As Elizabeth Scalia reminds us today, St. Teresa of Avila said,
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things pass away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
So easy to say; so hard to live. True, though.
Looked at one way, the interior life is a long series of repairs. We are broken people in so many ways, we fall so far short of the perfection God has in mind for us; and as we grow in the interior life these things slowly get fixed.
We currently are in the middle of a long kitchen remodel; and perhaps not coincidentally, it occurred to me this week that growing in the interior life is less like being a handyman and playing Mr. Fix-It in your own home, and more like hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen. There’s so much to do, and so much of it has to be done just right, and anyway I’ve got a full-time job of my own. Better to hire someone who knows what they are doing, and let them get on with it while I go to work.
The contractor, of course, is God. He knows what needs to be done, and he’ll take care of it for you. By His grace, amazing things will happen while you’re not paying attention. The thing is, you need to cooperate with him.
When you’re having your kitchen remodeled, there are many ways in which the contractor needs your help. You have to pick out counter tops. You have to pick out cupboard doors and plumbing fixtures and tile and colors of stain and cabinet hardware and appliances, and on and on and on. If you don’t do these things, work stops. Nothing happens. And, of course, you have to keeping paying him, or he can’t afford to pay his workers or buy the raw materials. If you don’t cooperate, the kitchen doesn’t get done.
Similarly, you have to cooperate with God’s grace, or nothing will happen. And really, that’s what these series of posts is all about: ways to cooperate with God’s grace that have worked for me, and might work for you. Ways to keep construction moving forward.
There is one major difference between remodeling your kitchen and the interior life: the remodel only seems like it’s going to last forever.
Pursuing the interior life—a life of holiness—is not easy, but fortunately God doesn’t leave us to our own resources. As I noted a couple of days ago, when we think of God that means that God’s calling us. More than that, He gives us the help we need in the form of grace…which term basically means “the help that we need that God gives us.”
To put it another way, you can’t get to know God on your own; He’s got to be part of the process.
God is free to give grace to anyone He pleases, and He does; if he didn’t, no unbelievers would ever come to Him. But for those of us in the Church He provides special means of grace that we should be eager to take advantage of: the sacraments. It’s not that we can force Him to give us grace; it’s that He has promised that if we make use of the sacraments, He will always give it to us. And not only will He give it to us, because of His promise we can know for sure that we’re getting it.
There’s a small catch. I gather (I am not a professional theologian) that to receive the full benefit you need to expect to receive His grace, and to make use of it. Cooperation is key. (But that’s a post for another day.) So be eager to attend mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist; and be just as eager to go to confession on a regular basis; and expect it to make a difference.
I’d been meaning to say a few more words about the Catholic New Media Conference and what I heard and learned there, but Julie has posted her summary of the CNMC and I find that I’ve not much more to say. The one thing she left out is the wonderful talk the last speaker presented, and fortunately she’s posted the text so you can read it for yourself. Which you should go do.
A major theme of the week was civility and taking the high road; the need for this was highlighted by a violent Facebook argument taking place at the same time involving a prominent Catholic blogger and a prominent Catholic priest. (As I only followed the fireworks from a distance I won’t go into details; those who saw what happened know what happened, and those who don’t can use their imaginations. Moreover, I don’t want to fan the flames.) (However, my sympathies were with the blogger.)
The fact is, we folks on-line can be amazingly, appallingly nasty to one another. It isn’t attractive, it doesn’t win friends, and it only influences people to distaste, disgust, and dislike. It doesn’t win anyone to Christ, but rather drives people away. We’ve got to stop doing it. See Thomas McDonald’s outstanding post on the “Inter-Nicene Creed” for more.
I do not often resemble the following scriptures:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
—Matt 5:6
O God, thou art my God, I seek thee,
my soul thirsts for thee;
my flesh faints for thee,
as in a dry and weary land where no water is.
—Ps 63:1
And this is a problem for the interior life, because the interior life is a life of learning to love God more than anything else, to put God before all else. And since we cannot really achieve that in this life (which is why “hope” is one of the theological virtues), the interior life is precisely a life of hungering and thirsting for God.
