By Fr Ian
This is the third of four articles on the three main stages of Christian spiritual life, as understood in the tradition of Catholic spiritual theology
‘The second duty of man is to apply his energies chiefly to advance in virtue; this belongs to those who are making progress and who are principally concerned that charity may be increased and strengthened in them.’ [1]
Jesus said: ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (Jn 8:12). Pride, greed, lust, the will to power, or any kind of sinful, self-serving desire clouds our spiritual vision. If we allow appetites like these to take root and dominate our heart and conscience we become spiritually blind (Mk 7:21-23). Similarly, the tendency that some people have to to rationalise and deceive themselves about the essential virtuousness of their motives is another form of clouded spiritual vision.
But when we persevere in our relationship with Christ he casts more and more light on all the dark areas of our character and behaviour. He deepens our intellectual understanding of the various aspects of Christian life. He cures our spiritual blindness in the same way that he cured the physical blindness of so many individuals during his earthly ministry.
So the second stage of Christian spiritual development is called illuminative because it’s a time of growing enlightenment in all aspects of our relationship with God. We experience increased knowledge, perceptiveness, insight and Christian wisdom, and a firmer inner conviction about all the aspects of our faith. Most especially, we grow in love: love of God and love of neighbour. We grow in the individual Christian virtues and in prayer.
It goes without saying that in the illuminative phase it’s God who enlightens us and gives us this deeper intuitive awareness of the truths of our faith. In other words, the illuminative stage is largely an experience of having knowledge, insights, deeper convictions and qualities of Christian character imparted to us, or infused into us, by God.
Benedict Groeschel points out that one very significant lesson that we learn on the illuminative way is that ‘we do not have within us the source of light. Light is given to us’. [2]
And that’s how we consciously experience it: we sense clearly that any progress we might be making, in understanding and love, in prayer and friendship with God, comes to us from outside ourselves, from God.
Father Groeschel also remarks that, of course, the illuminative phase isn’t a brief, fleeting experience. Rather it’s ‘a sustained state in which it is easier to pray, give up things that are superfluous or obstruct progress, and work to accomplish more for the kingdom of God’.
Doing good becomes easier because
a step has been taken in the right direction. In our struggles and
accomplishments we recognise the power of grace and the goodness of God
enabling us to do good. This recognition makes a person less judgemental, less
demanding upon others and more accepting. The ability to do good easily
continues to increase so that one on this way does not stop growing even if
mistakes are made. [3]
In all these areas of growth, as
we’ll explain in a moment, our example and model is Christ himself.
A. Dominant characteristics of the illuminative phase
Catholic spiritual theology lists the following elements as characteristic of the illuminative phase:
1. growth in love of God and Christ;
2. growth in the other two theological virtues, faith and hope;
3. growth in the four cardinal moral virtues and their associated Christian virtues;
4. growth in our capacity for self-sacrifice, love of neighbour and ‘good works’;
5. gradual change in the form of our prayer, which becomes less discursive and effortful, and more personal and affective (that is, involving our emotions).
6. gradual change in our penitential attitude, which in many ways becomes less dominant but more refined and interior, as we uncover the deep roots of our sinful inclinations and realise that many of our temptations to sin remain active within us, but in different, more subtle ways.
One of the most important aspects of the illuminative phase, which permeates all the individual elements listed above, is that our attachment to Christ grows and deepens. We realise, in Saint John the Baptist’s phrase, that ‘he must increase and I must decrease’ (Jn 3:30).
As our personal relationship with Christ gets stronger, through prayer, through reading and meditation, through the sacraments and through his accompaniment in the events and decisions of our daily life, we experience him increasingly as our teacher, who enlightens us about every aspect of our relationship with God, and as our model whom we feel drawn to imitate, especially in his virtues, his self-sacrificing love and the suffering of his Passion.
But in addition, in the illuminative way Christ becomes more and more the centre of our thoughts and our affections, and this centring on Christ leads us to want to imitate him more closely and make him the centre of our actions as well. In particular, the progress associated with the illuminative way involves deepening insight into the part played by ‘the cross’ - by suffering of any kind - in strengthening our bond of friendship with Christ and helping us imitate him in his suffering and sacrificial love. [4]
B. Development of prayer
The deeper knowledge of God which comes to us in the illuminative phase isn’t an increase in facts and information. It’s a personal knowledge that comes to us as our relationship with God grows, comparable to the growth of human friendships: a ‘loving knowledge’ or ‘knowledge-with-and-through-love’. This is brought about in large part by our prayer and, in turn, has an effect on our prayer.
