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Chapter II: What is the Spiritual Life?

WHEN in so many places the holy Scripture declares that there is antagonism between what it calls the “carnal or animal man” and the interior “heavenly or spiritual man,” it evidently does not intend to define states, nor to create real categories or, as it were, castes. The clearly marked distinction between the “carnal man” and the “spiritual man” arose from the fact that in the early Christian Church holiness shone forth with so much lustre in the midst of the pagan world that it brought into full daylight the superiority of the Christian over the pagan. It came about that even error took hold of these contrasts, exaggerated them, and then falsified doctrine by pushing to extremes contrasts only too real.

The “animal man,” in Scripture language, sometimes means the man who buries himself in abject materialism or simply in practical sensuality, persuading himself that nothing is real but that which he can touch and handle. Sometimes even the apostle will give the name of “animal man” to that body of disorderly or of even purely human tendencies existing in the Christian whose higher life is imperfectly developed, and by their base allurings so often making him lose sight of the supernatural spirit. The “spiritual man” and child of God is he who lives in obedience to the leadings of the Spirit of God: “For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”1 Of the others Scripture says: “These are sensual men, having not the Spirit.”2

Such, in fact, is the line of demarcation between the “animal man” and the “spiritual man.” Elsewhere St. Paul expresses it still more clearly. “But the sensual man,” he says, “perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined.”3 He who has not the Spirit of God within him is a “carnal man,” and does not live by the spiritual life—that is by that higher life which is given to us in baptism.

Hence the “spiritual man” is regenerated man; the man who has received the spirit of adoption, who has fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. He lives spiritually, and he has the fulness of spiritual life when he lives up to the duties of his high state; on the other hand, the apostle does not hesitate to number among “carnal men” those who by their conduct belie the promises they made at their baptism: “For whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man?”4 Thus then, in the apostle’s sense, the movements or actions of the soul reveal the nature of her life.

The spiritual or interior life begins in us at our baptism, which is a real second birth, and, according to St. Denis, “the principle of the sacred action of the most holy sacraments, a principle which transforms our carnal dispositions, that we may be apt to receive the other sacraments.”5 This spiritual life is capable of increase and development like our natural life. A long and laborious career, marked by diverse phases, opens out before the soul from the day she receives the principle of her new life in baptism till she attains the perfect age of Christ.

Among the numberless passages of St. Paul's Epistles describing this onward march of the soul there is one, taken from the Epistle to the Ephesians, which, we think, contains a very complete programme of the spiritual life. Moreover it is set forth in a solemn and majestic form, showing the importance which St. Paul attached to it: "For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man. That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God."6 It was necessary to read this magnificent exposition to the end, but we must return to it, and consider in detail each word of the incomparable master.

In his zeal for those to whom he has preached the Gospel, St. Paul ardently desires for them all that is highest and best; and it is from God the Father, whose Spirit they have received, that he asks the inestimable grace of seeing them complete a perfect career. God having various measures in the distribution of His grace—the lenticula or "little vial" of Saul: "And Samuel took a little vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him";7 or the large measure of David: "Then Samuel took a horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren,"8—what the apostle asks is that God would pour out His supernatural gifts "according to the riches of His glory." Most certainly, if we consider the fruits of holiness in the early Church, the apostle's prayer was heard. Now the first working of grace which the apostle solicits is this: "That God would grant you to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man."9 The inward man can then be diversely developed within us; and our all important interest during the time of our probation consists in bringing about this growth under the combined effort of divine grace and our own cooperation.

The first phase of the spiritual life here described by St. Paul is the PURGATIVE LIFE, in the course of which the soul strives to combat both her internal and her external enemies, to free herself from the tyranny of the senses and to prepare the way of the Lord. It is to this phase that exhortations such as these belong: "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened."10

The apostle repeats the same teaching in his Epistle to the Ephesians: "But you have not so learned Christ; if so be that you have heard Him, and have been taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus. To put off, according to former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.”11

Elsewhere St. Paul further insists upon the labours of this first period, and everywhere he points to the same end. This time he is addressing himself to the Colossians: “Mortify therefore your members, which are upon the earth. .... Lie not one to another, stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, him who is renewed unto all knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him.”12

But the apostle’s ambition is not limited to the powerful strengthening of the inward man by the Holy Spirit; he points to a further advance, saying: “That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts.”13 This is exactly what our Saviour Himself expressed when, speaking to the multitude that surrounded Him, He said: “Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness overtake you not; and he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. Whilst you have the light, believe in the light.”14 And again: “I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”15

