Soul Matters

In St John’s Gospel we meet a woman who wasn’t able to find the love she needed.  She thirsted for someone to love her unconditionally.  This thirst led her to look for love in the wrong places and among the wrong people.  Because she sought love in the wrong places and among the wrong people she became more and more isolated and lonely.  Why else was she visiting the village well on her own in the early afternoon, the hottest time of the day?

Then out of the blue something unexpected happened.  She had a brief encounter with a stranger and her life was never the same again.  In the presence of Jesus her longing was satisfied.  He looked into her soul and saw her hurt, her shame, her sadness, her need, her thirst.  He did not judge her; he did not condemn her; he did not reject her.  Instead, he accepted her and offered her the living water of unconditional love.  The encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman was short, but its impact was lasting.  It created a spring inside her that would well up to eternal life.

Like the Samaritan woman we too thirst for love; we long for someone to love us as we are.  This thirst can lead us also into relationships that are unstable and abusive; into situations that are damaging and hurtful.  At some point in our lives we have to acknowledge that only Jesus can offer us the kind of love that we need, a love that is truly gratuitous.  Once we do then we must learn how to access and receive this love.

There are a number of ways we can come to know the love of Jesus.  Not least among these is the willingness to create times of stillness and silence in our lives.  By having the courage and patience to sit still in silence we become aware from within that we are not alone, that we are being held by a strong yet gentle presence.  Within ourselves we know that we are being loved by Jesus in a way that does not expect us to be perfect and that does not condemn us for our weaknesses and our failures.  The love we are looking for is to be found inside.  It is there that Jesus is waiting for us, longing for us to make contact with him.

Perhaps one of the best descriptions of what I am saying is to be found in the writings of St Augustine.  In what is possibly the most beautiful passage in his Confessions Augustine tells us where and how he eventually found Jesus and the difference this made to his life.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!  You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

You may have had the experience of climbing a mountain.  Two things are helpful if you are to be a mountain climber.  The first has to do with determination.  Before you set off you have to make up your mind that, come what may, you are going to persevere until you reach the top.  Having a strong determination means that when you meet obstacles and difficulties you will be able to make the necessary sacrifices to overcome them.

The second thing that is helpful when you are climbing a mountain is the knowledge that a whole new vista opens up to you at the summit.  At the top of a mountain you experience a great sense of achievement and fulfilment.  But you also see the world below in an entirely new way.  Your view of the world is unimpeded, a full 360 degrees.  Indeed, on the mountaintop not only do you experience the world differently, you also experience yourself differently.  You feel good about yourself and who you are.

The season of Lent reminds us that the Christian life is a lot like climbing a mountain.  To live as a follower of Jesus we need a strong determination and a willingness to make sacrifices.  Living the Christian life can be quite demanding.  It challenges our tendency to indulge ourselves and it invites us to respond to others in a loving way.  Without a discipline of perseverance and generosity it is difficult to stay faithful to the way of Jesus.

Of course, like the journey up a mountain, the Christian journey also has a happy ending.  It leads to what we call resurrection.  At the end of our Christian pilgrimage in this world a whole new other world will be opened up to us.  We will see in a way we have never seen before.  We will see God face to face.  We will see ourselves reflected in God and we will also see other people reflected in God.  Indeed, we will find ourselves saying the same thing as Peter when he was enveloped by the presence of God on Mount Tabor: “Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here.  Let this be our home forever” (see Matthew 17:4).

What often helps mountain climbers persevere is an eye on the summit.  If they keep looking up to the mountaintop, the goal of their efforts, they are more likely to succeed in their climb.  Likewise, it is important for us as we struggle to remain faithful to the Gospel not to lose sight of the destination of our journey; heaven and a share in the risen life of Jesus.

It is no secret that the religion of Jesus can be summed up in the word love.  In his Sermon on the Mount he focuses on three things which could be described as a practical programme to help us grow in love.  These are the three things the Christian Churches invite its members to practise in earnest each year during the season of Lent.  They could be described as the non-negotiable essentials of the Christian religion.  They are prayer, almsgiving and fasting. 

“When you pray, go to your private room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is in that secret place” (Matt 6:6).  What a beautiful and accessible description of the activity of prayer!  Spend time on your own with your Father. During this time thank him for his presence in your life and for looking after you.  Talk to him in a personal way about what is happening in your life.  Ask him for the things you need, especially the things you need to help you develop a loving heart.  And, perhaps most importantly of all, hear him tell you that he loves you unconditionally, as you are.  For Jesus prayer is nothing more and nothing less than our personal act of surrender to the Father; to the Father’s love, to his help, to his healing. 