When we first begin to pray we can easily lapse into simply thinking, musing, talking to ourselves inwardly. We forget that we’re conversing with God and our attention easily drifts away from him. But as our relationship with God develops, and as he exercises his influence on us, our prayer takes on a more personal, emotional or ‘affective’ aspect. Our will and our emotions start to play a larger role in our relationship with God and therefore in our communication with him in prayer.
All our attitudes towards God - reverence, adoration, obedience, sorrow for sin, the desire to be like him and united with him - develop a stronger element of personal emotional conviction, personal attachment and commitment.
When we pray to Jesus we relate to his wisdom, his love and holiness, his paschal sacrifice less as doctrinal truths to be accepted intellectually and more as facets of his character which actively influence and change us in all our attitudes and behaviour. The main effect of a more affective prayer is that Christ nurtures a real person-to-person relationship of love and commitment with him which forms and moulds us in the life of discipleship. And this in turn imparts a more affective character to our prayer.
With this growth of personal closeness to Christ we’re very likely, at this middle stage, to develop a heightened sensitivity to his presence in the sacraments, especially his Real Presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist. We come to understand more fully the purpose of the Eucharist - to draw us into deeper communion with Christ, especially in his suffering and death - and we start to feel a stronger need to receive the food of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to take part in the constant making-present of Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass. [5]
C. Attitudes and
dispositions to be cultivated
It follows from everything that we’ve said so far that, as we progress beyond the initial ‘negative’ phase of spiritual growth, we need to embrace the more positive aspects.
We need to take steps to strengthen a commitment to regular prayer and to cultivate all the theological and moral virtues. But Christian virtues aren’t just abstract principles or parts of some theoretical ethical system. They’re the fruits of a personal relationship with Christ and we acquire them when we focus on Christ and on becoming an alter Christus, ‘another Christ’. Our aim is to be able to say with Saint Paul that now it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20).
As always we need to be open to, and to co-operate with, God’s grace, because growth in the perfection of love, in the imitation of Christ, and in the virtues which express the different dimensions of Christian love, are gifts imparted to us by God, who builds on and perfects our natural moral capacities and our natural desire to know and possess him.
D. Obstacles and difficulties
There are a number of traps that we can fall into even as we become more proficient in our Christian spirituality.
For one thing, we can believe that we’ve made more progress, or become more advanced, than we actually have, and forget that we still have a long way to travel before we reach the summit of holiness and perfect Christian love. We have to guard against a type of spiritual snobbery or self-righteousness similar to that of the Pharisees in the gospels: ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men…I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get’, and so on (Lk 18:11-12).
Father Groeschel argues that, as we make progress spiritually, we can develop a kind of Messiah complex and fall victim to the ‘dangerous illusion’ that God is calling us to a special task of leading others, which really arises from egotism and a desire to feel superior to other people.
On the other hand we can advance quite far only to become complacent, lose direction and fall back into weak commitment and sinful behaviour, especially when we experience setbacks and disappointments. Our spiritual enemies - the devil and our own internal weaknesses and flaws - are always waiting in the wings, ready to attack at the opportune moment.
Connected to this is the fact that, in the illuminative phase, we gain enlightenment not only about God and the truths of faith but about ourselves. As Father Groeschel informs us, our own inner turmoil, previously buried below the level of conscious awareness, is now revealed to us, often with a forcefulness that can be discouraging:
As the defences of denial and rationalisation are gradually abandoned, the person must cope with unruly aspects of the unconscious that were previously unknown. In return for the newly found freedom, the illuminated person faces possibilities of sin and betrayal of God which he or she never experienced. The illuminative way is not a cloudless summer day. It is a spring morning after a bad storm. Even though everything is washed clean and the sky is filled with clouds and sunlight, there are many fallen trees and an occasional live wire blocking the road. [6]
E. The relationship between the first two stages
Finally, it’s worth remarking that it’s a mistake to draw the lines that separate the degrees of spiritual growth too distinctly or exclusively. Personally I agree with the Anglican author F.P. Harton when he says that there’s a considerable ‘no-man’s-land’ between the purgative and the illuminative ways ‘where certain characteristics of both appear simultaneously in the same soul’:
One must be prepared for great diversities between souls, and sometimes considerable over-lapping between the ways; the distinctions which we rightly make in classification are not absolute, and it is a great mistake to treat them as though they were; nevertheless, rightly used, our classification is of the greatest practical assistance to the [spiritual] director. [7]
Another complicating factor for modern Christians, perhaps, is the prevalence of social and cultural influences that hinder spiritual progress.
