Christianity was originally called a ‘Way’, or rather, ‘The Way’. In other words it is a journey, an expedition, a great adventure, more exciting, more thrilling, more engrossing and ultimately more rewarding than any other conceivable journey. Furthermore, this journey is open to all because it involves falling in love. The more lowly, the more humble a person is, then the greater is the possibility that they will succeed.
The Greatest Adventure
Ultimately then the journey involves falling in love, not with anything nor with any other human being, but with the One who created the world in the first place. St Augustine puts it this way: “To fall in Love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him, the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement”. All of us are called to this journey and the journey begins here and now for those who are prepared to become more than mere nominal Catholics and plunge themselves without delay into the love of God.
God is love, so when he created us in his own image and likeness his love dwelt deep down within us. It dwells there not just as the very foundation of our being but as the very centre of our being. Here it can be experienced in the heart that never ceases to yearn for God despite the sludge of sin and selfishness that tries to stifle it.
Until they Rest in God
That is why St Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The more selfless our endeavour, then the more our hearts can be open to receive in return, evermore fully, something of the infinite love that can support and sustain it as it yearns to be united with the divine.
All forms of prayer to which we turn, from the very beginning to the heights of mystical union. have one thing in common. They are to help us to do but one thing. That is to help support, strengthen and sustain the God-given yearning that he has placed within us, so that it can continually rise to act as a sort of spiritual lightning conductor.
A Supernatural Lightning Conductor
This supernatural lightning conductor directs the love of God into the very heart of our being. Here it suffuses, surcharges and sustains the only love that can rise to make us one with the One who dwells in love without measure which is our final destiny. This ongoing and ever-deepening prayer is only able to rise to God because it takes place within our Risen Lord where it gradually fuses with his loving of God. The more deeply our prayer is united with Christ’s prayer then the faster we journey on, in, with and through ‘The Way’ as his love propels us onwards in the only journey that really matters.
Preparation for the Journey
Anyone who is about to set out on a journey of any magnitude must make preparation so that they will be sustained when alone and bereft of the support that they felt at the beginning, when initial fervour or enthusiasm inspired them. When we are feeling most lost, most vulnerable, and most insecure, we can turn to those prayers that we were taught from the beginning. I am referring to prayers like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory be and other prayers, hymns, canticles and psalms that have come down to us from the hallowed tradition that we have inherited. This is when the blueprint for prayer that I have explained can act like a spiritual backbone that keeps us together and on course when we are in danger of floundering. That is why I have expanded on this blueprint in a booklet that I have written for the Catholic Truth Society, Prayer Made Simple
But where is God?
However, when we choose to respond to the Holy Spirt who is always calling us onward into Christ and in him to the Father, Catholic tradition has from the beginning taught the way forward for someone prepared to take the next step on the way to loving God the Father. When at the Last Supper St Philip asked Christ to show them the Father, Christ said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John: 14-10)? Now we can see that in order to begin loving God in himself, we must begin by loving Him as he is present in the human being of his son, Jesus Christ. This is how the first Apostles began their search for God and how they in their turn taught the members of the infant Church to do the same.
A new form of preparation for prayer
So with Christianity a totally new form of preparation for prayer was born, called meditation. However, unlike previous or contemporary forms of meditation it was not centred on themselves, but on God and on his love as it was first embodied in Jesus Christ, and in all he said and did. It is the love that is generated there that will enable us to enter into Christ as he is now in his Risen glory. So, as we have seen, love of its very nature yearns for union. The deep yearning that rises in all of us will only be satisfied, will only be consummated, when as St Augustine insists, it rests in God.
The love generated from coming to know and love Jesus Christ then, as he once was, through daily meditation, is the only love that can enable us to come to know and love him as he is now. By this I mean as he is now in his Mystical body. Then, from being drawn up into his mystical human being we are taken up into his mystical human action, and that means into his mystical loving of his Father. As we participate with him in his sublime contemplation of his Father, we receive in return the fruits of Contemplation, the infused virtues, the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit that can not only change us, but through us the world in which we live.
Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton
For hundreds of years the mystical theology that teaches how this love is purified so that we can be united with Christ has been not only forgotten, but even derided by those who should know better. G.K. Chesterton said that “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, it is that it has been found difficult and so left untried”. St Paul said that he preached Christ and him crucified, and anyone who is not prepared to take up their daily cross as this journey progresses, will never be able to rise with Christ to be united with the One from whom they have been thirsting from the beginning.
The Primacy of Loving is Published 9th December 2022 in Britain and 1st January 2023 in the USA
It shows for everyone a step-by-step guide on how to practise the simple, practical Christ-given spirituality that can change lives permanently for the better.