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Chapter III: Who are apt for the Spiritual Life?

AS A RULE, books treating of the spiritual life seem to be addressed exclusively to a certain class of men, to persons gifted with a special vocation. Such we think is not the Church's intention, nor that of our Lord Jesus Christ. This way of distinguishing and separating seems to divide the mystic body of the Lord, which is founded on the unity of one same life, whose sole principle is the Spirit of God. "One body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through us all, and in us all. But to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ."1 So then the Holy Spirit, who forms the spiritual life within us, is the bond that unites all who are baptized. It is quite true that all do not receive the same measure of grace, and that, in some souls grace itself is crowned with those spiritual gifts which God distributes according to His good pleasure:

"Now there are diversities of grace, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all in all.”2 Thus, according to the teaching of the apostle, grace is not distributed to all in equal measure. Moreover, the diverse gifts of the Holy Spirit, which determine the ministry and action of each one in the Church, or what St. Paul calls “the manifestation of the Spirit unto profit,”3 depend more still than the rest upon God’s good pleasure, and are the privileged matter of His free liberality; “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body. . . . For the body also is not one member, but many.”4

This unequal distribution of grace sometimes gives rise to a pernicious error, which would aim at nothing less than discouraging the Christian in his aspirations after God. “I cannot help it,” some will say, “God does not call me by His grace to the heights of the spiritual life.” Let us have a right understanding of the matter. In admitting that God is essentially free in the distribution of His grace, we do not mean to say that He ever measures it out so sparingly as to make it impossible for certain souls to attain the fulness of the spiritual life. No doubt the greater number of those who are saved do not before their death come to this union with God, but we must not conclude that they might not have done so, or that God denied them the necessary grace.

Our faith obliges us to believe that all men have been redeemed by Jesus Christ; and yet how many are lost without being able to impute this misfortune to any one but to themselves! We cannot then gather the law from the fact, nor can we argue from the condition to which man reduces himself, what God's intentions are in his regard. But if we open the holy Scriptures, we there find the most generous, vehement and repeated invitation to the Unitive Life, whilst nowhere do we see a systematic exclusiveness, which would repel far from God and from union with Him a certain number of souls purposely overlooked by divine Providence. "Behold, I stand at the gate and knock. If any man shall hear My voice and open to Me the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." If this text shows us clearly how intimate is the bond of union which our Lord wishes to contract with us even in this world, and how He is first to make the advance, since He stands at the door and knocks, it also shows that man, on his side, must correspond to these merciful advances; he must open the door, under pain of preventing our Lord from abiding with him. Let us then assert boldly that the fact of the unequal distribution of grace does not close the way to divine union, any more than the "diversities of ministries" prevent us from belonging to the mystical body of Christ.

The doctrine of the Church on purgatory alone seems to prove that our Lord has given all men the power of attaining to divine union. For if it were not strictly possible for all Christians, before their death, to reach the Unitive Life, how could God reproach them afterwards, and give them over to the rigorous requirements of His justice, for having neglected the means whereby they might have come before Him free from all their debts. Nothing then could be more strange than the conduct of a Christian who should limit his efforts in the supernatural life merely to reaching the place of expiation, when, at the very outset, all baptized souls are established in a holy state which gives them the right of immediate entrance into the eternal sanctuary, there to enjoy the face to face vision of God.

So then all Christians may attain union with God, without any other call to it than that given in their baptism; they can do so in virtue of their simple title of children of God, and without entering upon any other way but that of the precepts: "He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me. And he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father; and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him."5 But what shall we say of the new facility offered to those who make the evangelical counsels their law, and who have heard the word, "He shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting"?6

Supported by Scripture and tradition, St. Benedict, in his Rule, simultaneously opens to his children the gates of the spiritual life and points to its highest reach. "To thee therefore now my speech is directed," he says, "who, renouncing thy own will, being to fight under our Lord Jesus Christ, the true king, takest unto thee the most strong and bright armour of obedience."7 A little farther on he adds: "But in process of practice and faith, the heart being once dilated, the way of God's commandments is run with unspeakable sweetness of love."8

By this advance in holiness of life and faith, an advance which goes so far as to make the soul run with joy and gladness in the way of the divine commandments, it is easy to recognize the perfection of the spiritual life in which love makes all things light. The holy patriarch has no distinctions among his children; in his view the career is open to all, and nothing remains but to run for the prize. To aspire after the highest reach of the spiritual life, which is union, is the normal state for the Christian, and especially for the religious. The soul which has entered the state which aims at perfection must, however, take heed lest a want of generosity and energy in overcoming herself should hinder the carrying out of this divine programme.