Perhaps the thing we most associate with Lent is fasting.  Jesus understood the value of fasting and promoted it in his teaching.  He knew there is a tendency in human nature towards attachment and addiction that is not healthy and balanced. Jesus wants us to keep our hearts mellow and grateful.  To keep our hearts mellow and grateful it is not enough to give up things like sweets and alcohol. We need to control our desire for possessions, power and popularity. As Jesus himself discovered during his retreat in the desert these are potent demons in the human heart that need to be tamed. Fasting is unfashionable today.  Yet never has it been so necessary.  In the so-called first world which is mainly nominally Christian we are now the most indebted, obese, addicted and medicated generation in history.  Jesus’ teaching on fasting has the power to improve our health, our relationships and our environment. 

The third thing the Lenten season invites us to practise is almsgiving.  Jesus insisted that we care for those in need and that we do this without looking for a reward. We can look at almsgiving in the specific sense of offering practical help to those who are hungry or homeless or without clothes. But we also need to look at it in the much broader sense of our attitude to life.  Our lives are not just about ourselves and our own needs.  Our lives are for others too.  When we serve others we are making a difference to their lives. We are also making a difference to our own.  It is a truth that unless and until we give our lives away to others we do not seem to have them ourselves at any deep level.

On Ash Wednesday the annual Christian fasting season, known as Lent, begins.  Most world religions have an annual fasting season.  The Christian one lasts for forty days and significantly coincides with spring.  There are many reasons why it is good for Christians to have the fasting season of Lent.  Here are a few.

Lent offers us an opportunity to start again, to make a new beginning.  Failing and falling are part of the human condition.  In the Christian view of life, failing and falling should never be a cause for despondency or despair.  The God of Jesus is a God of abundant mercy and radical forgiveness, a God who wipes out past failures and invites us to make a fresh start.  We should never be reluctant to begin again.  Indeed, our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail. New beginnings are a necessary part of the Christian journey.  They are always life-giving.

Lent is also an ideal time to restore the balance in our lives.  Virtue is the happy medium, the golden mean.  But the golden mean is hard to achieve. There is a tendency in human nature to overindulge, to develop addictions, to abuse our bodies, to become overly preoccupied with work, to neglect important relationships, to put too much emphasis on our material needs and not enough on our emotional and spiritual needs.  Lent provides us with an opportunity to get back to a healthy diet – a healthy diet of food, of exercise, of relaxation, of prayer.  Restoring the balance in our lives helps us to sort out our priorities, to decide what is good for us and what is not good for us.

Lent is the Christian fasting season which means that it should be focused on Jesus who is the Christ.   There is really only one yardstick with which to measure the success of our Lenten fasting: Does it help us to become more like Jesus?  The heart of Christianity is not a rule of law or a code of behaviour.  It is a Person whose love we receive and whose life we seek to imitate.  Ultimately, Lent is about Jesus.  It is about Jesus’ vision of life, his values and the building of his Kingdom in the world.  Therefore, the best type of fasting we can do in Lent is the fasting that helps us pay greater attention to Jesus and move closer to him.  To use the language of St Paul, the goal of Lent is to get rid of the ‘old man’ who is the selfish me and to put on the ‘New Man’ who is the loving Jesus.

Some years ago a woman by the name of Teresa came to talk to me about her experience of God.  She was carrying negative images of God.  For her, God was distant and demanding.  He was like a policeman watching to catch her doing something wrong.  He was also like a judge handing out sentences from on high.  Needless to say Teresa was frightened of God and because of this she was finding it difficult to pray.

After listening to Teresa I asked her if she would be willing to try a new way of praying.  I suggested that she spend ten minutes each day picturing in her mind what happened at the Baptism of Jesus. I invited her to do two things.  Firstly, to imagine what it was like for Jesus to hear God the Father say to him, “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Secondly, to imagine that God the Father is saying the very same words to her, “Teresa, you are my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.”  I asked her to notice what she was feeling as she heard God the Father telling her that he was pleased with her.

Three weeks later, Teresa came back to tell me how she was getting on.  She said she was beginning to experience God differently.  God was becoming easier to relate to.  Rather than feeling that God was disappointed with her, she was beginning to feel that God was in fact pleased with her. Indeed, she was starting to accept that God knew her personally and that he was involved in her life.

The baptism of Jesus took place when he was an adult and it was a very significant event in his life.  During his baptism Jesus had an overwhelming experience of unconditional love.  He knew he was God’s beloved Son.  He also knew that his Father took delight in him. 

