If you aren't growing you are doing it wrong

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued even more …

“This foundation being laid, the soul has nothing to do save to pass all its life in rejoicing that God is God.” ~Caussade (Page 55.)

It seemed disingenuous to breeze through Father Caussade’s comment here without revisiting the notion of Christian growth and the development of one’s spiritual maturity, as we have done above for some time.

Indeed, it is because he said, “This foundation being laid,” that I had to stop my writing for many days and consider the condition of “this foundation” – not only in me, but in all of us.

For a moment, let’s consider Father Caussade’s full description of the foundation: “The great and solid foundation of the spiritual life is to give oneself to God in order to be the subject of His good pleasure in everything internal and external, and afterwards to forget oneself so completely, that one considers oneself as a thing sold and delivered to the purchaser to which one no longer has any right, in such a way that the good pleasure of God makes all our joy and that this happiness, glory and being become our sole good.” (Page 55)

Only then does he go on to say, “This foundation being laid …”

The material for such a basis for establishing a life of faith is made up of a will to submit to God. No one can “rejoice that God is God” without submitting their will to him. Those who know God as God either submit to him, or remain stubbornly lost, or are darkened by evil.

          It is upon this “great and solid foundation,” as Caussade puts it, that we may then move on to “grow completely into Christ,” as Paul states in Ephesians 4 – to be “fully mature with the fullness of Christ Himself.”

What is the true condition of this foundation among those of us who dare say we walk with God? Do we not see how exclusively and single-mindedly, and with what commitment this foundation is composed? Do we not see its beauty?

More often than not, when reading the words of long-past spiritual shepherds, their comments about the initial phase of spiritual growth (beginners) are beyond any one of us who might think we have adequately moved on in our faith. Myself, thinking that my spiritual journey by this time should be at least at mid-sea, I have found instead that I haven’t left the harbor. My shoes are still dry.

Even during the best occurrences of spiritual growth, the believer is faced with the same ever-fading horizon that plagued the aging king in Tennyson’s “Ulysses” – “Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move.” As I progress, I see how much farther I have yet to go to reach my drifting goal. I sail toward, but never seem to reach, the receding horizon.

In his 12^th-Century work Ladder of Monks, Guigo II wrote that the function of meditation on Scripture is like squeezing much juice from a small grape. At this, he says, “I am still an ignorant beginner, and it is only with difficulty that I have found something in which to draw up these few drops.” (Page 71)

We want to become better at knowing God, but once we make progress, we realize what little way we have come and how unsearchable he is. The believer’s ever-fading horizon is the sheer magnitude of God.

Even so, we are encouraged not to look back on the field of discoveries that we have made, but to face forward with the plow and continue on. Moses, thank goodness, did not pitch a tent where he saw the burning bush awaiting succeeding fiery interludes with God. Moses is a good example of a spiritual person who was free to move on from one solid experience with God to others. The ground there was called holy by the Lord, yet no altar was built there, nor did the people of Israel camp around an unburnt bush for the rest of time.

From this well-made foundation, as described by Father Caussade, our vantage point from which we perceive God through our inner man is lifted, as though we are children on our father’s shoulders, seeing and enjoying just that much more fully.

Why would the believer then stop building at this point – satisfied to have constructed a passable foundation? What composer would think he had finished an orchestral score when he had only marked out the blank measures and affixed the time and key signatures? Is there not now music to create? Cannot the imagination be summoned to fill pages with notes, and eventually a concert hall with music?

What soul can say that its sole good is the good pleasure of God, and that its life is about rejoicing that God is God? Let us admit together that we are all far from this. We must as well note a careful distinction: Some have the same heart as the psalmist, who yearned for God in his heart. Some have not this heart for yearning. Those who are satisfied should take warning from their inert inner man. As Jesus pointed out, only those who thirst will be satisfied.

How far along am I in loving God? Notice, I didn’t say “studying God,” or “understanding God,” or even “loving what God has done.” There are, in fact, many reasons to love God, but we are required to do more than love these reasons. Note the reasons if you like, but get on with it. Grow in your love for God. If this is not happening, as far as your Christian faith is concerned, you are doing it wrong.

