Hiddenness, a Place of Purification

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God.   In hiddenness we do not receive human   acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement.   In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.

In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness.   We want to be seen and acknowledged.   We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events.   But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being.     Hiddenness is the place of purification.   In hiddenness we find our true selves.

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Protecting Our Hiddenness

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life?     The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty.   Solitude allows us to be alone with God.   There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone.   Poverty is where we experience our own and other people’s weakness, limitations, and need for support.   To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power.   But there God chooses to show us God’s love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.

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Clinging to God in Solitude

When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are.   Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense.   When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies.   Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant.   Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are “somebodies.”   But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people’s responses to us but God’s eternal love for us.

To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are.

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Becoming the Living Christ

Whenever we come together around the table, take bread, bless it, break it, and give it to one another saying:   “The Body of Christ,” we know that Jesus is among us.   He is among us not as a vague memory of a person who lived long ago but as a real, life-giving presence that transforms us.   By eating the Body of Christ, we become the living Christ and we are enabled to discover our own chosenness and blessedness, acknowledge our brokenness, and trust that all we live we live for others.   Thus we, like Jesus himself, become food for the world.

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Recognizing Christ in Suffering Communities

Communities as well as individuals suffer.   All over the world there are large groups of people who are persecuted, mistreated, abused, and made victims of horrendous crimes.   There are suffering families, suffering circles of friends, suffering religious communities, suffering ethnic groups, and suffering nations.     In these suffering bodies of people we must be able to recognise the suffering Christ.   They too are chosen, blessed, broken and given to the world.

As we call one another to respond to the cries of these people and work together for justice and peace, we are caring for Christ, who suffered and died for the salvation of our world.

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Who Is My Neighbour?

“Love your neighbour as yourself” the Gospel says (Matthew 22:38).   But who is my neighbor?   We often respond to that question by saying:   “My neighbours are all the people I am living with on this earth, especially the sick, the hungry, the dying, and all who are in need.”   But this is not what Jesus says.   When Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan (see Luke 10:29-37) to answer the question “Who is my neighbour?”   he ends the by asking:   “Which, … do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the bandits’ hands?”   The neighbour, Jesus makes clear, is not the poor man laying on the side of the street, stripped, beaten, and half dead, but the Samaritan who crossed the road, “bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, … lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him.”   My neighbour is the one who crosses the road for me!

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Crossing the Road for One Another

We become neighbours when we are willing to cross the road for one another.   There is so much separation and segregation: between black people and white people, between gay people and straight people, between young people and old people, between sick people and healthy people, between prisoners and free people, between Jews and Gentiles, Muslims and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, Greek Catholics and Latin Catholics.

There is a lot of road crossing to do.   We are all very busy in our own circles.   We have our own people to go to and our own affairs to take care of.   But if we could cross the street once in a while and pay attention to what is happening on the other side, we might become neighbours.

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Bridging the Gap Between People

To become neighbours is to bridge the gap between people.   As long as there is distance between us and we cannot look in each other’s eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise.   We give them names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact.   We think of them as enemies.   We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do.   We forget that they are our brothers and sisters and treat them as objects that can be destroyed at will.

Only when we have the courage to cross the street and look in one another’s eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family.

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What We Feel Is Not Who We Are

Our emotional lives move up and down constantly.   Sometimes we experience great mood swings: from excitement to depression, from joy to sorrow, from inner harmony to inner chaos.   A little event, a word from someone, a disappointment in work, many things can trigger such mood swings.   Mostly we have little control over these changes.   It seems that they happen  to  us rather than being created  by  us.

Thus it is important to know that our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life.   Our spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of God within us.   As we feel our emotions shift we must connect our spirits with the Spirit of God and remind ourselves that what we  feel  is not who we are.   We are and remain, whatever our moods, God’s beloved children.

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Overcoming Our Mood Swings

Are we condemned to be passive victims of our moods?   Must we simply say:   “I feel great today” or “I feel awful today,” and require others to live with our moods?

Although it is very hard to control our moods, we can gradually overcome them by living a well-disciplined spiritual life.   This can prevent us from acting out of our moods.   We might not “feel” like getting up in the morning because we “feel” that life is not worth living, that nobody loves us, and that our work is boring.   But if we get up anyhow, to spend some time reading the Gospels, praying the Psalms, and thanking God for a new day, our moods may lose their power over   us.

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Digging Into Our Spiritual Resources

When someone hurts us, offends us, ignores us, or rejects us, a deep inner protest emerges.   It can be rage or depression, desire to take revenge or an impulse to harm ourselves.   We can feel a deep urge to wound those who have wounded us or to withdraw in a suicidal mood of self-rejection.   Although these extreme reactions might seem exceptional, they are never far away from our hearts.   During the long nights we often find ourselves brooding about words and actions we might have used in response to what others have said or done to us.

