What does it mean to “live a Christian life”? The reading that I’ve been doing lately has caused me to ask this question which, after 43 years of being a Catholic - sometimes practicing, sometimes lapsed, always sinful, and lately yearning for a deeper understanding of my faith – I feel embarrassed to admit that I've never really considered before. I’m starting to discover my likely answer to this question would be, if not wrong, then at least far from complete.
I’ve been reading some of the great Carmelite saints over the last year or so, along with other complementary books about the spiritual life. I’ve been primarily influenced by St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Perfection and Interior Castle, St. Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within, and St. John of the Cross’ poems The Dark Night and The Living Flame of Love. I’ve also read John of the Cross’ Ascent of Mount Carmel. I make no claim to have any kind of definitive understanding of any of these works and will not try to offer a scholarly analysis of what each writer is saying. And since I don’t have the time to cite too many direct quotes, I would encourage you to go to the sources yourself and let them speak directly to you. All I present here are some of the thoughts about the Christian life that these works have provoked in me in the hopes that they may help others who wish to grow closer to Christ. With that disclaimer, I’ll press on, asking the Blessed Mother to help me to communicate well the little bit of knowledge I have gained.
Besides teaching me that I am a baby (or, to be more precise, an impulsive toddler) in the spiritual life, these Carmelite masters and their fellow travelers have taught me that the Christian life is – first, last, and always – about union with Christ. Everything else has to flow from this union (or the desire for this union) to prevent my faith life from becoming something foreign to Christianity. Where I have usually (and subconsciously) thought of the Christian life as being mostly about external practices, I'm now coming to appreciate more fully how central a personal relationship with Christ is to my Christian faith. Just writing that makes me see how absurd it is to think that a person can be Christian without Christ being at the center of everything, but I also have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this kind of practice of my religious faith. I’m learning that I have a Pharisee, a Pagan, and an Atheist all lurking inside of me and that seeking union with Christ offers me the best protection from these errors.
First, the Pharisee. I know how easily I can slip into a practice of religion that is all about the letter of the Law without paying sufficient attention to its spirit. I can make a good show of being a great Catholic by observing all of the externals while internally I'm hardly thinking about my relationship with God at all. As for showing love to others, that really doesn’t cross my mind when I am in a “Pharisee phase” and it shows in my impatience, my critical spirit, my judgmentalism. It’s a practice of faith that is disconnected from God and it is empty and it is destructive.
I also know how to be the Pagan. I know how to offer up sacrifices and prayers in the hopes of placating or manipulating the Deity whom I fear. I will perform this religious ritual, Lord, and in return, I want you to bring prosperity to me and my loved ones and protect us from all harm. I will fast from that meal, Lord, and in return I want you to reward me with weight loss. I will say these prayers, Lord, and in return I expect the answer that I want, on the terms that I have set, at the time that I want it (i.e., right now). When the Pagan in me begins to assert herself, I lose the sense of God as the transcendent, omnipotent, loving Creator and begin to see Him as a spiritual vending machine that will dispense the product I want if I feed Him the right currency. I begin to worship a god made in my image and likeness and fall into idolatry, crowding out the true God and forgoing all of the graces He wants to give me.
Then there is the Atheist in me who whispers doubts in my ear, mocking me for buying into a fantasy. The Atheist is especially active in trying to discourage Eucharistic piety in me, whether at Mass or Adoration, and her voice is an insidious, seductive one because she knows how to make a good case. “Do you really mean to tell me that you believe all of this? God in that piece of bread? You believe that? It doesn’t even look like bread, much less God. Does it occur to you that it is silly to kneel down and worship bread?” It is the Atheist who shakes me to my core, but then again, she also sends me to Scripture and to the Fathers of the Church for reinforcement, and to more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, so maybe she’s both my worst enemy and my best friend. If nothing else, she does keep me on my toes.
The antidote to these temptations, as I am coming to understand from my Carmelite friends, is to zealously seek after union with God. I am made for this union and I will not be able to rest, as St. Augustine says, until I rest in the One who made me and saved me and sanctifies me. But in order to grow in my capacity for union with God, I need to first empty myself of everything else. It’s as if I’m jealously guarding two big handfuls of worthless rocks while at the same time God is offering me precious jewels. I can’t accept the jewels until I drop the rocks, but it’s hard to let them go. I’ve convinced myself that they’re valuable and I'm not 100% sure that God will come through on His end of the bargain. I need faith and courage, along with the humility to remember that God knows more about what I need than I do. I need to enter into what John of the Cross calls “the purgative way.”
