‘Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye’.
Since the essential is invisible to the eye, many people, you and I are fooling ourselves having or not the awareness that we are not seeking the essential. Why seek the essential? Because otherwise we are going to waste our time, waste our energies, waste our enthusiasm and love on something that is not worth it.
It is very good that we start with these thoughts for today’s formation since it is about The Interior Life. Throughout this formation today, you will be able to answer the questions: ‘What is interior life?’ ‘What is it for?’ ‘How do I know if I have an interior life?’ ‘Why is interior life important?’
So that we understand and distinguish it, there are two types or two ways of referring to the interior life which we could talk about: the first one is related to the person who actually met Jesus and for that reason has a spiritual life and lives in the Grace of God. We could define this one as an interior life in a sense of life of grace. The second one is a higher degree, in a sense of dimension, it is like comparing the life of holy people, saints of the Church, to the life of regular people, and it could be identified when we refer to the activism.
Obviously if we go truly deep on the steps of the spiritual or the interior life, we need to come to one of the Masters of the Church who wrote a wonderful book, very worth reading, called ‘The Interior Castle’ - Saint Teresa of Avila - where she states there are Seven Mansions - and they define the steps of the spiritual life. But today we want to open the subject and clarify some points to help us understand.
There is a plague in the Church nowadays and this plague is called activism (or Christian activism): it is the sense of service that needs doing, evangelization and millions of ways of keeping yourself active (it doesn’t mean it is bad, since it should be done - this needs to happen and it is very necessary) but the fact is it does lead many people to do lots of things for God and most of the time don’t find enough time to develop their interior life.
One classic example of it could be identified in the Gospel from Saint Luke, in the person of the sisters Mary and Martha:
“Now it came to pass as they went, that he entered into a certain town: and a certain woman named Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord’s feet, heard his word. But Martha was BUSY ABOUT MUCH SERVING. Who stood and said: Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me. And the Lord answering, said to her: Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)
Like Martha many people are willing to do this and do that because we need to spread the Good News, we need to evangelize, we need to talk about God to others but many times the same people forget that before spreading it we are called to live the Good News, evangelize and acquire formation to ourselves and it is better to talk to God first before talking about him.
There is surely a big need of missions to preach the Gospel to the pagans of the modern world but maybe the worst pagans are living in our houses and they keep on being pagans, do not convert to Christ and live a worldly life much more when they look at our lives that are hollow. Many Catholics and Christians lack this deepening on their faith...
One of the reasons for it could be because they didn’t have a strong encounter with Jesus like Saint Paul (which we reflected upon on the previous formation ”) which changed their lives once and forever. No one who ever met Christ was the same again!! Another reason could be because we were never told we need to deepen our faith! And it could be even because of the lack of examples around the people of God!
When we look at Saint Therese of Lisieux and come to realise she is the patroness of the missions in the Catholic Church, many would say, ‘How could she have this title if she never even left the Carmel?’ and it is the specific and central point we are talking about: because of her interior life! There was a stage in her life where she could barely walk because of her fragile body and sickness (pneumonia), she would be in processions many times with no reluctance. At other times she would be sent by her superior to the garden - to get some fresh air - and regardless of the fact that she couldn’t make another step, she would obey her superior and offer every step given as a small sacrifice for the missionaries of the whole world.
And it was step by step, offering one small sacrifice after another, being small and hidden to the world that she became one huge saint with an example recognised by the Church that could be followed and that will lead us to holiness.
What could we say about Saint Teresa of Avila (whose mention we made above) who was also a Master of prayer and who was used by God to convert more than 10 thousand pagans with one single fervorous prayer? It seems to be a joke but it is actually reality and these 2 mere examples are just to remind us that the essential is invisible, it is what won’t be taken away from us.
The interior life is a wonderful place where we can be ourselves alone with Jesus and in there spend time to contemplate him, stay with him and in his presence allow him to transform everything in us, our mind, our thoughts, our wishes, our dreams, our plans and objectives in life, our way of living our life and everything that is important or not to us: it is a complete surrender to the will of God, until everything in us is transformed into God through his Spirit.
It seems to be a wee bit too much? Do you think I am exaggerating and this is not bearable? Do you think I am too high to write this down? Well, let’s read what Saint Paul wrote about the spiritual and the carnal or natural man (or the person who has got an interior life and the person who has not):
“Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we may know the things that are given us from God. Which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom; but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that we may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” (1Cor 2:12-16)
What courage and responsibility of Saint Paul to say, ‘we have the mind of Christ!’ truth be said: the person who truly has an interior life has the mind and the way of Christ, and that is not too much, that is called being a genuine Christian. It is to be other Christs that we are called!
We are too carnal and too natural people to understand money and richness are not an end but could be a way that could be used to get to the essential, that is to save souls, that is to convert those who don’t know God back to him, that is to bring people to Christ. Instead, people are too attached to their material achievements and that is why they are not happy, because these attachments become sins, and the sin is the reason for our sadness, while happiness is found in holiness.
