“Faith is the marriage of God and the soul”

Faith is the marriage of God and the soul names faith as an inward relationship with God, not merely assent to religious ideas. In the book, Dag Hammarskjöld gives the expression its most explicit formulation: it joins mystical union to a life of selfless service, while other examples show how inward faith is practiced through prayer, silence, worship, and care for others.

Meaning and Formulation

Soon after his election as Secretary General of the United Nations, Hammarskjöld presented a statement of his beliefs on Edward R. Murrow’s radio program. He described two inheritances: from his father’s family, a commitment to service to country and humanity; from scholars and clergy on his mother’s side, the gospel teaching that all people are created equal as children of God. Although many Swedish friends assumed he shared their agnosticism, his statement affirmed faith as a central part of his life.

Hammarskjöld was drawn to John of the Cross’s definition of faith as the union of God with the soul. He returned to that understanding in Markings, recasting it as a marriage between God and the soul. The variation makes the relationship central: faith is not only an idea held by a person but a bond that shapes the person’s inward life. Hammarskjöld also maintained that religious language does not describe sensory reality; it consists of formulations that register a basic spiritual experience. He said it took time for the Christian beliefs of his upbringing to become his through free choice.

Hammarskjöld’s Inward Practice

The expression becomes more concrete in Hammarskjöld’s account of prayer. He described a mystical encounter as a passage through a barrier that kept him from encountering himself when he confronted reality. He imagined himself at the frontier of what was unheard of, uncertain how to enter that experience. Understanding faith as God’s marriage to the soul meant, for him, that God is holy within the person. In prayer, the person descends inward to meet the Other and comes to see all things, like the self, standing alone before God. That inward movement did not end in withdrawal: Hammarskjöld urged a life that makes use of what has been placed in one’s hands, and the book observes that his public work was grounded in his mystical experience.

A Pentecost 1961 entry in Markings records a decisive moment of spiritual change. Hammarskjöld recalled answering yes to someone or something, though he could not say who or what had asked, or when. He understood his life as meaningful and directed, and no longer looked backward or worried about tomorrow. The Way, his early Christian term, could lead to a triumph that was also catastrophe and a catastrophe that was also triumph. In this account, humility and the surrender of the self accompany the faith he had described as union with God.

Prayer, Silence, and Shared Worship

The book sets Hammarskjöld’s formulation alongside practices that make inward faith part of ordinary life. During visits to the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monk advised a student seeking a deeper prayer life to pray the Psalms. The author adopted that advice as a steady practice. His first visit had been with a seminary class studying medieval monasticism; the students attended the Divine Offices, ate in the guest house, toured the monastery, and heard a monk speak about monastic life. The late-1950s community numbered about 250 monks, whose Latin psalmody and silence made a strong impression. On two of five visits, Thomas Merton spent afternoons answering the students’ questions. The author later returned annually for a week-long retreat and often attended a discussion group in Merton’s hermitage.

Quaker worship offers another account of faith as inward attention. The Quakers’ dominant belief is that the Inner Light in each person can disclose the reality of God when attended to. Worship centers on sitting in silence and listening for the Holy Spirit; someone may speak when moved to do so. Quakers have no sacraments, professional ministry, official doctrine, or creed. A book intended to state their faith instead became an anthology of spiritual experiences. This practice presents inward revelation not as a possession of one exceptional figure but as a possibility for every person.

Douglas Steere’s account of Quaker worship shows how silence could also change relations among people. He valued meetings in which no one spoke unless moved by the Holy Spirit, and described worship as drawing participants into a closer fellowship. He had seen it level an ugly barrier between two people and begin a process in which they asked forgiveness. During a 1945 meeting to plan relief work in Finland, a brief prayer followed by another participant’s prayer preceded Steere’s sudden experience of release and closeness to those assembled; he also noticed that two others seemed to be undergoing something similar. His account joins inward experience to a shared gathering and to practical service.

Faith in Worship and Service

Howard Thurman’s chapel work at Howard University likewise connected worship with collective experience. To engage students without making chapel an occasion for resentment, he experimented with silence for meditation and prayer, liturgical dance, and visual art. In one service, six European Madonna paintings were recreated as life-sized tableaux behind a nine-by-five-foot frame, with silence between presentations and Ave Maria accompanying each display. Thurman described the congregation and participants as brought together in a single moment of spiritual transcendence, an experience of unity that could outweigh what divided people. The book presents this as another form of mystical awareness, made through a carefully shaped communal service.

For Dorothy Day, the recognition of God took a particularly practical form: seeing God in other people, especially the poor. Her daily Mass and regular prayer belonged to an interior life, but her understanding of Matthew 25 made care for people in need a direct encounter with Christ. She held that the guest seeking food or shelter was Christ, even when that person was difficult to serve. Hospitality was therefore not separate from spiritual life; feeding and sheltering the poor were ways of responding to God’s presence. Her example extends the language of union beyond private prayer into the demands of human relationships.

Practice and the Limits of Experience

The book’s concluding reflections distinguish spiritual practice from the attempt to produce a special experience. Prayer, meditation, study, and silence help a person become more open and receptive to God, but their importance lies in their cumulative effect over time. A simple routine might begin with a Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, then add a few minutes of silence and a Gospel reading; worship can also become a deliberate occasion for attention. Such practices may change how events are understood in retrospect, as what once seemed chance or coincidence comes to appear as an occasion of divine action.

This account does not promise steady consolation. The inner life can include periods when prayer seems dry as well as times when it feels rich, and the book treats falling and rising as part of spiritual development. Its closing counsel is to look for God in ordinary, simple aspects of life rather than to expect spectacular experiences. Read in that context, faith as the marriage of God and the soul is both an account of inward relationship and a way of describing a life shaped through repeated practices, shared worship, and attention to others.