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Holiness The key to heaven
Joseph Dasan, a leader within the indian community, shares about his desire to grow in holiness.
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I respected all of these non-Christian friends, these gurus, who were masters of their religion, but I was looking for something else. I was looking for holiness. Years passed. It is now more than 14 years since I gave my life to Jesus, and although I have found many good people in the Charismatic Renewal and the Church, I haven’t come across that quality of holiness that I long for, for myself and for others. I go to a prayer group in central London near Oxford Circus. Nearby there is an ashram of the Hare Rama movement. The devotees go out on regular outreaches in the streets of central London where they attract a lot of attention by their singing and dancing and calling out the name of their lord, Hari Krishna. “He was more devout and joyful than me” One evening while waiting for the tube, I found myself next to one of these guys standing on the platform. I thought I would talk to him about Jesus. I went over to him and started a conversation. I asked him his name and about his faith. He was a very peaceful person and started telling me his story and about his spiritual practices. He then invited me to their mission. I had gone to tell him about Jesus but after listening to him I realised that he was more devout in his practices than me and more joyful. What could I possibly say to him? Then the Lord told me in my heart, “If St Anthony was in your place, would he be able to preach?” Of course. “Then be St Anthony and preach!” So I did. But all this has made me reflect on the essentials of our faith. By rituals and religious practice we gain a certain stability and peace. But in Christianity there is something beyond all this. Something that only holiness can bring. The Church is blessed with thousands of good people who are faithful, but it seems to me that there is a ceiling that is not being broken, and somehow we need to go beyond this so we can bear the fruits of holiness.Many religious people love their gods. I remember at an ashram at Thiruvananthapuram , having supper with the swamis. Before supper they prayed and a young swami read out from one of their sacred books the story of their founder. While he read this, he was crying with love, love for a man made god. Although I respected him, I knew that my religion had something better than emotional experiences like this, that emotional love like this, even for Jesus is not enough. Do they see Joseph or do they see Jesus? Virtue too is not enough. I realise I have been trying too much to imitate Christ. I have been trying too much to be a good man. But holiness is not about me imitating Jesus but about me allowing Jesus to live in me, and to manifest himself in me. A person Mother Teresa served, did not see Mother Teresa, they saw Jesus. When people look at me do they see Joseph or do they see Jesus? Maybe I have become a little obsessed with this topic of holiness but I don’t want to be a false Christian leader. I want to achieve what I should achieve in this life. But I want to be holy and I realise that holiness is not about being a successful Christian leader or having everyone respect and admire me as a good Christian man. The danger for all of us is, if we make this our goal, we might become satisfied with externals and miss the point and fail to manifest Jesus in our midst. The danger then is that our Christian churches will become infected with “good” Christians who don’t feel they need to grow, who don’t need more of Jesus. The problem is when we leaders fail to grow in holiness, we also make it more difficult for others, because we are not showing them the way. What is our desire? I asked myself, how often in my conversation have I been talking about evangelisation and strategy and prayer in the last three months? And how many times in the same period have I been thinking about holiness. Is the main goal of my life for Jesus to be manifest in my life or is it something else? Someone once asked a saint, “How can I become a saint?” “Desire,” replied the saint. The secret of all spiritual growth is desire. What is our desire? Let us desire holiness. Let us beseech the Lord to take over our entire lives and not to rest until He is truly living in us. It is only in this way that we will be truly effective disciples for him and evangelise our world.
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What
does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? Is it just being a good man?
I don’t think so. In my life I have met many good men and women
who are not Christians. When I was young I visited many ashrams in South
India where I learnt about Indian mysticism. I remember I found many
good people there, people who read their scriptures daily (some of them
even read the bible!), people who prayed every day. For some of them
Jesus is a deity whom they worship along with their other Hindu gods.
A lot of them had great charity in their hearts. They meditated, they
had compassion, some of them even had family prayers.. .but somehow
there was a difference. I don’t even quite know what it was…
but being with them I understood that the early Christians had something
special, which was different from what these good people had, which
helped them to survive 300 years of persecution. 