The peak we ascend is not Candy Mountain

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As I seek the will of God through the avenues available to me, there is a likelihood that I will merely become self-satisfied by the exercise of seeking. Go me.

There is a hint of self-congratulation in St. Peter’s remark to Jesus, asking about rewards in Matthew 19:27: “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?”

As it turns out, interestingly, Jesus simply answers the question.

Father C’s point here is that “apart from God” these avenues of spiritual growth and activity can give a person Christian ideas without touching and changing the heart or their bearing in life. What is needed is what the monastic call “the conversion of manners,” and it means that a person is in touch with God’s “life-giving power,” as Father C puts it here, such that speech and behavior and all of a person’s life is one continuous agreement with and expression of the will of God.

These avenues, apart from God, have the effect of –

_{“… emptying the heart by the very satisfaction which they give to the mind … a proud man who reads spiritual books only from curiosity and without any regard for the will of god receives only the dead letter into his mind, and his heart grows ever drier and harder.” (Page 9)}

John of the Cross called these satisfactions consolations, and said that the quest for such things is the mark of a “beginner” in the ascent of the mountain toward God. Think here in terms of preschool. Or maybe pre-preschool.

In his prologue to The Ascent of Mount Carmel, John seems to cajole those who “approach God along sweet and satisfying paths.” Egads! My own preference is for convenient and painless paths along my spiritual journey.

John of the Cross goes on to say, “The journey, then, does not consist in consolations, delights and spiritual feelings, but in the living death of the cross, sensory and spiritual, exterior and interior.”

The lack of this less easy approach around him led John to observe, “Christ is little known by those who consider themselves his friends.”

Only a few pages from now, (18) Father C will mention consolation as one of the guises by which God conceals himself in our lives.

Again I wonder if the faith hasn’t been today eviscerated by a culture that has led us only to appreciate spiritual things that make us feel good. We have now a belief in the church that simply states, “I’m in!” Nothing is said of change, obedience or transformation. And, if we do hear of such things, it is clothed in the trappings of self-help through the Christian psychologists of our day, who have apparently taken over American theological studies. (But, I digress.)

“God is good,” has been changed to “God is good for my lifestyle.”

The early Christians, when confronted by conversion, were facing the probability of a foreshortened lifespan. Of the Twelve Apostles, eleven were put to death, and only John died a natural death after having been boiled in oil and surviving, then was exiled to Patmos and later lived in Ephesus. Matthias, the “replacement” for Judas, is here considered one of the Twelve, as the death of Judas is variously recorded in the gospels. The mode of Matthias’ death is inconclusive in tradition. He was either crucified in the region of the Black Sea, or stoned and beheaded in Jerusalem, or died in Ethiopia. Paul was executed as well – beheaded in Rome.

In my world, conversion does not imply a singular focus on God and his will in every moment. God is asked to sit quietly among the crowd of all my other interests. There he is, between orchestra and juggling, behind family, near career. Sometimes you can see him. Other times the crowd makes it difficult to make him out.