It is precisely here that we have to dig deep into our spiritual resources and find the center within us, the center that lies beyond our need to hurt others or ourselves, where we are free to forgive and love.

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The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life

Our emotional lives and our spiritual lives have different dynamics.   The ups and downs of our emotional life depend a great deal on our past or present surroundings.   We are happy, sad, angry, bored, excited, depressed, loving, caring, hateful, or vengeful because of what happened long ago or what is happening now.

The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our obedience – that is, our attentive listening – to the movements of the Spirit of God within us.   Without this listening our spiritual life eventually becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions.

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A Window on Our Spiritual Lives

Even though our emotional and spiritual lives are distinct, they do influence one another profoundly.   Our feelings often give us a window on our spiritual journeys.   When we cannot let go of jealousy, we may wonder if we are in touch with the Spirit in us that cries out “Abba.”   When we feel very peaceful and “centered,” we may come to realise that this is a sign of our deep awareness of our belovedness.

Likewise our prayer lives, lived as faithful response to the presence of the Spirit within us, may open a window on our emotions, feelings, and passions and give us some indication of how to put them into the service of our long journey into the heart of God.

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Putting Our Temperaments in the Service of God

Our temperaments – whether flamboyant, phlegmatic, introverted, or extroverted – are quite permanent fixtures of our personalities.   Still, the way we “use” our temperaments on a daily basis can vary greatly.   When we are attentive to the Spirit of God within us, we will gradually learn to put our temperaments in the service of a virtuous life.   Then flamboyancy gives great zeal for the Kingdom, phlegmatism helps to keep an even keel in times of crisis, introversion deepens the contemplative side, and extroversion encourages creative ministry.

Let’s live with our temperaments as with gifts that help us deepen our spiritual lives.

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Spiritual Dryness

Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life.   We feel no desire to pray, don’t experience God’s presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.

Then it is important to realise that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts.   It is a great grace to be able to experience God’s presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don’t, it does not mean that God is absent.   It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness.   It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

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Two Kinds of Loneliness

In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness.   In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home.   The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture.

We might think of these two kinds of loneliness as two forms of blindness.   The first blindness comes from the absence of light, the second from too much light.     The first loneliness we must try to outgrow with faith and hope. The second   we must be willing to embrace in love.

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Jesus’ Loneliness

When Jesus came close to his death, he no longer could experience God’s presence.   He cried out:   “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   (Matthew 27:47).   Still in love he held on to the truth that God was with him and said:   “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”   (Luke 23:46).

The loneliness of the cross led Jesus to the resurrection.   As we grow older we are often invited by Jesus to follow him into this loneliness, the loneliness in which God is too close to be experienced by our limited hearts and minds.   When this happens, let us pray for the grace to surrender our spirits to God as Jesus did.

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All People Lifted Up with Jesus

The death and resurrection of Jesus are God’s way to open for all people the door to eternal life.   Jesus said:   “When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Indeed, all people, from all times and places, are lifted up with Jesus on the cross and into the new life of the resurrection.   Thus, Jesus’ death is a death for all humanity, and Jesus’ resurrection is a resurrection for all humanity.

Not one person from the past, present, or future is excluded from the great passage of Jesus from slavery to freedom, from the land of captivity to the promised land, from death to eternal life.

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Jesus Takes Away Fatality

The great mystery of the incarnation is that God became human in Jesus so that all human flesh could be clothed with divine life.   Our lives are fragile and destined to death.   But since God, through Jesus, shared in our fragile and mortal lives, death no longer has the final word.   Life has become victorious.   Paul writes:   “And after this perishable nature has put on imperishability and this mortal nature has put on immortality, then will the words of scripture come true:   “Death is swallowed up in victory.   Death, where is your victory?   Death, where is your sting?”   (1 Corinthians 15:54).     Jesus has taken away the fatality of our existence and given our lives eternal value.

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The Door Open to Anyone

Jesus is the door to a life in and with God. “I am the gate,” he says (John 10:9).   “I am the Way;   I am Truth and Life.     No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).   Still, many people never have heard or will hear of Jesus.   They are born, live their lives, and die without having been exposed to Jesus and his words.   Are they lost?   Is there no place in the Father’s house for them?

Jesus opened the door to God’s house for all people, also for those who never knew or will know that it was Jesus who opened it.   The Spirit that Jesus sent “blows where it pleases” (John 3:8), and it can lead anyone through the door to God’s house.

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Jesus Comes to Us in the Poor

What finally counts is not whether we know Jesus and his words but whether we live our lives in the Spirit of Jesus.   The Spirit of Jesus is the Spirit of Love.   Jesus himself makes this clear when he speaks about the last judgment.   There people will ask:   “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?” and Jesus will answer:   “In so far as you did this to one of the least … of mine, you did it to me”   (Matthew 25:37, 40).