Beginners must get past beginning ASAP

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

     Continued more …

Having established that it is fitting for beginners to begin, it must also be said that this starting phase of one’s spiritual life must be soon grown out of. Once the runner has taken his place at the starting blocks his feet are braced, his fingers pressed on the track, his body coiled, his mind cleared – but for what? When the starting gun is fired all of his finesse training and all of his pent up strength must be released. He will run, and perhaps win, only if he explodes out of the starting blocks.

In the blocks, there is a satisfying ache from the leg muscles as they await the opportunity to do what they do naturally. Likewise does the new believer have zeal to grow. If not this, there could be cause for concern. Young parents become alarmed when their child does not seem to be developing as quickly as the siblings did, or are not as advanced as the other kids at daycare. We rightly tend to see a lack of growth as a symptom of a possible health problem or of inadequate nurturing.

So also must the house of God ensure that its beginners are moving along in their walk with Christ. The new believer is to be immediately set upon a prayerful journey into maturity. Along this voyage we will find we have fallen in love with God, and with our crew.

Some Christian spiritual directors refer to this secondary stage that flows into the believer as the “intermediate” stage (e.g. John of the Cross) or they use a reference to “those making progress” (e.g. William of St. Thierry).

Another way to advance the idea of “making progress” in one’s spiritual life is to refer to the process of being transformed into the likeness of Christ. (See Romans 8:29.) Members of the churches first under the direction of the Apostles were pressed to allow God to thoroughly work this transformation upon them. For example:

“Brothers,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “do not remain children in your thinking; infants in wickedness – agreed, but in your thinking grown-ups” (First Corinthians 14:20).

As Abbott William of St. Thierry said, “The servant of God must always make progress or go back; either he struggles upwards or he is driven down into the depths” (The Golden Epistle, Part 38).

In the Bible, the young churches are sometimes chided by the apostles for their slow-going with regard to spiritual maturity.

Here is a brief wakeup call from Paul to the Christians at Corinth: “And so, brothers, I was not able to talk to you as spiritual people; I had to talk to you as people still living by your natural inclinations, still infants in Christ; I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it – and even now, you are still not able to, for you are still living by your natural inclinations. As long as there are jealousy and rivalry among you, that surely means that you are still living by your natural inclinations and by merely human principles” (First Corinthians 3:1-3).

In another place Christians are told “you have grown so slow at understanding.” And, a sentence later, “you have gone back to needing milk, and not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells seeking Christians that the purpose of the church as the Body of Christ is to bring its members to “unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Ephesians 4:13)

Then he goes on to briefly spell out the difference between immature and mature believers:

“Then we shall no longer be children, or tossed one way and another, and carried hither and thither by every new gust of teaching, at the mercy of all the tricks people play and their unscrupulousness in deliberate deception. If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow completely into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole Body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each individual part to work according to its function. So the body grows until it has built itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:14-16)

In order to move from spiritual immaturity to maturity in Christ, the believer must undergo a steady, continuous transformation that ripens in the soul a wise, informed, willful love for God. Only a Christian with these heart markings may be allowed to be considered mature in Christ. Welcome, beloved, to a world filled with toddlers.

Please have your boarding passes ready . . . The journey has a beginning

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

        Continued …

“This foundation being laid, the soul has nothing to do save to pass all its life in rejoicing that God is God.” ~Caussade (Page 55.)

In the following few sections we will be looking at a person’s spirituality from the standpoint of phases of growth or levels of development. However, because these are discussed one at a time, it must be kept always in mind that these divisions are not closed off from one another. A believer may be very mature and well-made in one aspect of his life with God, and quite unripened in another. Also, humility and poverty of spirit must be kept in mind whenever the reader is considering himself in light of the descriptions of these supposed levels or stages.

The separate consideration of these steps of growth is a means by which the spiritual life may be taught and discussed. In our real life, these gradations are not sealed off from one another.

