Monthly Archives: October 2010

Eveyln Underhill on Mortification and Prayer

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The old writers call these two activities Mortification and Prayer. These are formidable words, and modern man tends to recoil from them. Yet they only mean, when translated into our own language, that the development of the spiritual life involves both dealing with ourselves, and attending to God. Or, to put it the other way round and in more general terms, first turning to Reality, and then getting our tangled, half-real psychic lives–so tightly coiled about ourselves and our own interests, including our spiritual interests–into harmony with the great movement of Reality. Mortification means killing the very roots of self-love; pride and possessiveness, anger and violence, ambition and greed in all their disguises, however respectable those disguises may be, whatever uniforms they wear. In fact, it really means the entire transformation of our personal, professional and political life into something more consistent with our real situation as small dependent, fugitive creatures; all sharing the same limitations and inheriting the same half-animal past. That may not sound very impressive or unusual; but it is the foundation of all genuine spiritual life, and sets a standard which is not peculiar to orthodox Christianity. Those who are familiar with Blake’s poetry will recognise that it is all to be found there. Indeed, wherever we find people whose spiritual life is robust and creative, we find that in one way or another this transformation has been effected and this price has been paid.

Prayer means turning to Reality, taking our part, however humble, tentative and half-understood, in the continual conversation, the communion, of our spirits with the Eternal Spirit; the acknowledgment of our entire dependence, which is yet the partly free dependence of the child. For Prayer is really our whole life toward God: our longing for him, our “incurable God-sickness,” as Barth calls it, our whole drive towards him. It is the humble correspondence of the human spirit with the Sum of all Perfection, the Fountain of Life. No narrower definition than this is truly satisfactory or covers all the ground.

—The Spiritual Life

Charles de Foucauld: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

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In my thoughts, words and actions, whether directed to myself or my neighbour, I must never trouble about worldly position, celebrity, human esteem, but respect the poor equally with the rich. I must take as much trouble about the humblest workman as about a prince, since God appeared as a humble workman. Always, for myself, seek the lowest place, and be as low as my Master, so as to be with him and walk in his steps like a faithful servant and disciple (since in his infinite and incomprehensible goodness he lets me speak so), as a faithful brother, a faithful spouse. Thus I must arrange my life so that I am the lowest and most despised of men, so that I live it beside my Master, my Lord, my Brother, my Spouse, my God who was the outcast of the people, and the reproach of the earth, a worm and no man. It is my desire to live in poverty, abjection and suffering, in solitude and neglect, so that all my life I may be beside my Master, my Brother, my Spouse, my God, who lived thus all his life, and has given me the example ever since his birth.

—Meditations of a Hermit

Last Sunday I preached a sermon on unanswered prayer. Look closely at de Foucauld’s desires and ask yourself how likely it would be for Jesus to reject such a prayer.

John Wesley: Living Life Expectantly

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Nor yet do you say, “I must do something more before I come to Christ.” I grant, supposing thy Lord should delay his coming, it were meet and right to wait for his appearing, in doing, so far as you have the power, whatsoever he has commanded you. But there is no necessity for making such a supposition. How do you know that he will delay? Perhaps he will appear, as the day-spring from on high, before the morning light. Oh do not set him a time! Expect him every hour. Now he is nigh! Even at the door!

Jesus’ and John’s Call to Repentance Contrasted

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Somewhat in contrast to John the Baptist, who preached a stern call to repentance almost as an end in itself, Jesus’ call to repentance and conversion spotlighted a further dimension. One was to turn around in order to face a new, much more hopeful direction. One was to hear the word of judgment on one’s sins, since that was the preliminary to hearing the glad tidings of salvation, of the Kingdom come. The Kingdom, as we have indicated, was Jesus’ central preoccupation, and as the angels are imagined to have sung joyously at Jesus’ birth, so “joy to the world” is a good epitome of Jesus’ message. The world was to hear the surpassingly joyous news that God’s reign was breaking forth, that all humanity’s longings were on the verge of fulfillment. Moreover, those who then suffered from the world’s injustices could count themselves especially blessed: The kingdom of God was theirs in a particular way.

–John Carmody, The Heart of the Christian Matter

Mother Teresa on Imitating Jesus

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Anyone who imitates Jesus to the full must also share in his passion.
We must have the courage to pray to have the courage to accept.
Because we do not pray enough, we see only the human part.
We don’t see the divine.
And we resent it.
I think that much of the misunderstanding of suffering today comes from that from resentment and bitterness.
Bitterness is an infectious disease a cancer an anger hidden inside.
Suffering is meant to purify to sanctify to make us Christlike.

—Words to Love

From the Morning Scriptures

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When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you. Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.”

–Luke 11:37-48 (TNIV)

So much for Jesus, meek and mild. Nothing seems to have aroused our Lord’s anger more than hypocrisy and here we see a blistering example of it. Jesus is not railing at the Pharisees and teachers of the law because of what they did, but because of what they didn’t do. They didn’t practice what they preached.

You see, the Law was given to instruct people in how to be creatures and how to relate in a proper way to their Creator. In the case of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, they had gotten their ends and means confused. They did things for the sake of doing them rather than remembering why they were instructed to do so. For example, God commanded tithing but not at the expense of looking out for the poor, the needy, and the most helpless in society.