The purgative way is, from what I understand, a growing detachment from all created goods which allows the soul to become attached only to God. It’s about saying “yes” to God and saying “no” to the self, but it’s not about being a doormat. I would compare saying no to the self to being the parent of an unruly toddler who makes many demands, all of which he thinks must be met immediately. The parent has to teach the child that some demands can wait, while others would only harm the child and must be denied. So then, I say “no” to the demands that my unruly self constantly makes as a way of bringing those desires under control. This I have to do over and over and over all day long as the self is persistent.
At the same time, the purgative way is about saying “yes” to God just as often as I say “no” to myself. How this plays out will depend on a person’s vocation or state in life. For me, a wife and mother to four young children, my opportunities to say “yes” to God usually involve saying yes to the needs of my husband and children. Not indulging their whims at the expense of my needs, but responding to their needs while setting aside my whims. For example, if I would rather read a book than do a load of laundry, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather sleep late than get out of bed and get breakfast ready, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather spend money on expensive clothes for myself than on food for my family, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. I need to realize that God may never ask me to submit to martyrdom for my faith, but He does ask me to die a little bit every day for love of Him and those He has entrusted to me. And if the day does come that He asks me for my life in martyrdom, these little deaths along the way will help me be prepared to say “yes” even to that.
This growing detachment will lead to what is called “the illuminative way.” In The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Father Garrigou-Lagrange quotes a Jesuit writer who described the purgative way as the devotion to the service of God and the illuminative way as surrender of self entirely to perfection. The purgative way is active – we choose to say “yes” to God and “no” to ourselves – while the illuminative way is passive – something God does to us which we choose to submit to. I’m not sure that I can articulate this very clearly, but it seems to me that the illuminative way is about acceptance of the trials and sufferings that God sends in order to further purify the soul and cleanse it of remaining self-love. Since I can barely grasp the implications of the purgative way, I’m not even going to try to elaborate on the illuminative way. But it’s clear from what I’ve been reading that the third stage, “the unitive way,” will not be reached without passing through these other two.
The unitive way should be the goal of all Christians. In the last stanza of The Dark Night, St. John of the Cross speaks poetically of this union with Christ: “I abandoned myself and forgot myself,/ laying my face on my Beloved;/ all things ceased; I went out from myself,/ leaving my cares/ forgotten among the lilies.” The soul has left everything behind, even itself, and has given itself over completely to Christ. The soul is in a state of peace, and has ceased even to experience desires because its only true desire has been satisfied. This is the Christian life in the full. This is what we are called to. This is the relationship that God wants to have with all of us. This is what we have been created for. And yet I have spent my life up to this point not even knowing that this is the goal, much less trying to reach it. It’s not anybody’s fault but mine. I’ve always been all too happy to satisfy my “animal appetites” at the expense of my relationship with God. So, what now? Now that I know, how will things be different going forward? What am I going to do with this realization?
I wish I could say that starting now I will enter into the purgative way with enthusiasm and seek opportunities to say “yes” to God and “no” to myself so that I can allow God to begin this great work in me. Being a little more realistic about myself, I’m going to say that starting now I will beg God to help me to grow in my love for Him so that I may have the grace to drop the pile of rubble that I’ve been holding onto for all these years. I’m going to ask Him to help me trust that my hands won’t stay empty for long, that He will fill them with treasure beyond all imagining. I’m going to pray that my growing relationship with Him will serve as the catalyst for a more sincere practice of my faith. I’m going to continue to do battle against the Pharisee, the Pagan, the Atheist, and all of the other disordered attitudes within me that impede my ability to love God with all of my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I’m going to try not to seek after extraordinary mystical phenomena, but to put my energies into serving God while trusting that He will give me everything that is good for me. And I’m going to continue to read and reflect on what these great masters have written so that one day, by the grace of God, I'll be able to join them in union with God for eternity.
The one thing I know is that I want this union, and this union won’t come without suffering. I can either embrace the suffering - the opportunities for purgation - that God sends me in this life, or I can wait and suffer that purgation in the next, but I won’t get to skip Good Friday and go right to Easter Sunday. It just doesn’t work that way. But I don’t want to spend any more of my life desiring less than God wants for me. I want to realize Christ’s promise to give me life and give it to me abundantly. Now that I have a better understanding of the goal, I feel like I have a shot at reaching it. That’s not much, but it’s something.
