Spiritual Growth

Fundamentally there are two types of people in the world: those who reconcile themselves to human nature, and those who reject it. After that, the only way people distinguish themselves is by how willing they are to pursue that. A school friend of mine recommended I read "Prayer: Living With God" by Simon Tugwell (she was recommended the book by another Dominican). Being quite willing to pursue my humanity, understanding my condition to the full, I checked it out, and it has paid off.

Tugwell makes the claim (by his admision copying Aquinas) that humility is rooted in the proper understanding of our humanity, and central to that is the fall of man. There he goes to St. Irenaeus (not St. Augustine), who claimed that man was born immature, and God intended for him to grow up slowly, but man was too hasty, and suffers the consequenses. This is reasonable enough. By eating the apple man grew up too quickly: he took knowledge that he wasn't ready to handle. It's the reason why we don't tell our 4 year old children there are souls burning in hell for all eternity. They aren't ready to handle such a reality.

Here is the amazing part: God, knowing that his beloved 4 year old now knew far too much about himself than he was able to handle made him mortal! He ended his sufferings. Man truly does know God's mind, in the small way that our mind is capable to handle such things. It's not any of our buisness to about sin, heaven, or hell. Why? None of it has anything to do with us really. Oh how I wish the world knew this: the saints do not preach fire and brimstone! Their message is one of love! Jesus is a burning funace of charity. Every drop of water in the ocean would not account for our sins, yet all that water would not cause any hesitation to the fire which is God's love for us. We messed up, but God loved us too much to let it really hurt.

Being a saint is not a matter of not sinning. It's not a matter of aeseticism. It's not a matter of anything! You just have to be yourself. Of course, this is wildly difficult in this day and age. I'm wasn't the kind of guy to play music. It's not that music is bad: God creates people who can play music, but not me. There are different religious orders because everybody is called to do different things. It would be misery for some people to contemplate God in silence all day, and, so too, some people simply could not contain themselves if they had to live with (not in) the world each day.

All you have to do to be a saint is be yourself. You have to understand your human nature. That's no easy task, be so warned. No easy task at all: confronting yourself never is. Crosses and pennences, spiritual reading and prayer, these are all just ways to understand your human nature. Of course they are good for other things too; don't missunderstand me, prayer is not all about us. But at the course of the spiritual life is the pressing desire to reconcile yourself to yourself. (To continue St. Irenaeus' understanding) to do this is to grow up.