A Firm Foundation

In a previous post, it was discussed what integral human formation was and why it is key to the New Evangelization. It was mentioned that there was a classical ordering to the four pillars—spiritual, human, intellectual and apostolic. Quite obviously, spiritual is listed first because it is the most important dimension and the one on which the other three depend.

To see why this is necessarily the case, let's go back to whole purpose of why we need this integral formation to begin with. The answer is the same answer we give to all the important questions—Christ (try to come up with an important question to which Christ is not the answer). We are called to become little Christs and we do this by following a very specific pattern of development. We move from a knowledge of Christ, to a love of Christ and from a love of Christ to an imitation of Him. Finally, when we truly know Him and love Him, we desire to communicate Him to others. Spiritual formation pertains to the first three stages of development, while the other three pillars mainly pertain to communicating Him to others.

The Supreme Good—to Know Christ Jesus

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says that he considers "everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ ". We all know that St. Paul did have a remarkable experience of Christ on his road to Damascus. He came to know that everything else was rubbish (the Greek word is scubula which translates into English as another 's' word that means a specific type of animal rubbish) compared to this supreme good. This knowledge that St. Paul is talking about then is more than to know about Him. I am quite sure that prior to his conversion experience during his persecution of the Christians that he came to know a lot about Jesus of Nazareth. But, he did not actually know Christ until he experienced Him. Since most of us will never have an experience like St. Paul, how is it that we actually experience Christ?

One question that used to really annoy me, but that I have come to appreciate more and more, is when I am asked "do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior?" I think because Protestants rely completely on their own subjective experience they have touched on a question that most Catholics don't ask. In fact, Catholics tend to only rely on the objective presence of Christ in the Sacraments and are annoyed when a Protestant asks them that question. But to experience Christ, there must be a mixture of the two.

Well, to get to know anyone, we have to spend time with them. The obvious answer then is that we must pray. In order to pray rightly, we truly have to understand what prayer is. There is a mental picture that often helps me to stay focused on why God calls us to prayer. When a smith plunges iron into the first, he is not just trying to make it hot and glowing; he wants to make it malleable. This is precisely why we pray—not so that God can make us hot and glowing (although this happens often), but to make us malleable. Ultimately, prayer is our attempt to break our will and conform it to God's will. That is what Christ's prayer looked like in the Garden of Gethsemane and should serve as a model for all of us.

Once we understand what prayer is, the technique we use is not so important. What is important is that we set aside a specific time during the day to be alone with Our Lord. We should give Our Lord our best time of the day, which is usually first thing in the morning. If we don't have time, we could start by getting up 10 minutes earlier. If we were promised a million dollars if we got up 10 minutes early every morning for a year would we do it? A million dollars is nice, but it is not the supreme good that Paul is talking about.

Our mental prayer must be a simple conversation in which we speak to God as we truly are. To avoid it becoming sterile, we should walk away with a concrete resolution. We should see patterns develop in our prayers that tell us what God is asking of us. Once we know what He is asking, we must put a concrete resolution in place to carry it out.

Cardinal Newman described personal prayer as "God and my soul and nothing else besides". But there is more to the life of prayer than simply personal prayer. We are also called to participate in the liturgical prayer of the Church. The Mass has been called the most perfect prayer. The sacrifice of the Logos is already accepted and is accepted forever, but through the Sacrifice of the Mass we make it our sacrifice in hopes that we will be transformed into Christ. In the Liturgy there becomes no difference between Christ's actions and ours and this is why every prayer of the Mass is directed to the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The Mass is not a private devotion, but the Church's very participation in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. It would serve us well to spend time meditating on the beauty and the gift that the Mass is. Unfortunately, because we don't do this, we are still concerned with making our "Sunday obligation".

For Christ's Love Compels Us

Once this personal knowledge has been cultivated, it opens the gate to an all consuming love for Our Lord. Just like any relationship, once we come to know another, we also want to know everything about them. In knowing more about them, we come to love them even more. So, how to we stir this knowledge into the flame of love?

This is where we look to Mary for help. We should strive to imitate her love for Christ and should implore her intercession in achieving it.

In almost all of the artwork that depicts the Annunciation, Mary is seen reading Scripture when the angel appears. While I doubt the historicity of her on a kneeler in a nicely decorated room with a bound copy of Scripture, her Magnificat shows us that she knew a great deal about Scripture. Without, she would not have been able to "ponder all these things in her heart" and see how they fit with God's promises in the Old Testament.

St. Jerome once said that "ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ". I am very often disheartened by how few Catholics know and understand Scripture. This is the book of the Church and for the Church.
Yet, for the most part Catholics leave their Bibles on the shelves or put them on the coffee tables when they have certain guests.

I am always so surprised when I hear someone say "I pray, but God never talks to me." I ask them if they ever thought of getting an audio Bible which usually elicits a puzzled look. The point is that the Bible is God's Word and it is the ordinary way that He speaks to us. When we read it, we are meant not to merely read a book, but to encounter a Person. As God's Word it seeks to become flesh in us. The Psalms are the same prayers that Jesus said. It is time for us as Catholics to start growing in our appreciation for Sacred Scripture. This is something that our separated brethren could surely teach us.

I also hear people say that they don't read Scripture because they don't understand it. That truly is backwards. Do we only watch movies that we fully understand? The only way to understand is to read it. Jesus has promised in Mark's Gospel (4:22-25) that repeated exposure to the Word of God will result in increased understanding. By closely listening and discerning the meaning of the parable, the one who is given spiritual insight will have it increased by exposure to the parables as opposed to those who will end up in greater spiritual ignorance. Scripture has a sort of double inspiration in that the Holy Spirit breathed into the authors and breathes into the readers as well.

Mary being the first tabernacle, she would also point us to the Eucharist. Imagine the joy and ecstasy that Our Lady must have felt when she received the Eucharist from St. John the Apostle when she stayed in Ephesus with him. We too should ask for the grace to love Our Eucharistic Lord in the same way. One way to do this is to make regular Eucharistic Adoration a part of our spiritual program.

Eucharistic adoration is the most important way in which the presence of Christ continues in the Church following the celebration of the Mass, Because of this, it is meant to help us sanctify everything we do and most importantly to draw us back to our next celebration of the Eucharist. What we do at the Eucharist is to eat and drink deeply of the food of our salvation. Think of Adoration then as a way to stimulate our appetites for our next sacred meal. Pope Benedict said in one of his homilies during World Youth Day a few years ago that the "Latin word for adoration is ad-oratio - mouth to mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love."

Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart

From love, we are led to imitation. One very unpopular point in Christ's life that we are called to imitate is in His Passion. We make this a vivid, living reality by our own mortification and detachment. Ever since man first sinned, penance, reparation, and spiritual war have become necessary conditions of our life.

The fact that it is newsworthy that John Paul II performed acts of penance should be an indication just how far removed we are from this idea. As followers of Christ we are called to these acts not only for our own mortification but because of the redemptive value of uniting them with Christ's suffering. Fasting has gone completely "out of style" despite its spiritual benefits.

We also have avoided the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We have come to see it in a totally negative light rather than as an encounter with the Our Lord sacramentally. In the Catechism, the Sacrament of Reconciliation falls under the sacraments of healing. Do we have a medicinal view of Confession? Do we see it as a means to obtain the grace to overcome our persistent faults? I will write about what I think should be a proper view of Confession at another time, but I invite you to take it to prayer. Ask Our Lord to show you the beauty of the gift of the Sacrament of Confession. If you haven't been in a long time, go this weekend. If you have been recently, go again, but take someone with you who hasn't gone in a while.

Next week we will continue with human formation.