The Infinity on High

In somewhat of an aside, Victor Hugo wrote some thoughts about prayer in Les Misérables. He suggested that there is an “infinite beyond us” and an “infinite within us.” He wrote, “The I below is the soul; the I on high is God. To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying.” I find this idea compelling because it suggests that what communicates with God through prayer is our soul; it is not the superficial self that we sometimes present before the world, but it is the part of us that is infinite and yearns to be connected with Him. Hugo continued, “Certain faculties in man are directed towards the Unknown; thought, reverie, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, reverie, prayer,—these are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them. Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul? Into the shadow; that is to say, to the light…. With regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite.” He wrote this near the story of Jean Valjean entering a religious convent with Cosette to escape Javert who sought to find him and put him back in prison. Valjean was miraculously saved just like he had been the first time through the Bishop of Digne, and he found himself a gardener and living a peaceful life surrounded by religious devotion. Here, he too looked to God and I love the depiction of the final scene in the second volume as he sought to turn his soul more devotedly towards the divine: “Sometimes at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when the garden was deserted, he could be seen on his knees in the middle of the walk which skirted the chapel, in front of the window through which he had gazed on the night of his arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he knew, the sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he prayed as he knelt before the sister…. And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him; the second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not been for the second, into torment. His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.” As he turned his thought, reverie, and prayer to God, he found that in him grew the essence of God: love. Through his connection with the infinite he found his heart filled with love.

               And perhaps that is the most important reason that we pray: to be filled with the love of God. As we connect ourselves to Him of whom John wrote, “God is love,” we can be filled with that love (1 John 4:8). This is what Mormon famously taught, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moroni 7:48). He also taught that this love we seek continues with us through prayer: “Which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God” (Moroni 8:26). We obtain love as a gift from Him as we pray with all the energy of heart, and that love endures with us as we continue in diligence with prayer. This is the example that the Savior gave His apostles in that final night before His great atoning sacrifice. In His great intercessory prayer He pled with the Father that His love would be with us: “That the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:23-26). Above all He sought for us to be filled with the love of the Father He had already received, and this was the culmination of His great prayer before entering the Garden of Gethsemane. As we seek to draw near unto Him, we too can pray that the love of the Father may be in us and fill our hearts like it did for Jean Valjean kneeling in his own garden at night.