GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
IN THE
SPIRITUAL LIFE
The great St. Teresa (1515-1582),
the one from Avila, Doctor of the Church, loved to use images - lots of images
- when she wrote about growth and development in the spiritual life. One of her
favorite images was that of water - lots of water.
Teresa of Avila says that when we
begin to get serious about prayer and living a spiritual life, we’re like a
plot of arid, uncultivated ground with weeds - lots of weeds. So we need to
weed and plant. We also need to water our garden. At first all we have is just
a bucket, so we find ourselves going back and forth and back and forth with
just the bucket to get water for our garden. With God’s help we begin to
change. We begin to grow spiritually.
As time goes on, we get smarter.
We use a well with a crank that winds a rope around a barrel making it that
much easier to get water. Slowly, we even get smarter. We find a river or a spring
of running water. With work we are able to make it flow into our garden so as
to irrigate it with much less trouble. By now we are really blossoming. Our
garden becomes a favorite spot for the Lord to visit.
Those first 3 stages of growth
and development in the spiritual life seem mostly our work, our doing. However,
if we keep on praying, keep on growing, surprise, surprise, the day comes when
we look out the window and it’s raining - pouring lots of rain. God really
takes over. The heavens have opened and an outpouring of God’s love and God’s
peace falls on us. We are flooded by God. There is so much rain, so much water,
so much love, that we don’t know what to do with it. We stand there in the rain
- becoming totally soaked and drenched in God’s love. As in the movie, “April
in Paris”, we find ourselves like Gene Kelly dancing and “Singing in the Rain.”
If you have ever seen a picture
of Bernini’s statue of “St. Teresa in Ecstasy”, she seems to be floating in
space. Rain like light is pelting down
against her whole body. It’s like standing in a shower with the water pouring
down upon us.
HOMILETIC REFLECTIONS
Today’s second and third readings
capture that feeling St. Teresa of Avila
experienced: what it feels like when God showers down peace, joy and serenity
into our life. Both readings give us rich images and rich theology of what it
feels like to be loved by God.
Today’s second reading from the
21st Chapter of the Book of Revelation is filled with poetic images.
It gives a revelation in images describing the future - that final day when
there will be total Resurrection, total Easter, total Transcendence for the
whole of creation. On that day all will experience an outpouring of God’s
peace. Jerusalem will finally live up to its name: “City of Peace.” It will be
coming out of the clouds like a bride coming down the aisle on her wedding day.
It will be a brand new city with brand new gates. It will shine like a precious
jewel, sparkle like a diamond. There will be no need for temples in the new
city, because every person will be a temple of God. There will be no need for
sun or moon, “for the glory of God will give it light, and its lamp will be the
Lamb.”
In today’s gospel [John 14: 23-29], John gives us
the rich image of “dwelling place”. We are being called to be the dwelling
place, the home, the house of God. St. Teresa of Avila in the 16th
century will describe it poetically as The
Interior Castle. Any person who loves Jesus and is true to his word, the
Father will love that person. They will make their dwelling place with that
person always and forever. They will be filled with the Spirit of God.
And as we heard from St. Teresa
of Avila, then there will be a downpouring, a showering of God’s peace. It will
not be the kind of peace that the world gives. It will be a peace that is
marbled with joy and serenity. It will be a peace that calls us not to be
distressed or fearful. It will be a peace that comes out of a knowledge, an
understanding, a rejoicing that God is dwelling within us.
What John is telling us then, is
that we will feel great peace, great joy, great serenity. What a great trinity
of gifts: peace, joy and serenity - gifts that come out of the great Trinity:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Now all this is a great dream.
It’s a great hope. It’s a great vision for all of us who want to live a
spiritual life. It’s a vision that we need to keep in mind as we work in the
garden every day - especially in the heat of the day or when we struggle in the
dark of the night, when like the Lord, we feel all alone with nobody wanting to
be with us - not even for an hour (Mark 14:37).
