A
number of years ago some Travellers in North Dublin asked me to say
an inaugural mass in a hut they had built on their halting site. The
following day I returned to the site and visited the families who
were living there. When I knocked on one caravan door, it was opened
by a good looking young woman with blonde hair. She gave me a warm
welcome, invited me in, and said, "I'm glad you called father,
because there is something I want to tell you." When I asked
her what it was, she replied: "I was at the mass last night.
When you gave out holy communion you said that we should close our
eyes and imagine that Jesus was standing in front of us looking at
us with eyes full of love and humility." "Yes, I can remember
saying that," I responded. "Well father," said the
traveling woman, I did see Jesus standing in front of me. He was as
real to me as you are at the moment." "So you saw Jesus,
after receiving holy communion," I said, "that must have
been deeply moving." "It was father, but that wasn't all.
Jesus walked into me." "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Father Jesus walked through my skin into my body. I knew he
was living inside me." "That is wonderful," I whispered,
"what did you feel when you knew that Jesus was living within
you?" The young woman paused. Then she replied, "joyful,
I never felt so happy in all my life, in fact, I still feel the same
happiness today." I had only to look at her radiant face to know
that what she said was true.
Surely, this young Traveller had an experiential awareness of the
meaning of the following texts: "Remain in me," said Jesus,
"and I will remain in you" Jn 15:4; "the life I live
now is not my own; Christ is living in me" Gal 2:20 and we are
"sharers of the divine nature" 2 Pt 1:4.
Relationship and Identity
In spirituality as in psychology, inwardness and relatedness are
interconnected. Paradoxically, the more I relate to others, the more
I discover and relate to my own deepest self. Carl Jung, one of the
most introspective of psychologists stated: "One is always in
the dark about one's personality. One needs others to get to know
oneself." If any of us reflect on our friendships we become aware
of the fact that we grow in self-awareness through our struggle to
grow in intimacy. It confronts us with the limits of such things as
our trust, generosity, patience and our ability to receive.
As I contemplate God the Father, in and through his Son, I get to
know my own divine potential, my Christ-self. Pope John Paul II adverted
to this principle in paragraph eight of his encyclical, Veritatis
Splendor: "the man who wishes to understand himself should.…
draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter him with all his
own self, .... If this profound process takes place within him, he
then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deeper wonder
at himself."
In another place the Holy Father said: "God is present in the
intimacy of man's being, in his mind, conscience and heart; an ontological
and psychological reality." When the Pope talks about the divine
indwelling as an ontological reality, he means that, in virtue of
my baptism, it is a certain fact, whether I'm consciously aware of
it, or not. It becomes a psychological reality as a result of a spiritual
awakening such as baptism in the Spirit. When I'm filled with the
Spirit, I have the felt sense, as Thomas Merton expressed it, that:
"My deepest realization of who I am is - I am one loved by Christ....The
depths of my identity is in the center of my being where I am loved
by God."
Christ's Biography My Potential Autobiography
Should I imitate Christ? or is his biography my potential autobiography?
On one occasion Carl Jung asked: "Are we to understand the "Imitation
of Christ" in the sense that we should copy his life, or in the
deeper sense that we are to live our own proper lives as he lived
his in its individual uniqueness?" Surely the latter understanding
is the more correct one. Par 521 of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church describes the profound effects of the divine indwelling which
began with the sacraments of initiation: "Christ enables us to
live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us."
In his The Life and Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls, St John
Eudes (1601-1688), drew out an important implication of this spiritual
truth. He began by quoting a well known Pauline text: "I make
up what is lacking in the sufferings of Jesus Christ for the sake
of his body the Church" Col 1:24. He then went on to observe
that what Paul says about our sufferings can be extended to all our
other actions as well. He said that any true Christian, who is united
to Christ by his grace, continues and fulfils, through all the actions
that he carries out in the spirit of Christ, the actions that Jesus
Christ performed during his brief life on earth.
The same can be said of any other action that is carried out in a
Christian manner.
A Prayer
I must confess that, over the last year or two, in particular, this
awareness has become a central tenet of my personal spirituality.
When I'm about to embark on different tasks such as writing, preaching,
teaching, praying for others; struggling to love, to be patient, to
be generous, to resist temptation etc., I often run into the buffers
of my own natural weakness and limitations. But then I say to Jesus:
"Lord, the good I wish to do, I cannot do, but you are living
out the mysteries of your life in me. Enable me by the Spirit that
animated your ministry, to continue and fulfill that same ministry
in my own life. Give me the ability to do this task (state what it
is…..), and I thank you that you are achieving even more than
I can ask, or imagine through the power of your Spirit, even now,
at work within me."
I have found that when I affirm the divine indwelling, in this way,
I have the conviction, not only that my efforts are being blessed,
but that they will bear lasting fruit.