I’ve been reading some of the great Carmelite saints over the last year or so, along with other complementary books about the spiritual life. I’ve been primarily influenced by St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Perfection and Interior Castle, St. Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within, and St. John of the Cross’ poems The Dark Night and The Living Flame of Love. I’ve also read John of the Cross’ Ascent of Mount Carmel. I make no claim to have any kind of definitive understanding of any of these works and will not try to offer a scholarly analysis of what each writer is saying. And since I don’t have the time to cite too many direct quotes, I would encourage you to go to the sources yourself and let them speak directly to you. All I present here are some of the thoughts about the Christian life that these works have provoked in me in the hopes that they may help others who wish to grow closer to Christ. With that disclaimer, I’ll press on, asking the Blessed Mother to help me to communicate well the little bit of knowledge I have gained.
Besides teaching me that I am a baby (or, to be more precise, an impulsive toddler) in the spiritual life, these Carmelite masters and their fellow travelers have taught me that the Christian life is – first, last, and always – about union with Christ. Everything else has to flow from this union (or the desire for this union) to prevent my faith life from becoming something foreign to Christianity. Where I have usually (and subconsciously) thought of the Christian life as being mostly about external practices, I'm now coming to appreciate more fully how central a personal relationship with Christ is to my Christian faith. Just writing that makes me see how absurd it is to think that a person can be Christian without Christ being at the center of everything, but I also have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this kind of practice of my religious faith. I’m learning that I have a Pharisee, a Pagan, and an Atheist all lurking inside of me and that seeking union with Christ offers me the best protection from these errors.
First, the Pharisee. I know how easily I can slip into a practice of religion that is all about the letter of the Law without paying sufficient attention to its spirit. I can make a good show of being a great Catholic by observing all of the externals while internally I'm hardly thinking about my relationship with God at all. As for showing love to others, that really doesn’t cross my mind when I am in a “Pharisee phase” and it shows in my impatience, my critical spirit, my judgmentalism. It’s a practice of faith that is disconnected from God and it is empty and it is destructive.
I also know how to be the Pagan. I know how to offer up sacrifices and prayers in the hopes of placating or manipulating the Deity whom I fear. I will perform this religious ritual, Lord, and in return, I want you to bring prosperity to me and my loved ones and protect us from all harm. I will fast from that meal, Lord, and in return I want you to reward me with weight loss. I will say these prayers, Lord, and in return I expect the answer that I want, on the terms that I have set, at the time that I want it (i.e., right now). When the Pagan in me begins to assert herself, I lose the sense of God as the transcendent, omnipotent, loving Creator and begin to see Him as a spiritual vending machine that will dispense the product I want if I feed Him the right currency. I begin to worship a god made in my image and likeness and fall into idolatry, crowding out the true God and forgoing all of the graces He wants to give me.
Then there is the Atheist in me who whispers doubts in my ear, mocking me for buying into a fantasy. The Atheist is especially active in trying to discourage Eucharistic piety in me, whether at Mass or Adoration, and her voice is an insidious, seductive one because she knows how to make a good case. “Do you really mean to tell me that you believe all of this? God in that piece of bread? You believe that? It doesn’t even look like bread, much less God. Does it occur to you that it is silly to kneel down and worship bread?” It is the Atheist who shakes me to my core, but then again, she also sends me to Scripture and to the Fathers of the Church for reinforcement, and to more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, so maybe she’s both my worst enemy and my best friend. If nothing else, she does keep me on my toes.
The antidote to these temptations, as I am coming to understand from my Carmelite friends, is to zealously seek after union with God. I am made for this union and I will not be able to rest, as St. Augustine says, until I rest in the One who made me and saved me and sanctifies me. But in order to grow in my capacity for union with God, I need to first empty myself of everything else. It’s as if I’m jealously guarding two big handfuls of worthless rocks while at the same time God is offering me precious jewels. I can’t accept the jewels until I drop the rocks, but it’s hard to let them go. I’ve convinced myself that they’re valuable and I'm not 100% sure that God will come through on His end of the bargain. I need faith and courage, along with the humility to remember that God knows more about what I need than I do. I need to enter into what John of the Cross calls “the purgative way.”
