Weekly Meditations

The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.                                                                   John 17:22-23 (The Message)

Many of us operate from a much more dualistic sense of spirituality than we ought to.  We tend to see and act as though God were wholly “other.”  We imagine our relationship with God as with One who accompanies us, helps us, counsels us, but who is ostensibly apart from us.  How is this different from Jesus’ relationship with His Father?  And how does Jesus’ prayer—that we would be one with God just as He and the Father are one—address this?

Mother Teresa was one among many saints who understood the spirituality of a life lived in tandem with God’s movement.  She taught her sisters the importance of this theology when she wrote,

We must be aware of our oneness with Christ, as he was aware of his oneness with his Father. Our activity is truly apostolic only in so far as we permit him to work in and through us – with his power, his desire, his love.

Jesus told us plainly that, apart from Him, we can do nothing (John 15:4).   Instead of seeking God for our marching orders, and then assuming the task of deploying these, we should rather seek, as Jesus did, God’s direct movement within us as the very power by which we do all things.  This is the gift of the New Testament whereby our obedience to God is to be sought through the impulse of the Holy Spirit, .  As the Lord assures us through the prophet Ezekiel, “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees” (Eze. 36:26-27).

Jesus offers the example of His own life as a model for the type of relationship we are to anticipate.  Because He desires to share this one-ness with us, Jesus prays that we would be united with the Trinity, just as He and the Father are.  Mother Teresa reiterates this hope to her sisters and highlights its relationship to prayer .

Our lives must be connected with the living Christ in us. If we do not live in the presence of God, we cannot go on.  If you don’t pray, your presence will have no power; your words will have no power.

No other definition exists for the nature of our unity with God than the one Jesus Himself offered when He said,  “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (Jn. 15:10).  Jesus’ “commands” are simply the prompts of His indwelling Spirit moving us, from within, to be conformed to God’s will.   There is no other way to live the Christian life than in unity with Christ.  Mother Teresa saw this as essential to anything we would call spiritual in our lives.  She wrote,

Prayer is the very life of oneness, of being one with Christ.  Therefore, prayer is as necessary as the air, as the blood in our body, as anything to keep us alive – to keep us alive to the grace of God.  Ask the Holy Spirit to pray in you. Learn to pray, love to pray, and pray often. Feel the need to pray and want to pray.

The apostle Paul boldly declared that, “the life I live is not my own, it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal, 2:20).  Can we say the same about ourselves?  If not, what adjustments do we need to make in order for this statement to be true for us as well?  The honest answers to these questions should make clear to us the spiritual direction we are being called to as we grow in our unity with God.

The whole progress of the soul consists in its being moved by God; but our own part remains in placing it in “a state to receive this motion”

St. John of the Cross.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.   Jer. 31:34

I often think I have the best job in the world.  As a spiritual director, I get a ring-side seat to God’s story as it unfolds in the lives of people who are growing in their knowledge and experience of the Lord’s presence.  But this word from Jeremiah is also something I long for—the day when I, and every other pastor, teacher and spiritual director will be out of a job.  “No longer will one person tell another, ‘Know the Lord,’” the prophet writes,  “for they will all know me.”  In the meantime there is a particular insight that gives me confidence that the slow and painstaking work we do in encouraging deeper relationships with God is somehow related to the transformation of the whole world.

There is an urban legend called the “hundredth monkey” that represents something of this phenomenon.  The hundredth-monkey effect is a supposed event in which, once a critical number is reached, a learned behavior spreads instantaneously from one group to another.   The hypothesis first showed up in Lawrence Blair’s book, Rhythms of Vision (1975) where studies were cited of scientists observing macaque monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima.  They noticed that some of these monkeys were learning how to wash mud off their food before eating it.  The researchers then claimed that once a critical number of monkeys had adopted this behaviour—the so-called hundredth monkey—this evolutionary instinct somehow spontaneously spread across the water to monkeys on nearby islands.  For no apparent reason, they too started experimenting with washing their food.  The story has since been used by others as a parable to support the hope of raising global consciousness in matters of ecology and social justice.

Could this also be what happens in a church, or a nation as more and more people learn to relate to God through prayer? Whether this story is true or not I do believe that something similar happens in the spirituality of community when a quorum of its members start moving more in step with the Spirit of God.