What happened to Jesus at his baptism also happened to us at our baptism even though we were children and unaware of it.  As our parents held us over the baptismal font, God the Father said to each of us, “You are my beloved son/daughter in whom I am well pleased.”  Unfortunately, because of life’s negative experiences this is a truth many of us find difficult to accept.  Instead of believing in a loving and affirming God, we find ourselves believing in a demanding and judgemental God.  Like Teresa, we need to find a way of getting rid of our negative images of God and of taking possession of the real relationship, the loving relationship, which God has with each of us.  We need to find a way of claiming our belovedness.  Perhaps a prayer exercise like the one Teresa was willing to try can help us.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a man in his late thirties. He told me that many of his contemporaries had no real source of guidance in their lives. “They have no north star,” is the way he put it. It is certainly true that there is a breakdown of trust in our society. Many people have lost faith in the major institutions that have been the bedrock of our way of life. We are missing a moral compass and things like consumerism, individualism and the social media are filling the vacuum.

On the feast of the Epiphany, sometimes referred to as ‘little Christmas’, we meet three men known as the Magi who had the courage to follow a new star that appeared in the sky.  Their journey brought them to an unfamiliar place and to an unexpected discovery.  They found a child who had come into the world to offer its peoples guidance and hope.  So convinced were they of their discovery that their lives took a whole new direction and were given a new sense of purpose.  It is not surprising we are told that they returned home by a different route (see Matthew 2:1-12).

The truth is there is a moral compass to guide us.  We do have a ‘north star.’  This star is the person of Jesus discovered by the wise men in a stable in Bethlehem.  Jesus is the Word of God who came among us to speak the truth that sets us free. He is the Wise Man who inspires and guides us.  The teachings of Jesus provide us with meaning and give purpose and direction to our lives.    

Let’s not allow the failures of the Church and her ministers prevent us from hearing the message of Jesus.  The Church in her weakness may confuse and disappoint us, but Jesus will not.  He has words of comfort and hope, words that will change the way we see ourselves, other people and the world around us.  Peter once said to Jesus, “Lord, who else is there to go to; it is you who have the words of eternal life” (see John 6:68).  Jesus is still the only one who can offer us the message of eternal life. It is he who is our ‘north star.’

There is a story told about a child who woke up from a dream in the middle of the night frightened.  She was on her own so she cried out for protection.  Her mother who was in the bedroom next door heard her cry and immediately came to comfort her.  The mother tried to reassure her daughter that she was safe and that there was no reason for her to be frightened.  ‘Don’t you know that God is looking after you,’ she said. ‘Yes mammy I know God is looking after me,’ the child replied, ‘but tonight I need a God with skin on!’ 

Jesus was God with skin on.  People met God in the humanity of Jesus. This is what we are celebrating at Christmas; we call it the Incarnation. In Jesus, God became one of us; he became one with us. On that first Christmas night “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). Jesus of Nazareth was the very human face of God, the person in whom God was met and known in the most concrete of ways.

Because Jesus was God with skin on, we are also God with skin on.  If God dwelt in the humanity of Jesus then God dwells in our humanity too.  What we are celebrating at Christmas is not just the extraordinary fact that God put on flesh in Jesus, but the even more extraordinary fact that we put flesh on God for each other.  This truth is poetically expressed in this little verse: “I sought my soul I could not see; I sought my God and He eluded me; I sought my neighbour and I found all three.”   In the tangible reality of our neighbour we meet God.  In the physical body of our neighbour we meet God. In the humanness of our neighbour we meet God. This is the implication of what happened on that first Christmas all those years ago.  

The birth of Jesus raised the dignity of our humanity to a whole new realm.  Whether we are aware of it or not, God is living and loving in each of us. This makes us sacred vessels and channels of the Divine Presence.  To accept this is to accept that our humanity is the primary means through which God is involved in our world.  To quote the words attributed to St Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth. Yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.”

How do we prepare well for Christmas?  Perhaps John the Baptist, one of the great Advent personalities, can provide us with the answer. John was a prophet and he has some helpful things to teach us about our preparation for Christmas.  Let me mention three all beginning with the letter S.

John was single-minded. The focus of his life was Jesus.  He had come to prepare the way for Jesus and to point Jesus out when he came.  John let nothing distract him from centring his life on Jesus.  At this time of year there is a danger we would forget that Jesus is the reason for the season.  We need to try to keep Jesus at the centre of our Christmas preparations and celebrations.  If we don’t, Christmas will leave us with a sense of disappointment and perhaps even emptiness.

We are told that John the Baptist lived out in the desert.  He sought silence.  Silence helped John not only to reflect but, more importantly, to listen to his heart. In listening to his heart John knew he was listening to God.  Silence enabled John to experience solitude.  Solitude is finding the Presence of God within.  It is prayer experienced as friendship.  Like John we too need times of silence in our lives, especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  How else can we glimpse the great wonder of God becoming human in a helpless, vulnerable child?  Without silence Christmas can be a superficial experience.