William of St. Thierry pointed this out in his discussion of the three stages of growth: “It should be noted that when we speak [1] of carnal or animal perception, [2] of rational knowledge or [3] of spiritual wisdom, we have in mind both a single man [who possesses characteristics of all three], and three kinds of men … each with the characteristics of one of these states.” (The Golden Epistle, Section 35, Paragraph 140)

Still, I believe it is helpful to articulate the spiritual journey by talking about its beginning, its route and its destination.

Because our natural orientation is toward things below it is not always easy to understand or relate to things from above. Nor is it easy to integrate some of the advanced thoughts from spiritual masters. My soul might be ripe for one sentence and unready for the next. I suppose most of us try to take away what we can from our reading and leave the rest for another time. That’s how I do it.

Spiritual writing is not a replacement for the work of the Spirit, but is one of the agents through which the Spirit often chooses to enact the transformation, the growth and the progress of a disciple.

The nature of spiritual writing is to inform as a teacher, form as a coach, and draw the reader to God as a spiritual director. Each of these three aspects are accomplished only by the work of the Holy Spirit, who Himself teaches, coaches and draws the disciple further along, more deeply along, more genuinely or actually along the follower’s journey with God.

To be taught, coached and drawn to God – these three match the three categories into which some spiritual masters have placed God’s people. That is, beginners, intermediates (those making progress) and the proficient. Such is the three-phased description of John of the Cross. William of St. Thierry worded his three phases of spiritual growth as animal, rational and spiritual man.

In the Bible itself, there seems more often to be a two-fold description of the faithful: The young and the older; the infant (the milk-drinkers) and the mature (the meat-eaters); the child and the adult. When we think of the spiritual life as a journey, then there will be a beginning and a destination. Between the two, there may be any number of gradations representing progress or movement or advancement. Any number of words could be employed to describe the points between the start and the destination, or the developmental stages between the child and the adult.

When it comes to reading, whether it is the Scriptures or books on Christian spirituality, the ultimate goal is to allow the encounter with the words to draw the reader to God. In the case of beginners, this occurs with some difficulty. Those new to the faith or newly interested in their faith rightly become students and will want to be informed. Books are studied by novices for content.

The young in the faith also carry around a certain amount of pride for what they are learning. Never was this so clear to me as it was in Bible college, where it was encumbered upon me to live in a dormitory named “Skitch Hall.” A freshman that year, who lived in another dorm, which some of us had nicknamed “The Firetrap,” introduced himself to me with his name, a firm handshake, inescapable eye contact and this between-you-and-me comment as if made by the mustache-twisting villain in a melodrama: “I am something of an expert on the Bible.”

I had never heard anyone announce themselves like that before – much less someone who had just turned 18. I should have said, “This is Bible college. Who isn’t?” Instead, I puzzled.

During my years at this preacher school, humility was neither taught nor caught. We were embroiled in an unspoken, rule-less competition to see who could appear the most spiritual, amass the most knowledge, and look as if we would be supremely adept pastors or missionaries when the time came. Humility would have to wait. I would have to become an expert, and start telling people so, in order to survive. I was threatened by my classmate’s braggadocio, such that I quietly accepted his superiority. Nowadays I realize it was the comment of a brash toddler.

There is nothing wrong with this initial “student” phase of investigation or discovery. (Well, except for the fore-mentioned nagging pride.) It is important to have good information in order to live and think in truth. Good spirituality does not come from bad theology. So it is thoroughly appropriate for beginners to become accustomed to the truth of the word of God and the teachings of the faith. Such a good root system will produce good fruit.

We must maintain a sense of balance when we are discussing the younger or less experienced among us. It is not acceptable to berate the beginner. Jesus pointed out that heaven rejoices over the recovery of one soul (Luke 15:7). God makes all of His blessings entirely available and entirely present to the beginner (Ephesians 1:3).There is absolutely no shame in a person taking their first steps in a lifelong walk with God. There is no disgrace in starting. Nor, for that matter, in starting late.