In his book, The Heart of the Parish: a Theology of the Remnant, Martin Thornton applies this type of thinking to parish work.  He recognizes the many different relationships to spirituality found in any given community saying, “each of our parishes contain the few really faithful, the occasional churchgoer, and everyone else.”  Thornton sees these different strata as concentric circles of intimacy with God where the influence of the center pervades the whole.  The few faithful believers—the remnant, as he calls them—are the ones who mysteriously anchor the whole community to the depths of spirituality.  According to Thornton, the church and ultimately the whole world depend and revolve around the faithful endeavour of the remnant.   He writes,

The Remnant, far from being an amputated segment, the clique detached from the whole, is at the centre of the parochial organism and of power extending beyond it. It is the very heart which recovers and serves the whole.

The concept of remnant theology can be quite motivating if we see our individual growth as benefitting the whole.  Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when He said, “For their sakes, I sanctify myself” (Jn. 17:19). Consider Thornton’s premise that as you mature as an individual in the knowledge of God you are somehow contributing to the maturity of all.  How does your own spiritual transformation serve the emerging freedom of all creation?  Paul implies something of this when he writes that  “the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19).

In quantum physics, we are reminded of the great mystery of our interconnectedness, where a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia is somehow related, in effect, to a tornado in Texas. Even if there are only a few people growing in their knowledge of God, it will make a difference to the whole church, to society and to the world.  Somehow, through God’s mysterious economy, it will add truth and depth to the spiritual direction of all creation.

Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways and He will direct your path.      Prov. 3:6

The trouble with our thoughts is that, for the most part, they presume to operate independently of God.  And the countless speculations and often short-sighted conclusions they reach on important matters related to self, to others, to life and to God often hinder us from learning directly at the feet of Christ.   Paul urged the Corinthians to “take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” (2Cor. 10:5).  It implies that we are to bring all things that take place within us into relationship with God.  And this includes all the deliberations that go on in our mind.

We get into trouble whenever we venture too far in our thinking without Christ.  All on our own, we reach some conclusion on a matter of importance.  We then have to live with whatever we believe, even if it is false, until God shows us otherwise.  When lies or half-truths get imbedded in our thinking we are most impaired in our spiritual direction.  Without even realizing it, we are operating from faulty premises.

It takes a lot more time to undo a lie in our thinking than to be patient beforehand with the conclusions we reach.  Better to allow our thoughts to remain uncertain for as long as possible than to prematurely bring our deliberations to a closure.  Such a prayerful approach requires faith though, and the ability to not let our anxious concerns regarding the unknown overly dictate our conclusions.

We should be especially careful when this applies to how we think about ourselves.  Without God, we can never know ourselves as we should.  Better to take all our opinions, speculations and analysis to Christ.  Ask the Lord what He thinks of these matters.  Do you feel that you need to change?  Ask God about this before you jump to any conclusions. Wait, watch and pray as the topic evolves in your spirit.  Rather than opting for any of the self-saving agendas that, on our own, we prescribe for our lives, take it instead to the Lord in prayer.  Are you concerned about this or that matter?  Talk to God about it rather than obsessing about life on your own.

Our thoughts might well contain important data but we should never consider them exclusively on their own.  We are wise to hold onto our conclusions lightly until we’ve verified them with God—to simply take the time to find out what Jesus has to say about what we are thinking.  Ask the Lord what He thinks about this or that matter.  He will either confirm our thoughts or else show us other ways to understand our situation.

As the book of Proverbs so plainly counsels us, we should always be wary of leaning overly to our own understanding.   By simply acknowledging the Lord in all our ways we will walk a very different path than the one that we would otherwise define for ourselves.

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry, ev’rything to God in Prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry, ev’rything to God in Prayer.

Joseph Medlicott Scriven
1819-1886

Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.  2Cor. 3:16

Science and Scripture offer hints that our lives, as well as God’s, are both closely related to the nature of light.  The apostle John tells us plainly that “God is light.” (1 Jn 1:5) and that Jesus is “the light that gives light to every person born” (Jn. 1:9).  Paul, as well, teaches that “God is immortal and lives in unapproachable light” (1Tim. 6:16). These are to be understood as theological principles much more than poetry.

We too are often described in terms of light.  Jesus tells us, for instance, that we are lights set on a hill for all to see (Mt. 5:14).  But Scripture also teaches us that the light we have is not our own (2Cor. 3:9).  The nature of our relationship to God is more like that of the moon to the sun.  God is light and we, made in the image of God, mirror that light.  Our light is simply a reflected light.