The purgative way is, from what I understand, a growing detachment from all created goods which allows the soul to become attached only to God. It’s about saying “yes” to God and saying “no” to the self, but it’s not about being a doormat. I would compare saying no to the self to being the parent of an unruly toddler who makes many demands, all of which he thinks must be met immediately. The parent has to teach the child that some demands can wait, while others would only harm the child and must be denied. So then, I say “no” to the demands that my unruly self constantly makes as a way of bringing those desires under control. This I have to do over and over and over all day long as the self is persistent.
At the same time, the purgative way is about saying “yes” to God just as often as I say “no” to myself. How this plays out will depend on a person’s vocation or state in life. For me, a wife and mother to four young children, my opportunities to say “yes” to God usually involve saying yes to the needs of my husband and children. Not indulging their whims at the expense of my needs, but responding to their needs while setting aside my whims. For example, if I would rather read a book than do a load of laundry, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather sleep late than get out of bed and get breakfast ready, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather spend money on expensive clothes for myself than on food for my family, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. I need to realize that God may never ask me to submit to martyrdom for my faith, but He does ask me to die a little bit every day for love of Him and those He has entrusted to me. And if the day does come that He asks me for my life in martyrdom, these little deaths along the way will help me be prepared to say “yes” even to that.
This growing detachment will lead to what is called “the illuminative way.” In The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Father Garrigou-Lagrange quotes a Jesuit writer who described the purgative way as the devotion to the service of God and the illuminative way as surrender of self entirely to perfection. The purgative way is active – we choose to say “yes” to God and “no” to ourselves – while the illuminative way is passive – something God does to us which we choose to submit to. I’m not sure that I can articulate this very clearly, but it seems to me that the illuminative way is about acceptance of the trials and sufferings that God sends in order to further purify the soul and cleanse it of remaining self-love. Since I can barely grasp the implications of the purgative way, I’m not even going to try to elaborate on the illuminative way. But it’s clear from what I’ve been reading that the third stage, “the unitive way,” will not be reached without passing through these other two.
The unitive way should be the goal of all Christians. In the last stanza of The Dark Night, St. John of the Cross speaks poetically of this union with Christ: “I abandoned myself and forgot myself,/ laying my face on my Beloved;/ all things ceased; I went out from myself,/ leaving my cares/ forgotten among the lilies.” The soul has left everything behind, even itself, and has given itself over completely to Christ. The soul is in a state of peace, and has ceased even to experience desires because its only true desire has been satisfied. This is the Christian life in the full. This is what we are called to. This is the relationship that God wants to have with all of us. This is what we have been created for. And yet I have spent my life up to this point not even knowing that this is the goal, much less trying to reach it. It’s not anybody’s fault but mine. I’ve always been all too happy to satisfy my “animal appetites” at the expense of my relationship with God. So, what now? Now that I know, how will things be different going forward? What am I going to do with this realization?
I wish I could say that starting now I will enter into the purgative way with enthusiasm and seek opportunities to say “yes” to God and “no” to myself so that I can allow God to begin this great work in me. Being a little more realistic about myself, I’m going to say that starting now I will beg God to help me to grow in my love for Him so that I may have the grace to drop the pile of rubble that I’ve been holding onto for all these years. I’m going to ask Him to help me trust that my hands won’t stay empty for long, that He will fill them with treasure beyond all imagining. I’m going to pray that my growing relationship with Him will serve as the catalyst for a more sincere practice of my faith. I’m going to continue to do battle against the Pharisee, the Pagan, the Atheist, and all of the other disordered attitudes within me that impede my ability to love God with all of my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I’m going to try not to seek after extraordinary mystical phenomena, but to put my energies into serving God while trusting that He will give me everything that is good for me. And I’m going to continue to read and reflect on what these great masters have written so that one day, by the grace of God, I'll be able to join them in union with God for eternity.
The one thing I know is that I want this union, and this union won’t come without suffering. I can either embrace the suffering - the opportunities for purgation - that God sends me in this life, or I can wait and suffer that purgation in the next, but I won’t get to skip Good Friday and go right to Easter Sunday. It just doesn’t work that way. But I don’t want to spend any more of my life desiring less than God wants for me. I want to realize Christ’s promise to give me life and give it to me abundantly. Now that I have a better understanding of the goal, I feel like I have a shot at reaching it. That’s not much, but it’s something.