Years ago as a young pastor, I stood next to a hospital bed and helped a man start his life with God. He was trembling with physical weakness such that the bed was tremulous to the touch. “I have never been a religious man,” he said to me, “but I would like to do something about that now.” In that afternoon, he responded to God in faith. His family and I waited with him at the hospital for one week after that, when he died while he and his son were looking at one another. I have no doubt that God did a complete work in this man’s heart, and that he lacked nothing when he died.

From Christ’s first invitation for the disciples to “follow Me,” up until the church as it exists now at this moment on this day, the call has been clear: “Join us.” Once he answers this call, the beginner belongs. He is a member of the community of faith, the company of the committed, the beloved of God. The beginner is no less a part of the Body of Christ than any other believer; no less valuable to God or to other members; and no less loved by God or His people. Every ship must have its maiden voyage; every sailor his first crossing.

The basis for a life lived completely under the influence of the Lord

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

It is reassuring when a spiritual director returns often to the basics. The subject of spirituality can be perilously nebulous and, in the wrong hands, a sincere Christian wanderer could be vulnerable to an unending stream of unfolding advice and direction that proves to be impossible to follow, or even to comprehend.

There is a danger, not only among the young in the faith, to be attracted to mystery or drama, with the result that a genuine faith and a genuine spirit is splayed by other imposing topics of interest. In this condition, one’s spirituality is not much more than a hobby.

In my experience, new believers want to first study the book of Revelation, and they want the 411 on angels and/or demons. The parts of the faith that would make good movies or video games appeal to young eyes.

Good spiritual guides working within the boundaries of solid Christian doctrine will redirect the young imagination to the basics of the faith.

In the Gospels Jesus continually brings up the basics when teaching His disciples. He speaks of prayer: “When you pray, say this, ‘Our Father …’” He speaks of commitment: “Deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Me.” He restates principles: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” He speaks of Himself as the foundation upon which resilient faith and life are built: “The other man built his house on a rock.” And the great hymn powerfully affirms the same truth: “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.”

It is little wonder, then, that good spiritual shepherds echo the concerns and priorities of The Good Shepherd.

At the outset of this new chapter, Father Caussade reinforces his idea of a good foundation, and repeats again his basic premise that self-abandonment unto God is at the heart of a life lived completely under the influence of the Lord.

“The great and solid foundation of the spiritual life is to give oneself to God.” ~Caussade (Page 55.)

          He further presses us in this same paragraph to consider ourselves as “a thing sold,” bringing to mind Paul’s stated and restated declaration to the Corinthians that they “were bought at a price” (First Corinthians 6:20, and 7:23). “You are not your own property,” says the Apostle.

So Caussade’s guidance here is not something new or something that he brought to the faith from outside or from his own imagination. Self-abandonment is the continuation of the call of the Gospel for Christians to lay down their lives, as though dead to the world and to sin, in order to allow God to take them up again for His pleasure, His purposes, His glory.

Faith is nothing if not a change of ownership.

The Apostle Peter says it this way: “for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (First Peter 2:10)

As Christ died on the cross and arose again to accomplish our salvation, so do we die in a sense when we deny ourselves to take up our cross and follow Him, and we rise to newness of life as we are infused with the Spirit of God – brought to life “by love, in love and for love,” as was articulated by William of St. Thierry. (The Nature and Dignity of Love)

This is clearly stated by Paul: “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

Prone to stray as we are, this newness of life has to be often refreshed through confession, nourished through the Church and deepened through prayer. During any journey we tire and weaken. A daily fresh start is needed to keep us moving toward our destination.

A pure heart is the first order of business

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 8 Continued-

As a pure heart is the soul’s first order of business, it must be said that, while its pursuit may involve a number of reliable means, the pure heart is made so by the Holy Spirit.

Scripture says “purify your hearts,” or “keep your way pure,” with the understanding that we are to offer our hearts unto God so that He may cleanse us in the way that only He can perfectly accomplish. (See James 4:8 and Psalm 119:9.) God advances to His people a holiness that is His alone. There is no holiness apart from Him. Nothing created can stand alone in its own innate purity. There is no purity unless God has put it in place. If anything or anyone is indeed holy, it is so because God has made it so and maintains it as such.