It’s kind of a double-bind. If you aren’t hungry and thirsty for God, you won’t seek him; so how can you seek him if you aren’t hungry and thirsty for Him? How can you get the interior life moving?
It reminds me of something my eldest said when he was quite young, and was asked why he hadn’t done something or other:
I can’t want to.
When it comes to loving God, sometimes I can’t want to, either.
And yet, I find, when I think about it, that I want to want to. And that’s all that’s necessary. As C.S. Lewis had George MacDonald say in The Great Divorce,
If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear.
Just pray: “Lord Jesus, I want to hunger and thirst for you as I ought.” Pray it whenever you happen to think about, because it’s a prayer that I believe Jesus will always answer. It might take awhile. In my case, I think it took years before I noticed that the prayer was being answered.
(Years? Really? Years? Well, yeah. The interior life is a long-term thing.)
Perhaps you can’t want to. But if you can want to want to, you’ll get there in the end.
The first thing to do in pursuing the interior life might also be the easiest, and that is simply to respond. If you find yourself thinking about God, for any reason, that’s a sign that God’s calling you to attend to Him. So do that.
I’m not suggesting that every time you think about God, you drop everything and rush off to some private place to pray. St. Paul tells us to pray constantly (1 Thess 5:17), but one has to eat and work and so forth. If we are to pray constantly, then, we need to be able to pray while doing these other things.
So if you happen to think about God, pray something simple. It can be something as simple as “Thank you for being with me.” It can be something more formal, like the Jesus prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Whatever you want to say is fine. The point is that you’re responding to God’s call….and over time, you’re building up the habit of responding to God’s call wherever you are and whatever you are doing. You’re also learning to recognize His presence in your day-to-day activities. It’s all good.
A few days ago I mentioned the interior life, and I find that I’ve got a few things to say about the interior life and how to embark upon it. I hasten to add that I’m no expert. I don’t intend to be in any way exhaustive; I simply intend to talk about things I’ve learned and things that have worked for me. Your mileage, as they say, may vary; and if something that worked for me doesn’t work for you, so be it. If everyone was exactly like me, the world would be a very strange place.
It’s a big topic, though, and so I don’t plan to put it all in this one post. I feel a little presumptuous at starting another series of posts, as most of my “series of posts” seem to terminate after the second, or sometimes even the first. But I was successful at continuing my series of posts about marriage (God is good!) and I’ve already got a notion for several subsequent posts, so we’ll give it a try. Feel free to poke me if I falter.
So what is the “interior life”? The Wikipedia page on the interior life defines it as follows:
Interior life is a life which seeks God in everything, a life of prayer and the practice of living in the presence of God. It connotes intimate, friendly conversation with Him, and a determined focus on internal prayer versus external actions, while these latter are transformed into means of prayer.
I wouldn’t have put it quite that way (or nearly so well); I’d simply say that my interior life is my life with Jesus. Being a Christian isn’t simply a way to live or a set of things to believe; it’s learning to live with Jesus. And by the nature of things much of that is inside, where it can’t be seen.
The interior life is something we are all called to; it’s part of the “universal call to holiness” described in Lumen Gentium. But until you’ve begun to experience it, it’s hard to know just what it means, or how to get started with it. Hence this series of posts.
I don’t claim to be more than a beginner. But according to St. Jose Maria Escriva, the interior life consists in beginning and beginning again. So let’s begin.
This post continues a series of reflections that I began here.
Note to anyone who comes to this page looking for a fight: please read the post carefully. If you’re a supporter of same-sex marriage, you probably won’t like my reasons for opposing it. But please take the time to discover what they are, and what my notion of “opposition” is before you start cussing me out.
Previously I’ve written of my responsibility to others as a Christian, and in particular that I must not lie to them. I’ve written of my rejection of coercion in most spiritual and moral matters (including this one). I’ve written on the moral necessity of knowing and loving what is good. I’ve talked about the many benefits, both physical and spiritual, of communal living, and particularly of married and family life. And I’ve talked about what I call “foundational sin“, sin that lies at the center of your self-image and is consequently the hardest to repent of.
And here’s where we come to the nub.
It should come as no surprise, given that I profess to believe what the Catholic Church teaches, that I think that certain specific acts are morally wrong. These include having sex with another person outside of traditional, heterosexual marriage.
