Walking in the Spirit
Part 5
Pentecost
27 May 2007
During this Eastertide we have been exploring the commonalities of our life in Christ, the normal Christian life as the Holy Spirit has made it possible for us. Today we have reached Pentecost and the end of Eastertide. As the conclusion to the series of sermons on Walking in the Spirit, I want to consider where we can hope to arrive if we seriously give ourselves to following the Spirit over time. What should be the goal of our long-range spiritual plan? As I hinted last week, I think we can hope to do good work, which is the prerogative of the mature Christian. A mature Christian is one who has found a good work to do with his or her life and who is getting on with it. This is what the Spirit equips us for: a life of maturity within the Body of Christ, in which our good work is the project of our lives. How do we describe this state?
Everything depends on our baptismal status. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. Our true life is hid with Christ in God—so we are in pursuit of that hidden reality. We are a new creation in Christ and are aiming to live that newness. This is the life of Jesus in us—so we are in pursuit of a Jesus way of life. What would Jesus be like if He were us? Obviously we do not copy his first century way of life but try to live according to the same Spirit who filled Him, for it is the Holy Spirit who makes all of this work for us. The Spirit shapes us to be like Jesus in all the ways of walking in the Spirit we have been talking about the last several weeks: the seven-fold gift, the virtues, the works of mercy. The Church has long experience of what Jesus’ kind of people do in many different circumstances and her experience is summarized in these lists of virtues and works.
And yet, as we strive for maturity in Christ by the power of the Spirit, we need more than lists of virtues or qualities of character. We must try to discern how in our own life we are to manifest the likeness of our Lord—how to be a normal Christian but a Christian in our own unique way. To discover this is to discover the good work our Lord wants us to do, the project or vocation to which we are called to respond with our lives, the kind of person we are meant to be.
We are not meant to be merely examples of various virtues. We are aiming at an integrated life, one that is focused and directed around Jesus and incarnates that focus in tasks that suit our capabilities and energies. In this integrated life there will be room for all the virtues and many good works, but they will be set within a life that has responded to a particular personal calling, a life of good work, directed by the Spirit through which Jesus is manifested uniquely in the life of his disciple. Christians are not standardized and typical. They are wonderfully diverse and unique. Yet there is a quality that belongs to the mature Christian person: a kind of humility and reserve. If you remember 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul talks about love, you see maturity in Christian character: a mature Christian is patient, kind; not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. A mature Christian does not insist on her own way; he is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Nothing he has to bear can keep him from loving or hoping. Her endurance is phenomenal.
How does one get there from here—that is, from Baptism to maturity? There is only one way: to learn to live a recollected life. The mature Christian life is one of habitual recollection. Recollection is nothing but the practice of the presence of God. Every act of prayer is an act of recollection. But in order to become what we are meant to be, we must attain to the level at which our recollectedness, our focus on God, is habitual, continuous, uninterrupted. Here is a definition: “the state of permanent God-centeredness wherein the presence of God is known, felt, or realized continuously and without major interruption. This knowledge or experience may be subconscious, in the ordinary practical life of busy people it will often have to be, but it is nevertheless very real and it will colour the whole of life. The recollected character is one who manifests a faith that sees God as the true end of all things, whether large or small, sorrowful or joyous, grim or gay; and he is known to his friends as someone who is balanced, level-headed, or reliable, one who makes a success of life because he has things in perspective.” [Thornton]
This state of habitual recollection is the highest state to which we can ordinarily aspire in the Spiritual Life. It will not be perfected until we arrive, by God’s mercy, in the world to come, but much progress can be made here and it does not have to be perfect to show real results. Most of us, of course, do not live very recollected lives. In fact, the opposite: lives of habitual distraction. Life is filled with distractions and most of them do us no harm. Yet if we do not return from them to God as soon as we may, we begin to drift into a life of only occasional recollection, habitually out of touch with our fundamental baptismal identity. We can resist this distractedness since we already have within us the principle of recollection: the active presence of the Holy Spirit and all of the dispositions of soul which the Spirit has planted within us.
