- Jean Vanier [1]

I am always fascinated when some person or other shares with others the experience of his or her encounter with Jesus Christ. It almost invariably leaves in me a sense of amazement about the truth of Jesus' promises to us: "I am with you always; yes, to the end of time" (Mt 28:20), "whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and reveal myself to him" (Jn 14:21), "Your sins are forgiven ... Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Lk 7:48, 50), and so many other of his words and actions which we find in the gospels and which we can experience in our relationship with him. Indeed, as Jean Vanier describes, Jesus is the key to a genuine understanding of life "filled with the ecstasy of living". He is the way "to inner freedom and growth", liberating "the deepest energies hidden within us all". He is the truth since in him we do not flee "the pain and conflict of our broken world", but we build up "community and places of love ... thus bringing hope to our world".

Yet so often in our lives and in the lives of most Christians these or similar words appear to be mere fantasy - a dream possibly attained by a few whom we call saints. Our devotion towards these holy persons has often led us to make of them unattainable peaks of Christian life - extraordinary persons whose life-style we can never hope to imitate fully. Yet they were men and women like all of us. They had to make many of the choices you and I are constantly faced with. They were human in the fullest sense of the word. I remember how this really struck me when I was reading Teresa of Avila's "Life". This famous Spanish mystic turns out to be human after all. Her life is in so many ways our life. She was not born a saint! She lists her own limitations such as her ignorance in explaining herself clearly in writing, her worldly attachments together with so many slight and common failings which we are all confronted with. While I was reading her writings I could easily identify with her in so many ways. She was not concerned with abstract notions, conceptualisations, systems of thought, or articulated outlines.

We often reduce religion and our religious experience to precisely that - something beyond us, unreachable except, perhaps, in a future mode of existence. However, what the saints do show us, more often than not, is that it is possible for God to transform our ordinary existence into something extraordinary. This is precisely what Jean Vanier describes in the passage I have quoted. It is what Teresa narrates in her "Life". It is Mary's Magnificat: "he has looked upon the humiliation of his servant ... from now onwards all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me ... his faithful love extends age after age to those who fear him" (Lk 1:48, 49, 50). It can become our magnificat too.

So often we expect our religious experience to be genuine and deep only if characterised by frequent mystical and contemplative experiences. We feel disappointed because despite our attempts to grow in our relationship with the Divine, our spiritual experience is one which leaves us apparently empty. Our constant efforts at prayer result in disappointing moments of dryness and distractions. The more we seem to desire God's presence in our lives, the more distant he seems to be. We are often tempted to give up on him. And so many of us do, resorting instead to substitutes which could apparently fill the void God seems to refuse to fill. What makes a saint a saint is precisely the ability which God gives all of us to transcend the ordinariness of our religious experience. Despite a long period of mediocrity in her spiritual life lasting for eighteen years, Teresa of Avila never gave up praying.

Teresa insisted on the fact that her own experience was not an exceptional one but one to which all are called. All are called to the summit of the mountain where only the glory of God dwells. He waits for the hour of our arrival, ready to give. When we do arrive, God will not fail to act with a generous mercy substantially identical to that she herself received. What is required is total surrender to God. She wrote:

"Let your will be done in me in every way, and may it not please Your Majesty that something as precious as Your love be given to anyone who serves You only for the sake of consolations".[2]

Joined with this surrender there must be the determination to follow Christ even though spiritual dryness may last for one's whole life. This is were we so often falter. Yet this paradox is what I find to be most intriguing in the Christian life. It is the paradox of the Cross. This instrument of defeat is transformed by and in Christ into the sign of his victory which extends to us. "Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt 10:39). St Paul writes that "I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:19-20).

Jesus Christ makes us an extraordinary proposal by attempting to transform the ordinary. Faith in Jesus is nothing else than an acceptance on our part of this proposal. Each and every moment of our lives can become special, unique, indeed spiritual in the highest sense of the world if we allow Christ to transform it into a precious moment of Christ-like love. The Apostle's exhortation is clear: "Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus" (Phil 2:5). The word of the Lord "is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path" (Ps 118:105) Jesus tells us, "If you love me you will keep my commandments" (Jn 14:15). Confronting our lives with the living word of the Gospel becomes the fundamental criteria for this transformation to take place. It challenges us to live his new commandment of love - "you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognise you as my disciples" (Jn 13:34-35). For "anyone who says 'I love God' and hates his brother, is a liar" (1Jn 4:20). Therefore, this confrontation with the word of God must take place within the context of a community which we call 'Church'. It is only within the Church that one can truly experience the living presence of Jesus in our lives. "For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them" (Mt 18:20). There can be no separation between Christ and the Church. It is inconceivable simply because Christ did not conceive it otherwise. The gospels themselves are the fruit of the reflections of the first Christian communities as recalled in writing by the inspired authors..

I feel that it is very important that we continue to deepen our understanding of the ecclesial experience of the Risen Christ. The three years of preparation before the year 2000 are a unique opportunity to grow in our experience of being Church. We are being invited to become more deeply involved in the mystery of God's love - the Holy Trinity. God is communion. The Church too is communion. It is our communion with the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit. May we allow the mystery to permeate within our very being. May we experience God's love in our deepest recesses. May we accept his initiative in our lives - "because he first loved us" (1Jn 4:19). And may we respond to this initiative by accepting the gift of himself and the gift of others.

We can do so first and foremost in prayer. Yet prayer too must be God's initiative. It can never become a monologue on our part but a dialogue between He who loves and we who are loved. Jesus Christ is the key since he revealed to us how to love. Therefore prayer can never be simply words or moments of silence. If prayer is a dialogue in love, prayer must also be accompanied by love of others with its concrete implications. Jesus initiated his ministry by declaring, in the words of Isaiah, that he had been anointed "to bring the good news to the afflicted ... to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord" (Is 61:1-2 as quoted in Lk 4:18-19).

Notes:

1 Jesus the Gift of Love, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1988, pp. 1-2.

2 Teresa of Avila, "The Book of Her Life", in The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila, Vol 1, Kavanaugh K. & Rodriguez O., ICS Publications, Washington D.C., 1976, 11:12.

3 Taken from the Ravenna Scroll (written prior to the 10th century).