67 one of the first questions we face as we begin our new life with God is where to start. we understand that it is not anything we can do that will win us salvation. that is a free gift from Christ. but we instinctively know that we must contribute something of ourselves and prove our faith and love. St. Paul said we are 'to work out our salvation in fear and trembling'. usually we decide that the best way of doing that is by keeping God's commandments. the temptation might be to start a ruthless self-analysis to ferret out all our sins and unruly desires, in a frantic effort to give up sin, even if we have not ben terribly bad. in a short time we find ourselves fighting a thousand battles on a thousand different fronts. if we are particularly strong-willed we can be quite successful, but before long we find ourselves almost totally drained of energy and when we fall, which we most certainly will, we can become so depressed we will be tempted to give up.
while it is important for us to try to do what is right and be virtuous, it is not possible to accomplish they overnight. nothing in nature grows overnight. plants start with a seed. the seed germinates, grows into a seedling, then a full-grown plant. flowers appear , then fruit. all in good time or, as Jesus put it, 'in due season'.
68 everything in nature grows the same way, slowly, step by step until it reaches maturity. the human person grows that way too. it takes years for our bodies to grow to maturity. it takes as many years for us to grow to intellectual maturity. the same is true for emotional and psychological maturity. that may take 40 or 50 years. I remember an incident which took place at a party I attended. a lady was growing impatient with her husband and made the remark to him, 'Harry, when are you going to grow up? she was talking bout emotional maturity. harry was 75 years old. emotional maturity. we may think we can change overnight, but nature does not work that way. Spiritual growth is slow. it takes not just a few years, but a lifetime. we struggle to be good, to do the right thing, to make prudent decisions, to help others, to be faithful in prayer. yet we still fall and fail, even with our best efforts. and after a lifetime of trying to discipline and perfect ourselves so we can be wise and strong and prudent and will disciplined, we get old and senile and start to lose it all. it is almost as if God is smiling at our efforts and does not take us quite as seriously as we take ourselves. and we wonder, maybe it is just our goodwill and our efforts God wants, as feeble as they may be. perhaps He is not too terribly concerned about the measurable success we look for in trying to be holy. maybe what is important to god is the unrelenting struggle on our part to do His will, to be sensitive to the
69 pain and anguish of others, and our reaching out to help them. we have to understand this when w start so we do not become discouraged.
concentrating on self-perfection and rooting out sin can become an almost total absorption and can develop into a very self-centered spirituality. this was the spirituality of the scribes and pharisees that Jesus criticized so vehemently, a spirituality that deteriorated into an obsessive pursuit of self-perfection and self-adoration rather than a life of self-forgetting love that flowed spontaneously from a deep relationship with God. that is the kind of spirituality Jesus was trying to instill in people's hearts. and that is the path we should travel.
what is remarkable about Jesus' relationship to people we would call sinners is the relaxed and easy way He mingled with them. no one felt uncomfortable with Him. nor should we feel uncomfortable in Jesus' presence, in god's presence. He does not want us to be uncomfortable with Him. the constant thrust of Jesus' message was to help people feel relaxed with His heavenly father. 'why are you all so worried ...stop worrying, your heavenly Father will take care of you'. the story of Jesus and the woman at the well points out graphically Jesus' attitude toward just ordinary people. Jesus chose to meet that woman on that particular day, knowing full well what she was. she was married 5 times and the fellow she was living with presently she had not married. yet Jesus picked her to be the messenger or the missionary to that Samaritan village. this Jesus who preached only the highest ideals, including
70 the highest ideals on marriage, this same Jesus could see goodness beneath the surface of that woman's life and pick her to be the missionary to her neighbors. God is not shocked or deterred by our weaknesses and our failures, as humiliating and shameful as they may be. He is concerned about the sincerity of our efforts and the intensity of our struggling to be good, and the goodness in our hearts. that is what is important to God. life is so complicated, especially today, it is sometimes near impossible to live the ideals churches insist on and which we try so hard to follow. so many of us have had difficult lives in the past and it is not easy to erase the unwanted habits of a lifetime. they haunt us and with the best of efforts they are often too much for us, and we fall. it is often much harder fro some people than for others. i know 2 boys. one finds it easy to be good and to be successful. the other seems to always make mistakes and out of poor judgment does things that are shocking. it seems that with the best of efforts he just does not know how to do things right. at the time he thinks what he did was right, but it ends up a mess. and the heartbreaking thing is, he tries so hard. I cannot help but think that that boy's struggling against such difficult odds endears him to god. he is the kind of person Jesus enjoyed associating with.
I also know a man in prison, a beautiful human being, who has a prayer life unmatched by anything I have come across in the outside world. the man is like Christ to the other inmates, but he knows he could never be trusted outside again because of his difficult
71 and dangerously mixed-up personality. as with these people, it is not the tangible success that gives value to our lives, but the intensity of the struggle. every single one of us is severely handicapped. God sees that. it is our handicaps that entitle us to God's mercy.
we have to get past a preoccupation with our sins. the thrust of our spiritual life should not be sin-oriented or Satan-oriented. it should be God-oriented. we should concentrate on developing a personal relationship with god and through openness in our prayer lives, let God into our lives so He can guide us. as we get to know Him we cannot help but fall in love with Him. the intimacy and warmth of that relationship will deepen our insights and understanding and will help us outgrow our sinful tendencies, one by one. as an example. before we met God we may have been envious of the success and accomplishments of others, eating out hearts out because we could not have the same good fortune that they had. now that we have met god and know how special we are to Him and that He has a very special work for us that nobody else can accomplish, our lives are given a meaning and a value that takes all the envy out of our hearts. we could not care less what someone else has. we now know we are special and are important to god the same thing happens with our other vices. one by one we outgrow them and in outgrowing them we get rid of them. that is a psychologically healthy way to attack our weaknesses and our limitations, by getting rid of the underlying problems which cause the sins.
