I want to follow up my comments of November 16 with some thoughts of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907 – 1972) on praise. An apologist for wonder, Heschel has much to say about its fruition.
Rabbi Heschel maintains that wonder, what he sometimes calls radical amazement, is the genesis of faith. The reverent response of awe occurs when the wonder of experiencing mystery gives way to the intuitive sense that in and beyond the mystery is the presence of God, what in the bible is often called the glory of God. “To be overtaken with awe of God,” Heschel claims, “is not to entertain a feeling but to share in a spirit that permeates all beings.”[2]
When awakened to and acutely aware of the precious givenness of all life, persons sense that the gifts shower forth from a kind and generous Giver. Indebtedness becomes gratefulness and gratefulness blooms into worship, into praise. For in receiving a gift, the recipient obtains not just the gift but the love of the giver as well.[3] Praise emerges when wonder is no longer enough, when awe no longer contains us. Heschel insists:
Praise is our first answer to the wonder. Indeed in the face of the sublime what is left for us to do except to praise, to be aflame with the inability to say what we see and to feel ashamed of not knowing how to thank for the ability to see.[4]
Praise is the way indebtedness is first expressed when, despite “the inability to say what [God’s] presence means,” the person becomes aware that “the whole earth is full of [God’s] glory.”[5] Heschel believes, “each creature has its own hymn of praise with which to extol the Creator,” and adds, the Biblical person “in sensing the sublime is carried away by his [or her] eagerness to exalt and praise the Maker of the world.”[6]
Heschel contends “we sense more than we can say,” insinuating, first, that praise emanates from a deep, knowing intuition, and second, that praise is not the expression of what we sense but the response to what we sense. He understands praise to be the encounter with “the realness of God.”
That persons cannot clearly and distinctly articulate verbally what they experience when they encounter the ineffable and then the mystery of being as an overture of divine presence does not contradict the source or the validity of their experience. On the contrary, the inability to communicate what one experiences is one of the characteristics of praise. In the presence of glory words are inadequate. Only singing will do.[7]
Praise is that “certainty without knowledge in the depth of our being” that is awakened and evoked by the sublime mystery and the presence of God. The mystery and the presence are responded to before one can grasp or articulate them. In fact, praise is the result of being grasped by the glory of God, of being overtaken by awe even though the person cannot comprehend or conceptualize it. Heschel emphasizes that “glory” is not a thing, but rather is equated with the goodness of God in action. To say that the “the whole earth is full of [God’s] glory” is to say “The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God, which is radiant and conveys itself without words.”[8]
In the transition from radical amazement, which is the response to the ineffable mystery, to praise, which is the response to a sense of divine glory or presence, we identify not only the beginning of faith, but locate the original impulse to worship. To praise is to worship, and worship is not merely to wonder or to admire but to pray, to adore, to pay homage. Praise is the matrimony of awe and joy offered to God. As an aspect of human responsiveness, praise is an act of worship that “makes [humans] a relative to the sublime, initiating [them] into the mystery.”[9] Praise is the sense of transcendent requiredness, of being challenged, of something being asked of us and responding accordingly. It signals not only the divine glory, but also the shift from the sense of indebtedness as an ontological reality to praise as a spiritual reply.
Heschel emphasizes, when fully realized, indebtedness, gratitude, and praise are no longer merely the antecedents to faith, but are especially and explicitly religious responses, conscious and intentional acts of faith. While it is true to say that praise transforms wonder and awe into faith, it is also true to say that faith transposes radical amazement and appreciation into praise.
For Heschel, the human person as defined in the Bible, is indebted to God and owes God thanks and praise. The pious man or woman is the person who is vitally and perennially aware of the graciousness and awesomeness of the divine bequest and of the human obligation that comes with it. Heschel states, “God is of no importance unless [God] is of supreme importance.”[10] Praise is corroboration that humans consider God to be of supreme importance. If, as Heschel states, “It is gratefulness which makes the soul great,” then it is praise that makes the soul gratified.
What is most striking and unique about Heschel’s definition of praise is his understanding that whereas glory signals divine concern for the world, praise, in turn, denotes human concern for God. God’s concern for humanity is what makes possible humanity’s concern for God. Here Heschel lays the foundation for a spirituality that connects praise and pathos, the mystical and the prophetic, worship and compassionate action. For Heschel, to praise is to be concerned about what concerns God. It means sharing God’s concern.[11] Glory is God’s presence to us. Praise is our act of being present to God. In praise, presence and concern meet. Evoked by the glory of God, praise is the full and fitting way humans are to relate to God. As the antecedent to faith and yet as the fullest expression of faith, praise is the act of attaching oneself to God and to that which is of passionate interest to God.
Because praise is essentially an act of worship, it is fundamentally personal while being necessarily communal and cosmic. Worship then is not only the intuitive and proper response of the individual to the presence of God, but also is “an act of participating in an eternal service, in the service of all souls of all ages. Every act of adoration is done in union with all of history.”[12] The extension of radical amazement, praise is the antidote to isolation and apathy. According to Heschel, praise cannot be quarantined:
As an act of personal recognition our praise would be fatuous, it is only meaningful as an act of joining in the endless song. We praise with the pebbles on the road which are like petrified amazement, with all the flowers and trees which look as if hypnotized in silent devotion.[13]
Praise creates conciliation and kinship among all living beings in the celebration of life.
The stars sing; the mountains tremble in [God’s] presence. . . . [Humankind] is not alone in celebrating God. To praise [God] is to join all things in their song to [God]. Our kinship with nature is a kinship of praise. All beings praise God. We live in a community of praise.[14]
As the human choice to make
God’s concern one’s own, “as an act of inner agreement with God,” praise plays
an integral role in the journey toward becoming human and participating in the
kinship of all the earth.[15]
[1]Heschel, Who Is Man?, 116.
[2]Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 74.
[3]Ibid., 291.
[4]Ibid., 74.
[5]Heschel, Quest for God, 62.
[6]Heschel, God in Search of Man, 96, 41.
[7]Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 74; Heschel, God in Search of Man, 95; Heschel, Quest for God, 63.
[8]Ibid., 83.
[9]Heschel, Quest for God, 13.
[10]Ibid., xiii.
[11]Ibid., 18.
[12]Heschel, Quest for God, 46.
[13]Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 74.
[14]Heschel, God in Search of Man, 96, 95.
[15]Heschel, Quest for God, 18.