Through God’s glory and goodness we have been made partakers of His divine nature (see Second Peter 1:4). The origin and application of the holiness we possess is from God. I can do certain things to open my mouth, but it is God’s work alone to fill it. (See Psalm 81:10.)

For believers to be able to say that God has purified their hearts, they must have entrusted to God the possession and care of their inner life. He finds the wrecked condition of the inner man and restores it in such a way that it can bear upon its reworked strands the weight of His glory, the substance of His holiness and the fullness of His life.

A close, loving, enriching relationship with God is the means by which one’s heart is purified. This route is supported by “obedience to the truth” (First Peter 1:22), “keeping the word of God” (Psalm 119:9), seeking God in prayer for cleansing and renewal of spirit (Psalm 51:1-10), and “treasuring our hope in Christ” (First John 3:3).

In the Gospels, the disciples of Jesus go through a gradual change in their relationship with Christ. John the Baptist is heard pointing to Jesus as the Messiah. Having heard, the disciples then seek out Jesus, after which they become followers. As they follow, their belief deepens. As believing followers, they continue to learn from Him, and they walk further as obedient servants of His. And then, as believing, obedient followers, they become disciples who love Jesus.

Even at this point, their love for Jesus is to become something still more enriching – it will yield union with God. His disciples, from this brief overview, are loving, obedient followers united in the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. At the close of His priestly prayer, Jesus prays to the Father, “I have made your name known to [My disciples], and will continue to make it known so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them” (John 17:26).

Jesus is setting up an inner-life economy by which obedience is honored as a high place indeed, but obedience out of love for God is higher still, and loving union with him is the utmost peak for the believer.

I included the above description of a disciple’s progressive walk with God not as a prescription – although it is pretty good medicine – but to point out the movement, the development, the blossoming that naturally occurs when a disciple encounters and abides with God. This is the widening and deepening of faith that God works in us through His Spirit. One’s soul may always anticipate vast improvement as love for God develops.

An Eleventh-Century monk articulated the emergent soul in this way:  “To have pure faith in [Christ], and carefully meditating on that same faith, always to seek, and understanding what we seek, to find, and ardently to love what we find, to imitate as much as we can what we love, and in imitating Christ, to cling to Him steadfastly, and clinging to Him, to be made one with Him for all eternity.” (Guigo II, Twelve Meditations, Meditation 10)

In whatever way we put it to words, we know the purified heart will deepen into union as we come to love our God.

As Father Caussade puts it:

“Let us love, dear souls . . . Love gives us holiness with all its accompaniments, with both hands, so that it may flow from both sides into hearts open to these divine effusions.” ~Caussade (Page 54.)

Not just any type of love will give us holiness or open us to a divine inflow of God’s goodness and presence. This is a love for God from God. It is the love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father. We are beckoned to share in this love of this divine quality, so we must be done with the idea that mere good feelings about God will pass. Only the transformed can access and live in this love. When they do, it is always at their fingertips, and they at the Lord’s.

“By Your love, I have access to Your house” (Psalm 5:7).

The one gift that gives all other gifts

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 8-

What, indeed, is the key to a fulfilled spiritual life?

Truly, even those who seek God and find him will still thirst for more of him. The joy of journeying in the presence of God is not something that the earnest believer will ever want to abandon. If we were smart – or as Father C says, “pure of heart” – we would never take for granted this exceptional and amazing truth that God is for us, with us and within us; that he exerts his good and perfect will toward us at every moment and not for a second does he abandon his fatherhood, his protection and his sustenance of us.

However, like the Prodigal Son (Luke 18), it is possible for us to forsake our heavenly inheritance, step away from our awareness of the Father – either momentarily to address ourselves to some outburst selfish distraction, or for a longer span of time filled with chronic denial, anger and blame; or simply a preference to avoid the demands of a meaningful attachment to God. We can turn away from God’s fatherhood. The angels must marvel at the callous and capricious manner in which we, the adopted sons and daughters, sometimes abuse the love that God has for us.