There’s the busyness, noise and mass of distractions inherent in modern life, which have a fragmenting effect mentally and make prayer difficult. And there’s the radical worldliness of modern culture, which discourages any consideration of God’s ultimate judgement and the prospect of our future life after death. Christians can fall into this mentality and focus only on the ‘horizontal’ concerns of everyday life.
Today’s widespread moral relativism and hostility to Christian moral norms also causes many church members to settle for a type of surface Christianity which underestimates the power of sin and the high standard of holiness that God summons us to.
Also, as most pastors know, many basically well-intentioned individuals can become snared in morally complex life-situations, full of dilemmas and seemingly intractable obstacles. When this happens we can feel assured that God understands the moral messes we create, or get caught up in, but also that he wants to help us untangle ourselves and escape from them as well. [8]
The Christian rule of life
remains: ‘Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is easy,
that leads to destruction…’, whereas: ‘the gate is narrow, and the way is hard,
that leads to life, and those who find it are few’ (Mt 7:13-14).
In the current cultural and moral climate many sincere aspirants to Christian discipleship may take a long time to clear away certain confusions and misconceptions about the real content of the gospel way of life and adjust their life-circumstances accordingly. For this reason many contemporary spiritual writers observe that Christians today are likely to spend a long time in the purgative phase, and perhaps get no further, during their earthly life, than some stage along the illuminative way. [9]
____________________[2] Benedict J. Groeschel, Spiritual Passages, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002 (orig. pub. 1983), p. 136.
[3] Groeschel, p.138.
[4] Adolphe Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life, 2nd rev. ed., Desclee & Co., 1950, p. 457-458.
[5] Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, art. 3: ‘As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which “Christ our Pasch is sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7), is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out. Likewise, in the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who from one body in Christ…is both expressed and brought about. All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and towards whom our whole life is directed.
[6] Groeschel, Spiritual Passages, p.139.
[7] F. P. Harton, The Elements of the Spiritual Life, London S.P.C.K., 1932, p.305.
[8] Anna Silvas’ remarks about men and women in irregular marital situations is relevant more generally:
‘The best stance in prayer for those who are in these situations and cannot as yet bring themselves to the measure of repentance required (and so to confession), but who do not want to let go of looking Godward, is to present themselves to the Lord at mass precisely in their state of privation and need, not going forward to "grasp" the eucharist, but endeavoring to lay themselves open to the intervention of grace and a change of circumstances, if and when it be possible. My sense of their plight is: it is better that they hold themselves honestly, if painfully, in the tension of their situation before God, without subterfuge. I think this is to position themselves best for the triumph of grace.
‘Who of us cannot identify with this unequal
situation in the spiritual contest of our own life, i.e. of battling hard with
some seemingly intractable passion, and scarcely finding our way out of it, or
perhaps being bogged down a long time in some sin before our moral life emerges
into a place of greater freedom? Remember Augustine’s famous prayer to God in
the lead-up to his definitive conversion: "Domine, da mihi castitatem, sed
noli modo": O Lord, give me chastity. but not yet? I think that when such
people attend mass and refrain from taking communion, it is a potentially a
great witness to all of us. And yes, it does cry out to us to consider our own
dispositions in going forward to partake of our Lord’s most holy, deifying Body
and Blood.’
Anna Silvas, Some Concerns about "Amoris Laetitia" at http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351311bdc4.html?eng=y
[9] Groeschel, p.138: ‘The meaning and description of the illuminative experience should be of vital interest to every Christian on the road because, frankly, it is as far as most sincere travellers ever reach’; and Daniel Burke, Navigating the Interior Life, Emmaus Road Publishing, Ohio, 2012, p.106: ‘…it is worth noting that the vast majority of pilgrims will likely find themselves somewhere within the purgative way’.
3 comments:
WOW!!! This profound discourse by Fr. Ian would find a meaningful reception in a theological class for Masters and PhD academics. Everything is taken into account here. Nothing is left out. I will persevere on my spiritual wanderings as quite clearly, my peasant, protestant mentality is not doing justice for this level of Christian insight. Publish a book, Fr. Ian, and grant me the favour of a signed 1st edition, please!!! What does Nicola make of this? ; )
Domine, da mihi castitatem, sed noli modo
Come on now Ray. We have already got two languages to cope with in Wales without you adding a third. Richard.
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