But there are many ways that we hinder the reflection of God in us.  Like a circus mirror, we often distort God’s light in our attempts to manipulate it.  We try to harness it to our advantage or to redirect it according to what we wish to highlight or conceal of ourselves.  Perhaps we hide ourselves from God’s light as Adam and Eve did.  Light, after all, exposes truth and we are not always open to what it might reveal.  And so we cover our mirror with fig leaves so that it no longer reflects God’s light as fully as it should.

For many such reasons we find veils over our hearts that diminish the light, and therefore diminish the truth of our lives.  And unfortunately, there is nothing that we can do about these veils.  Nothing, that is, except come to God for healing.  As Paul makes clear, whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is taken away.  This is how God restores His image in us.

The spiritual life is a matter of receiving God’s light as fully as possible and reflecting it back to God, like a polished mirror, as purely as possible.  No manipulation, no redirection, no smudges, no self-absorption—just a true reflection of who God is in us.  This is what Jesus demonstrated at His transfiguration —the light of God, perfectly reflected in human form.  Jesus’ transfiguration, in some ways, also foreshadows our own transfiguration

As God’s light shines on us, what does it mean for us to faithfully reflect it?  What is required of us in order to do so more fully?  The answers to these questions represent the spiritual direction of our own transfiguration.  In this, we have opportunity to participate, as Moses did, by simply gazing more fully into God’s face.  As we do so, Paul assures us that the veil will become thinner, less opaque.  And we will return from such encounters with faces that more fully reflect God’s glory.

If your eye be single, your whole body be full of light.
Mat. 6:22

Each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;  1Thes. 4:4-5

How often in the day do we push ourselves to be somewhere just ahead of where we actually are?  Maybe it’s a deadline, or an urgent need that creates an imperative in us for its fulfillment.  Or perhaps it’s just the tedium of “what is” that makes us want to rush ahead to be somewhere other than where we actually are.  Regardless of the reasons, whenever this mode overly defines our lifestyle the result is always the same—we end up losing touch with our souls.

Often, when I am trying to herd my family out the door to get somewhere, I will catch myself moving ahead to the next position I want them to be, perhaps standing at the doorway with my keys in hand, hoping that this might speed them up a bit.  How is this similar to the ways we often rush ahead of ourselves, as if to force us to pick up the pace?   And how does our refusal to accept or wait for ourselves contribute to feeling separated from our souls?

Feeling disjointed has a lot to do with the inner pace we set for ourselves in the course of our day.   This includes the many ways we overstep the truth of “what is” in favour of our projected ideals of what we wish it were.  “In patience,” we are told, “you shall possess your souls” (Luke 21:19 KJV).  St. Frances de Sales, a 16th cent. spiritual director, wrote similarly that, “to possess fully our souls is the effect of patience, made more perfect as it is less mixed with disquiet and eagerness.”

Peace and patience integrate us towards wholeness.  To “possess your soul” then, is to allow time throughout the day to literally catch up with yourself.  It asserts the reality of “what is” as the starting point of our lives rather than the imagination of where we would otherwise wish it to be.  Being patient with the actual pace of our lives is ultimately a matter of self-control.  And whenever we lose this virtue it leads to a less honourable expression of life.

Paul instructed the Thessalonians to “learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God” (1Thes. 4:4-5).  In other words, self-control better exemplifies a person who knows the sovereignty of God in their lives.  In the context of his letter, Paul was of course referring to moral self-discipline.  But the same exhortation applies to any lack of self-control we exhibit in relationship to our souls.  When the “passionate lusts” of our imagination drive us to live out of sync with the reality of who we actually are we tend to lose our sense of wholeness.  “In patience, you shall possess your souls.”  Perhaps this is what the apostle had in mind when he wrote, “since we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

The obvious antidote to “losing our souls” is to simply allow times in our day to catch up with ourselves—times to reclaim the peace that we’ve lost track of in the frenzy and distractions of our busy lives.  To “possess our souls” is to accept the reality of “what is” as more true than even the most attractive and urgent alternatives we can imagine.  And the more we exercise such times of restorative patience in our day the more in sync we will be with the truth of our lives.

The false self prays from where it thinks it should be or would like to be.  The true self prays from where it is.

Albert Haase,O.F.M.