What must we ask for in order to find everything in God? What will keep us from hesitating or resisting?

“As for me,” Caussade says, “I will ask one gift only, and I have only this one prayer to make to Thee. Give me a pure heart” (Page 52). (See Psalm 51:10.) This is the key. “The pure heart, the good will: This is the sole foundation of all spiritual states” (Page 53).

And again, “It is from purity of heart that [all souls] draw all their beauty and charm. The wonderful fruits of grace and all sorts of virtues, so nutritious for the soul and bursting into blossom on all sides, are the results of purity of heart.” (Ibid.)

It seems natural, does it not, that after warning us against contamination of spirit, the good father would enjoin us to pursue a pure heart with all our might; to return again and again to God’s loving embrace to further refine our own love for him, which William of St. Thierry said was “planted in us” (The Nature and Dignity of Love, Prologue).

Purity of heart, we may dare to discover, is not an end in itself but a means for a further-on life with God – a life marked by love for Him. We must give God ample workspace in our inner life to bring about this new creation. In the same way that He spoke over the darkness, “Let there be light,” so must He speak over our murky souls, “Let there be love.”

Caussade considers a pure heart and a good will to be a singular unit – a pure heart serving as a resource to form in us a will to follow the guidance of God as would a child at play: “What greater happiness than to possess God and be possessed by him! The soul sleeps peacefully on the breast of Providence playing with the divine wisdom like an innocent child without anxiety about the journey” (Page 52).

No wonder Jesus said the pure in heart would be “blessed,” and that “they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). Yes, they will see God when all are gathered into Heaven, but, the pure in heart will perceive God today with an awareness that comes from the Holy Spirit having free sway in a heart sprinkled clean by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:22).

Purity of heart is a gift from God over which we are to act as stewards. We do not make our hearts pure. God does that. But we are to guard our hearts and keep ourselves from drifting into shallows, from wandering into dark places or from exchanging our reliance upon God for anything else. When we, by blunder or by weakness, stray from our watch, the pure heart is contaminated. What are we to then do but seek forgiveness through confession and reconciliation?

Christians, if they are to be good stewards of this pure heart, will have to bathe it regularly with penitential tears to restore a clear conscience, a clean heart and an unobstructed view, as it were, of God’s presence.

'Why bother?' becomes 'I bother' because I love the God who loves me

Book 2, Chapter 1

-Part 7 Again Continued Even More-

The fact that one can possibly possess a diluted, pedestrian faith is one with which any believer must wrestle. We may one day successfully ward off the influence of the world, and the next day find ourselves having lapsed in our love for God and yielded to the inducements so readily at hand from the shadows. We may indeed find ourselves penetrated by the mentality of this present world.

Vigilance is in order – the type of which is urged upon believers by Paul in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Amplified Bible)

We must remember, too, before moving on from this subject, that the mere anti-world sentiment will not prove to be the originator of one’s love for God. The relationship goes the other way: One’s love for God will work in the soul of the believer in such a way that the polluting effects of the world, the age, will become better known and more readily rejected. Love for God will work a man loose from attachments to the world.

The means for eternal life is not to hate the world and arrive in Heaven, but to love God and live in this world in hope for eternal life with Him.

The believer will indeed leave his friendship with the world, “hate the first and love the second,” but must do so out of love for God. A person detached from the world is not necessarily attached to the Lord.

John Climacus, a 7^th-Century monk, articulated this need to renounce the world for the love of God in this way: “The man who renounces the world because of fear is like burning incense, which begins with fragrance and ends in smoke. The man who leaves the world in hopes of a reward is like the millstone that always turns around on the same axis. But the man who leaves the world for love of God has taken fire from the start, and like fire set to fuel, it soon creates a conflagration.” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step One: On Renunciation of Life) (My emphasis.)

Nor is someone who claims to be attached to the Lord necessarily free from an injurious or even lethal attachment to the things of the world. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I say?” asks Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:46). “I have never known you” (Matthew 7:23), He will say to supposed disciples who neither renounce the world nor embrace God with the love that only His love evokes.