Thus thought Dom Gueranger, when he drew up his "Rudiments of the Monastic Life." "God," it is there said, "has revealed Himself to man by faith. He has excited his hope of eternal union with the sovereign Good; He has commanded him to love his Creator and Redeemer; but He has done all this for an end, which is to be realized by man even in this present life. This end is that man should aspire, even in this world, to perfection.

"Perfection is the entire agreement of the creature with his God, as far as the creature is capable of it. It results from the conformity of the creature with the sanctity of God, by the exemption from sin and the realization of all virtues, of which charity is the most exalted, spreading its influence over every other.

"Hence it follows that there is a real obligation incumbent on every Christian, of desiring perfection and of endeavouring, according to the graces granted to him, to attain it. Were it not so, we should have to say that God cares not for His creature's fulfilling the plan He has marked out, or that His creature may, if he please, refuse to fulfil that end for which God drew him out of nothing, and redeemed him from hell. To assert either of these is worse than folly. Hence, in order to preclude all illusion with regard to this precept of perfection which includes all other precepts, our Lord says to us: 'Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’9 In these few words He shows us the divine Type according to which we should regulate, not only our actions, but also our thoughts and desires.”10

There are not then two forms of Christianity, as the Gnostics taught, nor two supernatural states to which man may be successively called, in virtue of two distinct predestinations. Only let man be faithful, and God will not be wanting; the holy Scriptures give us the infallible assurance of this. “Think of the Lord in goodness, and seek Him in simplicity of heart. For He is found by them that tempt Him not, and He showeth Himself to them that have faith in Him.”11 Thus the way is thrown open broadly before all whom baptism has made children of God. Even during their earthly pilgrimage, if they are faithful to their supernatural engagements, they may already attain to intimacy with God their Father.

Footnotes

  1. Unum corpus, et unus Spiritus, sicut vocati estis in una spe vocationis vestræ. Unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma. Unus Deus et Pater omnium qui est super omnes et per omnia, et in omnibus nobis. Unicuique autem nostrum data est gratia secundum mensuram donationis Christi (Eph. iv, 4-7). ↩

  2. Divisiones vero gratiarum sunt, idem autem Spiritus: divisiones ministrationum sunt, idem autem Dominus: et divisiones operationum sunt, idem vero Deus, qui operatur omnia in omnibus (i Cor. xii, 46). ↩

  3. Manifestatio Spiritus ad utilitatem (Ibid). ↩

  4. Etenim in uno Spiritu omnes nos in unum corpus baptizati sumus .... nam et corpus non est unum membrum, sed multa (Ibid, xii, 13, 14). ↩

  5. Qui habet mandata mea et servat ea: ille est qui diligit me. Qui autem diligit me, diligetur a Patre meo, et ego diligam eum et manifestabo ei meipsum (Joann., xiv, 21). ↩

  6. Centuplam accipiet, et vitam æternam possidebit (Matth., xix, 29). ↩

  7. Ad te ergo nunc mens servo dirigatur, quisquis abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus, Domino Christo vero Regi militaturus, obedientiæ fortissima atque præclara arma assumis (S. Reg. Prol.). ↩

  8. Processu vero conversationis et fidei, dilatato corde, inenarrabili dilectionis dulcedine curritur via mandatorum Dei (S. Reg. Prol., sub fine). ↩

  9. Estote ergo vos perfecti, sicut et Pater vester coelestis perfectus est (Matth. v, 48). ↩

  10. Rudiments viii. ↩

  11. Sentite de Domino in bonitate, et in simplicitate cordis quærite illum: quoniam invenitur ab his qui non tentat illum, apparet autem eis qui fidem habent in illum (Sap., i, 1, 2). ↩

Chapter 4 of 24