This is our great challenge and consolation.   Jesus comes to us in the poor, the sick, the dying, the prisoners, the lonely, the disabled, the rejected.   There we meet him, and there the door to God’s house is opened for us.

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Sharing the Abundant Love

Why must we go out to the far ends of the world to preach the Gospel of Jesus when people do not have to know Jesus in order to enter the house of God?     We must go out because we want to share with all people the abundant love and hope, joy and peace that Jesus brought to us.   We want to “proclaim the unfathomable treasure of Christ” and “throw light on the inner workings of the mystery kept hidden through all ages in God, the creator of everything”   (Ephesians 3:8-9).

What we have received is so beautiful and so rich that we cannot hold it for ourselves but feel compelled to bring it to every human being on earth.

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Being Joyful Witnesses

To speak about Jesus and his divine work of salvation shouldn’t be a burden or a heavy obligation.   When we go to people feeling that unless they accept our way of knowing Jesus,  they  are lost and  we  are failures, it is hardly possible to be true witnesses.

It is a great joy when people recognise through our witness that Jesus is the divine redeemer who opened for them the way to God.   It is a true cause for gratitude and celebration.   But we should also be able to live joyful and grateful lives when our witness with deeds and words does not lead people to accept Jesus in the way we do.

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Keeping the Peace in Our Hearts

Whatever we do in the Name of Jesus, we must always keep the peace of Jesus in our hearts.   When Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the Gospel, he says:   “Whatever town or village you go into, seek out someone worthy and stay with him until you leave.   As you enter his house, salute it, and if the house deserves it, may your peace come upon it; if it does not, may your peace come back to you”   (Matthew 10:11-13).

The great temptation is to let people take our peace away.   This happens whenever we become angry, hostile, bitter, spiteful, manipulative, or vengeful when others do not respond favourably to the good news we bring to them.

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Being Unconditional Witnesses

Good news becomes bad news when it is announced without peace and joy.   Anyone who proclaims the forgiving and healing love of Jesus with a bitter heart is a false witness.   Jesus is the savior of the world.   We are not.   We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us.   But this witness must come from a heart that is willing to give without getting anything in return.

The more we trust in God’s unconditional love for us, the more able we will be to proclaim the love of Jesus without any inner or outer conditions.

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Being Living Signs of Love

Jesus’ whole life was a witness to his Father’s love, and   Jesus calls his followers to carry on that witness in his Name.   We, as followers of Jesus, are sent into this world to be visible signs of God’s unconditional love.   Thus we are not first of all judged by what we say but by what we live.   When people say of us:   “See how they love one another,” they catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and are drawn to it as by a magnet.

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.

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Burning With Love

Often we are preoccupied with the question “How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus?   What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?”   These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love.     Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses.   He was so full of God’s love, so connected with God’s will, so burning with zeal for God’s Kingdom, that he couldn’t do other than witness.   Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him.   (See Luke 6:19.)

If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was.

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Trusting in the Fruits

We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work.   We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made.   But that is not the way of God’s Kingdom.   Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results.   Jesus himself died as a failure on a cross.   There was no success there to be proud of.   Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus’ life is beyond any human measure.   As faithful witnesses of Jesus we have to trust that our lives too will be fruitful, even though we cannot see their fruit.   The fruit of our lives may be visible only to those who live after us.

What is important is how well we love.   God will make our love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not.

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The Hidden Life of Jesus

The largest part of Jesus’ life was hidden.   Jesus lived with his parents in Nazareth, “under their authority” (Luke 2:51), and there “increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people” (Luke 2:52).   When we think about Jesus we mostly think about his words and miracles, his passion, death, and resurrection, but we should never forget that before all of that Jesus lived a simple, hidden life in a small town, far away from all the great people, great cities, and great events.   Jesus’ hidden life is very important for our own spiritual journeys.   If we want to follow Jesus by words and deeds in the service of his Kingdom, we must first of all strive to follow Jesus in his simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary hidden life.

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Hiddenness, a Place of Intimacy

Hiddenness is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing … all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live.   It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase “in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people” (Luke 2:51).   It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.

Even during his active ministry, Jesus continued to return to hidden places to be alone with God.   If we don’t have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit.

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Focussing Our Minds and Hearts

How can we stay in solitude when we feel that deep urge to be distracted by people and events?     The most simple way is to focus our minds and hearts on a word or picture that reminds us of God.   By repeating quietly:   “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want,” or by gazing lovingly at an icon of Jesus, we can bring our restless minds to some rest and experience a gentle divine presence.

This doesn’t happen overnight.   It asks a faithful practice.   But when we spend a few moments every day just being with God, our endless distractions will gradually disappear.

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Our Poverty, God’s Dwelling Place

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich?     Poverty has many forms.   We have to ask ourselves:   “What is my poverty?”   Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence?   Each human being has a place of poverty.   That’s the place where God wants to dwell!   “How blessed are the poor,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:3).   This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.

We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it.     Let’s dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.