We cannot hope to move on to God’s place of excellence for our souls until we have done with the world as prescribed in the Scriptures. In our hearts, we must agree with Peter: “Lord, we have left everything to follow you” (Matthew 19:27).

Here we have to rely on the grace of God to lead us and the mercy of God to tend to us when the corruption of the world grazes our soul.

Importantly, we must also consider that our one, singular renunciation of the world is certainly not going to accomplish a permanent detachment. The world, as much as we would like it to, will not lie down and leave us alone for the rest of our days. For the believer who uses the words, “I have done with the world,” the more truthful statement of renunciation might be: “I am working on it on this day.” What is needed is a persistent will toward detachment.

The world will not cease its drawing us away from God and draining us of our spiritual resources.

Henri Nouwen, a 20^th-Century spiritual writer, describes our situation in this way: “It is not easy to keep our eyes fixed on the eternal life, especially not in a world that keeps telling us that there are more immediate and urgent things on which to focus. There is scarcely a day that does not pull our attention away from our goal and make it look vague and cloudy.” (Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 1995, Page 68)

Nouwen resolves this problem by urging us to return again and again to prayer. Always prayer.

Guigo II, a 12^th-Century Carthusian monk, in his work The Ladder of Monks, also emphasized how one’s love for God and a love for the world are incongruous and also ruinous to the life that is to be marked by prayer, reading, meditation and contemplation – the four “rungs” on his ladder.

Obstacles to these spiritual disciplines, according to the monk of nine centuries ago, are: “Unavoidable necessity, the good works of the active life, human frailty and worldly follies.” (Chapter XV, Four Obstacles to these Degrees)

The Christian seeker is excused from all but the last of these four. For “unavoidable necessity” from living in the world, we may understand this to mean the matters that one incurs from existing as a member of a family, an employee, a citizen, or any other responsibility or state of life that naturally arises from living in the world. Just for one example, Jesus did not excuse his followers from paying taxes.

With regard to “good works of the active life,” the Christian must confront a need for a balanced life between one’s quiet meditative moments and the ministry or activity that brings the Gospel to life for the good of the souls of others.

“Human frailty,” Guigo wrote, “invites compassion.” We understand ourselves to be in weakness, and we rarely live as our own ethical equal. In the margin of the pages of our imperfection there is ample room for grace and forgiveness to be written.

Only “worldly follies,” says the monk, fall under the category of “blame.” Or, if you like, “guilt.” He goes on to explain how this shows itself:

“How ill it accords, how unseemly it is for ears which so recently listened to words which man may not utter, so quickly to attend to idle and slanderous stories,

“for eyes so newly purified by holy tears to turn their gaze so soon on worldly vanities,

“for the tongue which has scarcely ended its sweet song of welcome to the spouse, scarcely has made peace between Him and the bride with its burning and pleading eloquence, and has greeted her in the banqueting hall, to revert to foul talk, to scurrility, to lampoons and libels.”

We know well that Peter’s noble words from Matthew 19 are not the only quotes from the rough-hewn fisherman who acted more often than not as the spokesman for the group. He also, out of fear for his own life, denied three times that he knew Christ. When Jesus earlier became more specific about His pending death, Peter proudly stepped in and announced he would not allow such a thing. Jesus corrected him immediately. He who had left his nets to follow Jesus three years earlier returned to fishing after Christ had died. What restored Peter is that which restores us all, the mercy of God – His loving-kindness.

We even see in the biblical announcement to the world-infected Laodiceans that mercy would be at hand if they would repent: “I reprove and train those whom I love, so repent in real earnest. Look, I am standing at the door knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person’s side” (Revelation 3:19, 20).

        This door-knocking passage is considered one of the most generous and loving invitations from God to mankind. We would learn much more about the workings of God’s mercy and forgiveness if we would consider the condition of the people to whom these words were originally addressed. For who among us can be brought to the place of excellence that God has in mind for us unless and until we face and receive the mercy and forgiveness of God, whose love evokes our love for him.