other book.