72 I do not mean to give the impression that it is all right to sin. God forbid! what I am talking about is becoming so absorbed with ourselves and so determined to get rid of all our sins that we focus more on self than on God. we will become conscious when we are about to do something wrong and we naturally should try to correct ourselves. others are usually quite good at pointing out our limitations and faults. they are a big help. our daily examination of conscience also goes a long way in helping us identify our mistakes. when we notice them we correct them or at least try our best to correct them we may not always succeed, especially if they are the expressions of deeply ingrained habits.
our friendship with Jesus goes a long way in replacing our old ways of doing things with a multitude of nice things these nice things fill up our lives as the not so nice things gradually fade from the pattern of our lives and with these not so nice things are included our sins. the important thing about spiritual growth is that it should be psychologically healthy. it is a growth process and as much as we might like to become perfect, our progress has to follow a pattern that is not under our control.
to a great extent that pattern is determined by God. since each of us is unique and has been created to do a special work, our life is a training process. god leads us through a set of experiences that prepares us for our particular work. if God calls a person to be a judge, He is not going to give that person a warm, affectionate
73nature and expose the person to a set of situations that will cultivate a sympathetic understanding of why problem people do the terrible things they do. it might be a nice trait to see in a judge, but if that trait predominates, the person would find it very difficult to sit in judgment.
if God calls a person to manifest His kindness and love to a hurting world, He is not going to give that person a personality that is rigid and insecure and needs to see everything in sharp contrasts of black and white, good and evil, and judge people unfeelingly on harsh, rigid standards. He would give that person a kind personality, capable of seeing good in the most abject of human outcasts as he does and filled with an infinite patience to reach out and pick up those who are beaten down so they can continue struggling on their way to god. the limitless variety of needs in human kind necessitates a limitless variety of functions for all of us to perform as we work together to hep one another and bring out the beauty in his creation.
as a result the training process for each of us is different. no 2 persons will follow the same route in the spiritual life and not 2persons will be at the same place along the way. this is why it is so insensitive for us to pressure others to be the way we think they should be. it is none of our business. each of us belongs to god and God works mysteriously within us, slowly and patiently building up what he wants to accomplish in the unseeable recesses of our souls. our good example and our kind words are prodding enough. people have to respond to god when they are ready, not from pressure
74 by outside forces. in a rare case, perhaps, a weak person might need the discipline of a strong friend, but that cannot always be presumed.
since God leads us each in our own way, our spiritual life will assume an aura totally different from that of everyone else. each of us is one of a kind. our spirituality then will be one of a kind. this is shown dramatically in various people's believes. i met a man at a wedding party one day. he was in a wheelchair and cornered me for the better part of an hour. he was badly deformed and had been that way from birth. we had a very pleasant conversation and when i learned he had a job i asked what kind of work he did. he told me he was an engineer and worked for the state. i was impressed. i guess he could see that i was impressed and went on to say, 'i suppose some people would think that i should have been aborted, but i have had a terrific life and i really love my work. this man's life is a living sermon. he does not have to say a word.
the story of Benedict Labre, who lived a couple of centuries ago in France, always impressed me. as a young boy he wanted to be a Trappist monk. he applied a number of times to the Order but each time was sent home.finally,he realized god must have something else in store for him.he went home and told his parents he felt God was calling him to Rome. reluctantly they let him go. in Rome he became a tramp, wandering the streets with other tramps. he dressed in rags and became widely know as one of the homeless who wandered the streets accepting scraps of food and
75 cloths people would give to them. as time went on people began to realize there was something different about this tramp. one day some friends found him in a quiet glen on his knees absorbed in prayer. he stayed that way for the longest time. his companions were deeply impressed. they also found out that he had the rare gift of counseling people with the most complex problems and bringing them peace. his reputation spread throughout Rome and soon strangers from all walks of life came to talk to him; lawyers, doctors, judges, women in society, bishops, cardinals, as well as just ordinary fold. his wisdom and understanding enabled him to bring peace to the most troubled souls. when he died the church was packed with people. after his burial, people came from all over Europe to visit his grave and ask his intercession with God. the healings and graces people received were so overwhelming the Vatican was forced to start the process for his canonization as a saint, and in record time he was proclaimed a person of rare heroic holiness. o the day of the canonization as a saint and in record time he was proclaimed a person of rare heroic holiness. on the day of the canonization mass, in the crowded St. Peter's basilica way up above the heads of all was the glorious painting of this sainted tramp dressed in his rags, held up for the veneration and admiration of all the faithful. what a strange vocation! and you cannot help but ask why. but it was at a time when the whole Christian world had become so materialistic that spiritual things meant little to people. so called this young man to give up everything and wander the streets of Rome with other homeless, dressed in the stinking rags of a tramp.
76 all the while God molded in the depths of his soul a holiness that transcended anything people had ever witness and held up the remarkable spirituality of this lowly beggar for the admiration and example of all. it was no doubt a difficult vocation for one to follow, but St. Benedict was always a happy man, so he must have found a strange satisfaction in the realization he was following where God was leading Him.
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