I once heard a Catholic say that he knew what he would do if he saw God approaching him.  He’d go up to Him and shake His hand.  Now if anyone thinks that union with God is a contact with Him as remote as handshaking, or even sitting or standing side by side, then that person has no idea of what union with God is; nor has he any idea of the real thirst for God and how it can be satisfied.

The Second Vatican Council spoke about us being plunged into the Paschal Mystery in the Liturgy.  Baptism plunges us into God.  Holy Communion, as Jesus said, leads to Him living in us and us living in Him, a fusion of life in a mysterious way.  What we are invited to reach is not so much life with God or life with Christ, as life in God, life in Christ. . .

There is no doubt that Our Lady had a closer union with God than anyone, and it reached a peak when She received Her Son, when God was conceived within Her. . . God sent a specially selected Archangel to make the Annunciation to Mary, to tell Her that God was coming to Her in this most remarkable way.  We think of the Angel waiting for Her to answer before God comes and the union is complete.  St. Bernard, on the other hand, says that God was so impatient to have this union with Mary, that after He had dispatched the Angel Gabriel, He travelled faster and got there first . . . and when the Angel arrived, he found that Mary was already full of grace.  Yes, in our plunge into God, whatever it seems like to us, God takes the initiative; He gets there first, as it were.  So we can be very hopeful about our prospects!  God loves us, and love hates separation. 

I want to suggest that there are two ways in which we can immerse ourselves in God and find His embrace and give Him ours.  One of these ways . . . requires a special grace from God if it is to succeed well, whilst the other way is under our control if we are in the state of grace and can be practiced whenever we like. . .
        
The first way in which we can be united to God is by deep, utterly sincere, interior prayer, in which we really do love God in our hearts, and for a while we turn away from everything else and just abide in Him.  This is a union with God in which we are joined to Him not in order to get anything out of Him, or to ask for gifts or graces.  We love Him and want to be in silent peace and love with Him because He is Who He is, because He is God.  We are not thinking of ourselves or of created things in this kind of prayer and union with God.  We are just glad to be with Him and are not even looking at our gladness.  We are not asking any questions, and we are not making any statements.  We are simply with God, in God, enveloped in love, and the love involved is not just our love but God’s love too.  Our gladness is that God is glad.  We are seeing Him, not ourselves.

It is perhaps necessary to say that the kind of passive prayer union with God, of which I have just spoken, is a gift from God and cannot be attained by techniques or personal asceticism.  We can easily block this kind of prayer by getting in the way of it, but we cannot acquire it by any effort of our own. . .
           
[Although] we cannot dive into the love of God directly unless He invites us, we can always at any moment dive into God’s Providence, which is an effect of His love and brings His love to us.  Whenever we line up our will with God’s, we are united with Him.  If we lived the prayer we so often say, “Thy will be done,” we should live in union with God, and God would live in us, and our lives would be all He desires and all we desire.  If we can accept all that God sends us and do all that He asks us to do, precisely because He wants it, then we are living in union with God.

So although we might never receive what we recognize as an interior prayer union with God as love, we can live in union with Him.  We can quench that thirst for God, that thirst for the love He is, by burying ourselves in His Providential order in creation and doing His will, accepting His will, thanking Him for His will, and being content.

“For those who love God,” St. Paul tells us, “all things cooperate unto good.”  All things work together to bring us God.  If we are really seeking God as the love He is, we can find Him from morning to night, and even during the dark night, under the disguise of the present moment.  What has been called “the Sacrament of the Present Moment” is an outward and visible sign of the invisible action and presence of God.  You can make a deep act of communion with God whenever you wish by accepting and cooperating with the grace of the present moment. . .

Bury yourself in God if He invites you.  If He does not, then buy yourself in the Sacrament of the Present Moment, which certainly comes to you in God’s Providence with an invitation to some kind of loving prayer or rest . . .  God is here, and so are you, and God is Love, and His love is for you at this moment, and at each succeeding one.