By following Him who has deigned to make us His brethren by adoption, man will therefore possess the true light of the spiritual life; he will enter into the Illuminative Life, which heretofore was not his: “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and justice and truth.”16 And: “For all you are the children of light, and children of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness.”17

The same signs of the development of the inward man are brought forward by St. John. “God is light,” he says, “and in Him there is no darkness. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”18

From the Old Testament times, the Holy Spirit has ever urged souls on to the Illuminative Life: “Come ye to Him, and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be confounded.”19 Other similar passages are so numerous that they could not be pointed out. The New Testament shows above all that our Lord came to increase the brightness of the light, and to make access to it more easy and more general. The prince of the apostles bears witness to this when he says, in the enthusiasm of his pastoral love: "That you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light."20

However splendid the spiritual life in its "illuminative" stage may appear to us, this is not the utmost advance to which the inward man may aspire, the man that is, who has received that precious germ which, when fully developed, is to bring him to the perfect age of Christ. It is here that St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, surpasses himself in his description of the spiritual life. In the passage alluded to he gives the secret of its last phase, which comprises heavenly beatitude itself. The Unitive Life, for it is of this that we are now speaking, is thus described by the apostle; "To be rooted and founded in charity." All the rest is but a development of this admirable state, wherein the inward man, now truly an adult, truly united to the Incarnate Word, whose perfect age he has attained, is led, by a marvellous assimilation, to the mysteries wherein Christ manifested His incomprehensible charity, that by Him and in Him he may be brought to enjoy even the fulness of God:

"That, being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God."21 Farther on we will develop the splendours of the "unitive life"; for the present it is sufficient for our purpose to have pointed out with the apostle this true end of the spiritual life, as an object greatly to be desired, and worthy of our most generous efforts.

The three stages of the spiritual life here mentioned, which stages we have purposely drawn from the teaching of the apostle St. Paul, were acknowledged very early in the Church. St. Denis, in his two "Hierarchies," founds all his teaching upon this triple form of the spiritual life, PURGATIVE, ILLUMINATIVE and UNITIVE. He seems to have gathered the tradition from the lips of the apostles themselves; but among the fathers he is not the only one that has pointed out these three definite stages. St. Gregory of Nyssa, a father who treats with the greatest profundity of the divine workings, also divides the spiritual life into three distinct parts, linking each with the Sapiential Books of Scripture. He assigns Proverbs to the "Purgative Life," Ecclesiastes to the "Illuminative Life," and the Canticle of Canticles to the "Unitive Life."22

St. Gregory the Great in his exhaustless "Morals" keeps the same divisions. "There are three states," he says, "for those who are converted—the beginning, the middle, and the perfection."23 He repeats the same in one of his Homilies on Ezechiel: "For the beginnings of virtue are one thing, the progress another, and the perfection another."24 St. Maximus of Constantinople, an abbot and martyr of the eighth century, calls the first state "Exercise of Practice"; the second, "Theory," which forms to the knowledge of things material and spiritual; the third, "Theology," which the soul reaches when, united to God by the grace of the Holy Ghost, it contemplates eternal truth and delights therein.

In the course of time the science of the spiritual life followed the impulse given to theology. When this latter was organized and classified by the schoolmen, and teaching became more condensed, more precise, more concrete, though not more extensive, the notions of the spiritual life were at the same time established. The doctrine of the angelic St. Thomas Aquinas has fixed and defined for ever the three stages of which we have been speaking. Moreover, from the very beginning, the Church adapted her children to them in a practical way by means of the sacred liturgy; this it is that Dom Gueranger has so well explained in the simple and vigorous language of his "Liturgical Year."

Hence man, having received in baptism the first fruits of the Spirit, ought unceasingly to aspire after his full growth. He must not limit his desires in the supernatural order, as he does not certainly wish to do so in the natural order. No one makes it the object of his ambition to attain merely the age of childhood or of youth; every man desires to reach his full development. Thus ought we ever to desire to attain the fulness of that divine life of which we have the principle within us: "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."25

The following table lists the number of students in each grade level at the end of the 2004-2005 school year.