When we come to today’s first
reading [Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29], we experience reality therapy. We have a very different story. We have
a reading that brings us down to earth and out of the clouds of poetic
imagination and visions. It’s a reading that brings us down to the nitty gritty
of the everyday.
The scene is Antioch, the capital
of the Roman province of Syria. It was a place where Christians from Palestine,
Cyprus and Cyrene started an early Christian community (Acts 11:19). It took in
new converts from both Gentiles and Jews. It was here in Antioch that people
first began to be called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Both Paul and Barnabas
visited the community there. It was to be the departing point for Paul’s first
and second missionary journeys.
It was also to be the place of a
major fight: the dispute that we hear about in today’s first reading. Rigorists
wanted Gentile Christians to practice Jewish traditions. They wanted male
Gentile converts to be circumcised. They seemed to forget Jesus’ words, “Come
to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder
my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will
find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew
11:28-30). They seemed to forget all those fights Jesus had with the Pharisees.
Actually all this was taking place before the written gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John. Jesus’ fights with the Pharisees that we hear so much about in
the Gospels are aimed more towards Pharisees here in the new Judaeo-Christian
communities than the actual Pharisees that Jesus was fighting with in his
lifetime.
The result was the need for a
meeting, so that people could air their differences and try to straighten
things out in the Antioch community. They met. Perhaps there was a stalemate.
Whatever. They decided to send Paul, Barnabas and others to Jerusalem to meet
with Peter and other apostles and elders there to try to settle the question.
The result was what was called the “First Council of Jerusalem.”
They met and tried to resolve the
problem. They then sent representatives
from the Jerusalem community as well as Barnabas and Paul back to Antioch. They
also sent the letter we heard in today’s first reading. “The apostles and the
elders, your brothers, send greetings to the brothers of Gentile origin in
Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. We have heard that some of our number without any
instruction from us have upset you with their discussions and disturbed your
peace of mind.” Next they said that they were sending a delegation to state the
following by word of mouth, “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours
too, not to lay on you any burden beyond which is strictly necessary, namely,
to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from illicit sexual
union.”
The First Council of Jerusalem
had come up with a compromise. It was a practical solution. It didn’t solve the
problem then and there, but it did set the tone for a developing theology and
practice of the early Church. To make Jewish-Christians happy, they took four
things restricted for aliens residing in Israel that are listed in the book of
Leviticus: don’t eat meat offered to idols; don’t take blood; don’t take meat
of strangled animals because they are not ritually slaughtered (not Kosher);
and don’t not have intercourse with close kin, because that would be an
incestuous relationship. To make the Gentile-Christians happy, males don’t have
to be circumcised and various other Jewish practices did not have to be
followed.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
We have in today’s readings some
very real and some very practical things to reflect upon. Two stand out.
First, be aware and beware of
rigorists and reformers. They are the type of people who like to think that the
more difficult you can make life, the better your are. The more rigorous you
are, the holier you are. More is better. The more time you spend in Church or
in prayer, the better you are. And often they spend their time watching who
isn’t doing what they are doing. They like to make life tougher for others.
They forget Jesus’ words about his yoke being easy and his burden being light.
Read the Gospel of Matthew. His church seems to have had a heavy dose of
Pharisaism. Matthew is fighting it from Chapter one to Chapter twenty-eight of
his gospel. Or as St. Teresa of Avila put it, “From frowning saints, good Lord,
deliver us.”
Secondly, in the midst of the
nitty gritty and the practical things of life, we need to keep our mind and our
imagination on a vision - a dream - that God - Father, Son and Spirit, wants to
dwell within us. We need to remember that God wants us to grow and develop
spiritually. God wants us to become a City of Peace. God wants us to become a
garden of delights - a garden of paradise - that is well watered - where
everyone can come in and enjoy each other, walking together during the cool of
the evening - a place where sometimes the skies open in a flooding downpour of
rain on all of us - and like St. Teresa of Avila, we’ll have a glimpse of what
it’s like to loved by God.