John also lived a simple life.  The scriptures tell us that he wore a camel skin and ate locusts and wild honey.  There was no excess baggage, no clutter or waste in John’s life. His life was focused on the essentials.  John’s example is an important one for us who live in a consumerist culture that is in overdrive for months before Christmas.  It often feels as if the real religion at Christmas is shopping. Of course it is a good thing at Christmas to give presents.  Gifts are an expression of our love and appreciation of others.  But there is so much needless spending and unnecessary waste at Christmas.  Waste is offensive to the poor.  It also distracts us from the things that really matter – our relationships.  The investment we make in building relationships is much more important than our investment in material possessions. 

In the weeks leading up to Christmas John the Baptist’s message to us is clear. Don’t forget that Jesus is the reason for the season, create a little time for silence and put relationships before possessions.

I once heard God compared to a mother who took her three young children to the seaside on a summer’s day.  The children spent most of their time on the beach playing in the sand.  Each of them built a sandcastle, according to his or her ability.  When they had finished their work, their mother came to look at what they had done.  She praised each of them individually for their achievements.  On returning home the mother fed her children, washed them and put them to bed.  Then she sat down to relax.  She was happy with the day at the seaside; pleased that her children enjoyed themselves on the beach and that they were safe.  And in the meantime the tide came in and washed away the sandcastles her children had built.

It is November.  It is the month when we remember the dead and when we think about our own death.  For all of us life is passing; it is transient.  Death is inevitable.  We have here no lasting city.  The thought of our mortality at this wintertime gives us an opportunity to get things in perspective.

To get things in perspective it is helpful to ask ourselves some questions. One question we could do to ask ourselves during November is this: What will we have to leave behind us when our earthly life is over?  Among the things we will definitely leave behind are the sandcastles we have built.  Our sandcastles are more than the buildings we own.  They are our projects, our investments, our businesses, our wealth, even our achievements.  All these things may have preoccupied us in life, but they will be of little benefit to us in death.

Another question November brings is one that gets to the heart of the meaning of life.  What will we take with us when our time in this world is over?  The poet William Blake provides the answer: “We are put on earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” What will endure are the relationships we have built, including our relationship with God.  Relationships are the most important thing in life.  It is the investment we make in relationships that we will take with us into God’s other world beyond the grave.  It is love and only love that will last.  When we meet the Lord face to face in death the thing he will look for is the love in our hearts.

So, “if you tend to get overly serious about your work and your responsibilities remind yourself that the most common deathbed regrets have to do with neglected relationships, not unfinished business” (The Little Book of Calm).

A religious reformer, writer, mystic, Doctor of the Church, founder of seventeen monasteries and, perhaps most importantly of all, a charming and wholesome human being.  Who can I be referring to?  The sixteen century Carmelite called Teresa of Avila.  Here is a little taste of her life and spirituality.

Teresa of Avila was a woman who was down to earth and full of practical common sense.  She was a mystic who had her feet firmly planted on the ground.  When one of her more pious Carmelite sisters criticised her for enjoying a well-cooked bird, she immediately replied, “Sister, there is a time for penance and a time for partridge!”  Teresa believed that the Lord can be found among the pots and pans.  Her spirituality was not detached from everyday things and everyday living.  It was an integral part of everyday things and everyday living.  Her God was a God who was personally involved in the business of her life.  She believed that the God, who revealed himself in and through the humanity of Jesus, was revealing himself in and through her humanity too.

Teresa had a great sense of humour.  For her religion should make us cheerful. She once exclaimed, “May the Lord protect us from sour-faced saints!”  As she travelled throughout Spain founding new Carmelite monasteries Teresa had to put up with plenty of inconvenience and hardship.  On one occasion when all of this was obviously getting her down she complained to the Lord, “If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”  Towards the end of her life Teresa agreed to have her portrait painted by a Carmelite brother by the name of John. When she saw the finished product she turned to Brother John and said, “God forgive you Brother John for you have made me fat and bleary-eyed!”  It is refreshing to meet a saint who did not take herself too seriously.

Without doubt Teresa of Avila’s most important contribution to the Christian tradition has to do with prayer.  She is the great teacher in the art of prayer.  Teresa is clear and adamant: If we want a relationship with the Lord then we must spend time in personal prayer and do this regularly.  Her teaching on prayer is perhaps best summed up in these words, “In my opinion, prayer is an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with the one whom we know loves us.”  For Teresa, prayer is about the experience of friendship, a friendship that satisfies the longing in our hearts for unconditional love. Teresa knew the Lord as an intimate friend and she wants us to experience his intimacy too.