A same-sex couple who seek out a same-sex marriage are presumably planning to have sex of some sort together. And by getting married, the couple have embedded this sin of sex outside of traditional marriage at the heart of their lives, where it will be difficult if not impossible to repent of. It’s hard enough to root out a foundational sin in your life when it’s just you. When rooting out that sin would involve the betrayal of a loved partner, it’s much harder.
Please note what I’m not saying.
I’m not saying that gays and lesbians are abominations. God loves us all.
I’m not saying that gays and lesbians are more sinful than straight people. It should be clear from what I’ve said that I regard cohabitation of straight people and re-marriage after divorce to be equally problematic, and there are six other deadly sins to think about.
I’m not saying that same-sex attraction is sinful. Me, I’ve got many attractions to things that I ought not do. So does everybody.
I’m not saying that devoting your life to the good of your loved ones is wrong; in fact, I’ve said the opposite.
But for me to vote in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage would be to say, “Go ahead; build your lives on this sin. It’s OK. It will do you no harm.” Or worse, it would be say, “Yeah, I think it will hurt you, but I don’t care.”
I cannot coerce anyone to open their lives to God’s grace. It doesn’t work, and attempting to do so is deeply sinful. But I mustn’t lie to them either. I mustn’t pretend that it doesn’t matter.
So I’m fresh back home from the Catholic New Media Conference, where I had great time meeting folks I’m feeling too tired to list for fear I’ll leave someone out. I got to see Tom and Julie Davis, of course, and was lucky enough to share meals with Rebecca Frech (one of Jane’s favorite bloggers), Sarah Reinhard, Jennifer Fitz, and of course Tom and Julie. I look forward to seeing all of them again some time.
I’ll probably post a few more specifics about the conference…but not just at the moment.
Update: Fixed the link to Sarah’s blog.
In her book, Forming Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell suggests that the first thing a parish needs to do to reach a norm of intentional discipleship is “Break the silence.” That is,
Talk openly about the possibility of a relationship with a personal God who loves you. Talk about your relationship with God.
In a study she quotes, 71% of Catholics who left the Catholic Church for Protestantism answered that they left because “My spiritual needs were not being met.” From her work, she says that it’s often because they’ve begun to experience spiritual growth in Christ…and they can’t find anyone to talk to about it at their parish. Then they meet an Evangelical who does talk about it, and they think, “Gosh, this person knows what I’m going through. Nobody at my parish does….” And they quite understandably leave the Church.
When people are leaving the Church because of their spiritual growth, we have a problem.
What I would have called the “spiritual life” when I was an Anglican, Catholics call the “interior life”. I like that name better, because it’s about how I relate to God in my deepest self…and because my deepest self is spirit-and-body, not just spirit. But because it’s part of my deepest self, it’s hard to talk about it, especially casually, especially in passing.
Seriously: it’s after Mass on Sunday, and I’m saying hello to someone I probably don’t know all that well. It’s quite possible that they have no idea what the interior life is. It’s quite possible that they have a much deeper interior life than I do. (It’s quite possible that both of these things might be true of the same person!) How do I even get started talking about it?
And then, I think there’s a culture of not showing off. It’s proper to have a deep interior life, but it’s not proper to show off how deep your interior life is. Of course, Sherry points out that it’s much more important to listen than to talk. Well and good, but I still don’t see how you get the conversation started. “Hey, how’s your prayer life this week? Gotten any consolation lately?” Once you’ve got an in with someone, that might be possible, but I suspect that the average Catholic would look at you funny.
But it’s important. Because serious spiritual growth depends on the development of one’s interior life, and for people who are just starting having someone to talk to is a real help.
I’ve got a friend—he’s the minister of a Four Square church in New Mexico—who likes to greet people with, “How’s God treating you?” That’s a start, because it’s nicely vague; people can take on a purely external level if they choose.
In any given parish, there are people who are used to having an interior life with God; those who are just starting to have an interior life with God*; and those who don’t know that it’s possible to have an interior life with God. Somehow we need to get these people talking to each other.
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* According to St. José Maria Escriva, “interior life is beginning, and beginning again.” Ain’t it the truth.
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The View from the Foothills 