Number of Students

2004-2005

2005-2006

2006-2007

2007-2008

2008-2009

2009-2010

2010-2011

2011-2012

2012-2013

2013-2014

2014-2015

2015-2016

2016-2017

2017-2018

2018-2019

2019-2020

2020-2021

Footnotes

  1. Quicumque Spiritu Dei aguntur, hi sunt filii Dei (Rom. viii, 14). ↩

  2. Hi sunt ... animales, Spiritum non habentes (Judæ 19). ↩

  3. Animalis autem homo non percipit ea, quæ sunt Spiritus Dei: stultitia enim est illi, et non potest intelligere, quia spiritualiter examinatur (1 Cor. ii, 14). ↩

  4. Cum enim sit inter vos zelus et contentio, nonne carnales estis, et secundum hominem ambulatis? (1 Cor., iii, 3). ↩

  5. Hier. Eccl., ii. ↩

  6. Hujus rei gratia flecto genua mea ad Patrem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, ex quo omnis paternitas in coelis et in terra nominatur, ut det vobis secundum divitias gloriæ suæ virtute corroborari per Spiritum ejus in interiorem hominem, Christum habitare per fidem in cordibus vestris, in caritate radicati et fundati, ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis, quæ sit latitudo, et longitudo, et sublimitas, et profundum: scire etiam supereminentem scientiæ caritatem Christi, ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei (Eph. iii, 14-19). ↩

  7. Tulit autem Samuel lenticulam olei, et effudit super caput ejus, et deosculatus est eum (1 Reg., x, 1). ↩

  8. Tulit ergo Samuel cornu olei, et unxit eum in medio fratrum ejus (1 Reg., xvi, 13). ↩

  9. Virtute corroborari per Spiritum ejus in interiorem hominem (Eph. iii, 16). ↩

  10. Expurgate vetus ferinentum, ut sitis nova conspersio, sicut estis azymi (I Cor. v, 7). ↩

  11. Vos autem non ita didicistis Christum, si tamen illum audistis, et in ipso edocti estis, sicut est veritas in Jesu; de ponere vos secundum pristinam conversationem veterem hominem, qui corrumpitur secundum desideria erroris. Renovamini autem spiritu mentis vestræ, et induite novum hominem, qui secundum Deum creatus est in justitia et sanctitate veritatis (Eph. iv, 20-24). ↩

  12. Mortificate ergo membra vestra, quare sunt super terram. . . . Nolite mentiri invicem, exspoliantes vos veterem hominem cum actibus suis, et induentes novum, eum qui renovatur in agnitionem, secundum imaginem ejus qui creavit illum (Coloss., iii, 5, 9, 10). ↩

  13. Christum habitare per fidem in cordibus vestris (Eph., iii, 17). ↩

  14. Ambulate dum lucem habetis, ut non vos tenebræ comprehendant; et qui ambulat in tenebris, nescit quo vadat. Dum lucem habetis, credite in lucem ut filii lucis sitis (Joann xii, 35, 36). ↩

  15. Ego sum lux mundi; qui sequitur me, non ambulat in tenebris sed habebit lumen vitæ (Ibid., viii, 12). ↩

  16. Eratis enim aliquando tenebræ, nunc autem lux in Domino. Ut filii lucis ambulate; fructus enim lucis est in omni bonitate, et justitia, et veritate (Eph. v, 8, 9). ↩

  17. Omnes enim vos filii lucis estis et filii diei; non sumus noctis, neque tenebrarum (Thess. v, 5). ↩

  18. Quoniain Deus lux est, et tenebræ in eo non sunt ullæ. Si dixerimus quoniam societatem habemus cum eo et in tenebris ambulamus, mentimur, et veritatem non facimus. Si autem in luce ambulamus, sicut et ipse est in luce, societatem habemus ab invicem, et sanguis Jesu Christi, Filii ejus, emundat nos ab omni peccato (1 Joann, i, 5, 6, 7). ↩

  19. Accedite ad eum, et illuminamini, et facies vestræ non confundentur (Ps. xxxiii). ↩

  20. Ut virtutes annuntietis ejus qui de tenebris vos vocavit in admirabile lumen suum (1 Pet. ii, 9). ↩

  21. In caritate radicati et fundati, ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis, quæ sit latitudo, et longitudo, et sublimitas, et profundum: scire etiam supereminentem scientiæ caritatem Christi, ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei (Eph., iii, 17-19). ↩

  22. S. Greg. Nyss. In Cant. Homil. 1. ↩

  23. Tres sunt modi conversorum: inchoatio, medietas atque perfectio (Mor. XXIV, viii). ↩

  24. Aliud namque sunt virtutis exordia, aliud provectus, aliud perfectio (in Ezech. Lib. II, Homil. 3). ↩

  25. Si Spiritu vivimus, Spiritu et ambulemus (Gal. v, 25). ↩

Chapter 3 of 24