“For we brought nothing into this world: and certainly we can carry nothing out. But having food, and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content. For they that will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruction and perdition. For ‘THE DESIRE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVILS’; which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, fly these things: and pursue justice, godliness, faith, charity, patience, mildness. Fight the good fight of faith: lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art called, and hast confessed a good confession before many witnesses.” (1 Thimoty 6:7-12)
Nowadays it is nearly a miracle for someone to be content with what they have... Not many people care for the essential. We need to have an interior life to be happy with what we have and the way we are. The world and the ones who live by the spirit of the world are sick because they are hollow, vain, superficial, hypocrites, live their lives like animals because they lack an interior life.
The interior life is so important that we could say that whoever hasn’t got it is soul-less, he lives a life like the animals do, like creatures. But we are called to be sons of God, like Jesus, for the love of God calls us to be so.
“Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not him. Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is. And every one that hath this hope in him, sanctifieth himself, as he also is holy.” (1 John 3:1-3)
What happens with the world and with the Christians who don’t have an interior life is the complete discontentment. If someone is black they want to be white; if they are white they want to be darker (like people who live in areas without much sun and spend a lot of money on fake tan and sunbeds — Belfast people); if they have curly hair they want to have it straight; if they are skinny they want to be like a skeleton; if women have small breasts they want to enlarge them, etc.
It is not about something outside we could change that will make us happier. We could change the whole body and world outside and we will still be sad, because it is about what we bring inside, it is about our heart, our soul, our spirit, our interior life (or the lack of it) where the happiness or sadness reside. The essential is invisible to the eyes!
The reality we live in will only be changed when we assume our posture as real Christians, when we assume our spiritual life, make progress and live a truthful interior life. The ones who have an interior life follow what Saint Paul would teach their spiritual sons to live, like Saint Titus, who will see God in everything and will look at the world with purity (which Jesus said is necessary to see God - “Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8).
“All things are clean to the clean: but to them that are defiled, and to unbelievers, nothing is clean: but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess that they know God: but in their works they deny him; being abominable, and incredulous, and to every good work reprobate.” (Titus 1:15-16)
There are in the history of the Church, people who were so pure they would have caused envy to the angels (if that was possible), there were people who were so holy they would have impressed God (if that was possible and God wasn’t as almighty and powerful as he is), there were people who did the will of God so perfectly that were formed personally by the very Our Blessed Mother and many times it could put us off...
But there are also great saints in the Church who arrived at the highest levels on the interior life and holiness but have a known past full of terrible things and awful deeds like Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint Augustine (and many others). Saint Augustine would look at these great saints (on the 4th century) and be impressed but he said a phrase that could serve as inspiration for us as well, ‘If they can, why cannot I?’.
In other words: If God operated great things in the life of people like Saint Peter who denied Jesus three times and regardless that he made him the First Pope; like Saul who was a persecutor of Christians and became Saint Paul, one of the biggest evangelists of the pagans; like David who killed his friend and stole his wife and forced her to sin in adultery and still he was called a Man after God’s heart; why cannot he operate in mine too? This should generate hope and great hope in our hearts.
Saints are there to be like arrows pointing to God and to bring us to follow their luminous path of interior life and to the interior life. There is a wonderful book written by a holy French priest called Jean-Baptiste Chautard which every Catholic should read called “The soul of the apostolate” where he calls our attention to the spiritual and interior life and which ardently combats the Christian Activism.
To finish off and not extend this text too much I want to share with you the conversion of Jean-Baptiste Chautard who belonged to a noble family. His conversion was one of those conversions operated through the hands of God himself by using a person with a profound interior life. He was a student of Economy and one day he was walking on the campus and saw a priest praying with his breviary. He would say then about this priest who changed his life forever, ‘His bearing, full of respect and religion was a revelation to me and produced in me an urgent need to pray from then on, and to pray in the way this priest was praying. The Church appeared, concretized, so to speak, in this worthy minister, in communion with his God’.
It is needless to say that after this he became a man of prayer, joined the order of the Trappists in France (Avignon). He became a Dom (or Abbot Chautard) of the motherhouse of one of the most important abbeys of the Trappist Order (Sept-Fons). One of the most famous phrases from his book is “WE MUST NEVER LEAVE THE GOD OF WORKS FOR THE WORKS OF GOD!”
I confess that the first time I read this, maybe about 10 years ago it took me a while to figure it out but eventually I understood and came to have many and many wonderful experiences with Christ that I will share with you in this blog... Keep tuned to be inspired and touched by the grace of God, our Lord!
The certainty every person with an interior life has is that of being so united with God through Christ that nothing, like Saint Paul would say, in heaven or earth, nor any occasion that could ever happen, absolutely nothing could separate us from this perfect union, like Saint John of the Cross would say, with him.
May God inspire us with his holiness and give us a profound interior life!
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