When we look out for the neediest and most helpless in society, not only is this doing justice, it is also loving mercy as Micah reminds us (6:8). There is a huge difference in the verbs here and we would do well to pay attention to it. We are to do justice, but to love mercy (which will result in us doing justice as well–the justice of God as manifested in the cross of Jesus Christ). The Law was given to God’s people to remind them to do just that, which is necessary, in part, if we are to have a proper relationship with our Creator. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law had forgotten that and they got an earful from Christ.

The lesson for us is equally clear. Jesus calls us to examine our behaviors and practices to see if they meet our professed beliefs. If the Church would start practicing consistently what it preached instead of play-acting, what a difference we would make in doing our part so that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

How’s your consistency these days?

More from C. S. Lewis

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Below are more excerpts from C.S. Lewis, this week’s featured Anglican writer and theologian. See Monday’s post for more information on Lewis. Today’s excerpts cover a wide range of topics. See if you can see Lewis’ characteristic logic and insight.

On God’s governance:

We want, in fact, not so much a Father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven  a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see young people enjoying themselves,” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all.” Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds. I do not claim to be an exception: I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don’t, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction.

—The Problem of Pain

On the love of God:

To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because he is what he is, his love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because he already loves us he must labor to make us lovable.

—The Problem of Pain

On sin:

A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of his to be true, though we are part of the world he came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom his words are addressed.

—The Problem of Pain

On miracles:

We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our hearers but by their real religion. Speak about beauty, truth and goodness, or about a God who is simply the indwelling principle of those three, speak about a great spiritual force pervading all things, a common mind of which we are all parts, a pool of generalized spirituality to which we can all flow, and you will command friendly interest. But the temperature drops as soon as you mention a God who has purposes and performs particular actions, who does one thing and not another, a concrete, choosing, commanding, prohibiting God with a determinate character. People become embarrassed or angry. Such a conception seems to them primitive and crude and even irreverent. The popular “religion” excludes miracles because it excludes the “living God” of Christianity and believes instead in a kind of God who obviously would not do miracles, or indeed anything else.

—Miracles

And this:

The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into his own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.

—The Grand Miracle

Two Ways of Seeing God

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There are two ways of seeing God: in this age and in the age to come. In this age, as has been written, “He who sees me sees my Father, too.” For they have a pure heart who not only do no evil and intend no evil but who also always do and intend everything good. For it is possible now and then to do good but not to intend it. Those who do so may do good, but not on account of God. And God does not reward such good, for the good rewarded by God isn’t the one that is merely done but the one that is well done. Moreover, a person who does good on account of God no doubt also intends the good. So whoever acts entirely justly and intends so with his mind sees God, for justice is the likeness of God. For God is just. So, to the extent that anybody has torn himself from evils and done good things, to that extent he also sees God, either dimly, or clearly or slightly or to a greater degree, or partly or completely, or now and then or always, or in accordance with human possibility.

–Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 9

Changing Society Because We Are Changed

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An impressive example of the value of the discipline of starting the day with a period of listening for God’s guidance, and of asking instructions for the day, is that provided by the Iona Community of Scotland. This is the major discipline that holds all members of the Iona Fellowship together, wherever they may be. To a remarkable degree, their practice meets the test of social verification, since the way in which this small minority of disciplined men have penetrated the economic, educational, and religious life of their country is striking indeed. They are changing society because they have been changed.
Powerful and productive as individual silence may be, group silence may be even more productive. Many are able to report that a genuine entering into a group silence, when it is dynamic and not merely sleepy, can bring, in the briefest conceivable time, an entire flood of ideas not previously recognized. More than three hundred years ago, Robert Barclay, one of the acknowledged masters of the interior life, had such an experience that radically altered his succeeding career. “When I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people,” he reported, “I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up, and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed.”

–Elton Trueblood, The New Man for Our Time

From the Old Methodist Hymnal

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Teach Me, O Lord, Thy Holy Way

Teach me, O Lord, thy holy way,
And give me an obedient mind,
That in thy service I may find
My soul’s delight from day to day.
Help me, O Savior, here to trace
The sacred footsteps thou hast trod;
And, meekly walking with my God,
To grow in goodness, truth, and grace.
Guard me, O Lord, that I may ne’er
Forsake the right or do the wrong;
Against temptation make me strong
And ’round me spread thy shelt’ring care.
Bless me, in every task, O Lord,
Begun, continued, done for thee;
Fulfill thy perfect work in me,
And thine abounding grace afford.

–William Matson

The Yoke of Christ

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Don’t be afraid of taking upon yourself the yoke of Christ. Christ’s burden is so light that it lightens. You won’t be pressed down by it; indeed, without it you cannot rise up. Think of the burden of Christ as being like the burden of wings for birds. As long as a bird is burdened by wings, it can fly. Without wings it is trapped on earth. The wings carrying us to Christ are the commandments to love God above all and our neighbor as ourself. To the extent you use these two wings, you will lift up your heart.

–Augustine, Sermon 68.12-13