By Cameron Ryan
One theologian of the last century remarked that “the Christians of the future will either be mystics, or they will not be Christians at all”. Today Jesus says to us: “Who doesn’t gather with me scatters.”
He has a test put before him. He reasons that, if he casts out demons by the power of Beelzebul, as he has been accused, then the devil would be acting against his own interests. The work of the devil is to divide, for “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
This goes for the Church at large, of course, but so too for the individual Christian. It is not possible to serve two masters. We can’t keep some rooms, in the fortress of our heart, closed off to the Lord. Put another way, we cannot be lukewarm.
Do we live the Christian life with integrity, on a single, solid foundation? Are there divisions in our hearts? “How can we repay the Lord, for all he has given to us?” Let us consciously make the love of the Lord our beginning and end, above any temporal or social motivations.
Constancy and consistency in the Christian life is the only way forward. If our hearts and minds are not gathered, and our motivation is not consolidated, our vocation will scatter. Are we ever tempted to look back from the ploughshare, in the Lord’s vineyard? I think there is a big difference between looking back from the ploughshare, and rational and prayerful discernment. Looking back is indulging the temptation to flee from what’s at hand, to swim against the current of our conscience. It’s not recognising that you aren’t called; but perhaps wishing you weren’t called.
We take our vocational journey a step at a time. The grace of certainty can both grow and be tested with time, but by simply following God’s will for each day alone, offering it to him when we wake up and commending it to him when we rest, we can do no wrong. Giving one’s life to God is, in essence, a series of doing his will each day, each hour. But this is why it is so crucial that we trust in God. Without his grace, we would rely on our own merits and confidence, and that is not sufficient to sustain the priestly life.
We ought to maintain our spiritual focus through consistent and generous mental prayer, decent spiritual reading, and seeking the guidance of a spiritual director who carefully and firmly challenges us. There is grace enough that none of us need to settle for being a spiritual lightweight, or merely activistic in our apostolate. As priests, and I believe even now as seminarians, our prayer, most especially our faithful keeping of the Office, is the very oil that keeps the gears turning.
Today is also the memorial of St John XXIII, who was pope for five years in the middle of the last century. Today he is most often remembered for convoking the Second Vatican Council, but in his own day he was renowned for his joyful personability and good humour, his humble working class upbringing, as well as his rigorous commitment to and promotion of priestly discipline. In his Journal of a Soul, the extensive collection of his spiritual writings and notes throughout his life, we read some of the spiritual resolutions he recorded during his time as a seminarian.
“I resolve and promise,” writes the young Angelo Roncalli, “never to approach the holy sacraments out of mere habit or with indifference, and never to spend less than a quarter of an hour in my preparation.”
“I promise and I vow to Our Lady ... to guard myself, as far as lies in my power, from any thought or act to which I might give consent, which might cast so much as a shadow over the heavenly virtue of holy purity.”
“I will not forget that I am never alone, even when I am by myself: God, Mary, and my Guardian Angel see me; and I am always a seminarian. When I am in danger of sinning against holy purity, then more urgently than ever will I appeal to God, to my guardian angel, and to Mary.”
Let us make these resolutions our own, continue fighting the good fight, and unite our hearts and wills, so that we may embody the priestly identity all the more deeply. May we not be scattered in our resolve to be pure and holy men of God, but may we gather with Christ, resolute and determined to be the priests that he desired us to be: mystics who will reflect his light to thousands, tens of thousands, of souls we haven’t even met yet.