But, of course, the Spirit has to be cooperated with, graces have to be corresponded to. That means a two-fold task towards the goal of habitual recollection. First of all, we have to fight distraction by an intention to practice the presence of God. We can frustrate the Holy Spirit’s work in us if we accept a distracted life as normal. I have done a lot of reading about post-modern conditions lately and as this condition is often described, I have wondered if it is possible for a truly postmodern person ever to be mature? I don’t have the answer to this. But I think that Christian maturity, maybe all types of maturity, are increasingly counter-cultural. For our goal is to focus everything around God. We don’t despair when we fail, but we don’t accept that condition, either.
Especially are we on the look-out for a particular kind of distraction, one which leads to a serious loss of centredness in God. This is what we mean by serious sin. If you want a good definition of sin, especially in those areas which are doubtful, ask yourself: does this distract me from my focus on God? If you sense that whatever you want to do or have been doing cools your desire for God, or makes you feel awkward in God’s presence, or diminishes your hold upon him, the chances are it is sinful for you. Recollection does not mean that we are always at prayer in an actual way. It is possible to give oneself wholly to doing one’s work and not think consciously about God at all, yet still be in a state of recollection, because deep down we are focused on Him and the work we do is centered in Him. In fact, if we are truly to do good work, all we do must spring from this inner recollectedness in God.
In order to make recollection a habit, we must practice it regularly. This is actual recollection, acts of recollection, by which we remind ourselves of who we are and actively seek to be aware of God and to correspond to his will. This is, naturally, the life of prayer. In order to be able to live prayerfully at a deep, even subconscious level, we will need a rule of prayer. A rule organizes our actual recollection and trains us to focus our lives in God, and leads us to mature proficiency in the Christian way of life. The goal of our rule is that prayer will eventually colour the whole of our lives, that nothing will be unrelated to our prayer, and that our prayer will be a natural expression of our deepest self. A rule of prayer, as we have said many times before, takes account of all the aspects of our relationship with God and seeks to give them full expression in regular and balanced way. The path towards maturity lies through the rule of prayer.
And what is it that we achieve when we begin to reach habitual recollection? We are taking our place in the world according to the will of God, living a Christ-like life, and walking in the power of the Spirit. The recollected person is able to respond to God’s call and to offer him a life of service in good work. If our desires and energies are directed towards Christ, then we can follow our natural inclinations to the extent that following them does not distract us from God. This is what Augustine meant by that famous phrase: Love God and do what you want.”
This kind of thinking may mean different things to a person depending on his or her stage of life. Teenagers trying to plan for education and career have this whole vocational response yet to make. Besides the standard advice about testing their talents, the Church says to them, first of all, develop your rule of prayer. Yet most teens drift away from their prayer just at the time of life when they need it most. To a more middle aged person whose vocational life has been frustrating, this teaching may cause him or her to think that mistakes have been made. None of us can go back, but we can all go forward. Wherever we are, if we focus ourselves on God in a life of habitual recollection, God will find a way to utilize our talents and abilities for Him. I think it is also possible that what many people have to do in their daily work will never satisfy them very much because it does not call out from them their real talents and abilities. Sometimes it is too late to retool for a new vocation, but it is never too late to fill one’s life with the kind of work that is creative and responsive to God, even if it has to be done after normal working hours.
Another angle on this teaching may be experienced by the person whose vocational life has consumed him. Doing good work cannot mean abandoning good works, family, friends, and so on. This is not consistent with habitual recollection. Maturity means balance, even in the amount of time one spends working. And it is never too late in our lives to discover our vocation more deeply. As our abilities change according to our progression through this life, so will our vocation. Even retired persons have a vocational call to live as mature Christians in the Church community contributing to the common life as the Spirit leads. No one is exempt from this until death takes them away.
Since having a Rule of Prayer is so crucial to the life of maturity in Christ, let me remind you that Pentecost is a good time to consider our prayer. It is the gift of the Spirit that enables us to pray or to correspond to any of God’s graces. The desire to pray comes from the Spirit. The ability to pray comes from the Spirit, who takes our own inadequate words and thoughts and translates them into meaningful communication with our Father in heaven. But we will never actually pray unless we set ourselves to do it, faithfully and regularly—according to rule. I remind you of the elements of Rule, centered around the triad of Worship, Doctrine, and Action. These are familiar to us by now, I think, but still crucial. As we fill out these three elements with solid content, we shall find ourselves growing towards that maturity of character which the Spirit desires for each of us, and out of which we will find our own unique way of serving God.
Let us pray. Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church; open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.