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Great Thinkers in the History of the Church (no. 14)
Being saved is nothing other than being like Jesus. It is to gain his humility, meekness, and self-denial. It means to take on his renunciation of the spirit and honors of this world. It involves his love of God, his desire for doing God’s will, and seeking only God’s honor. To have these attitudes and perspectives born in your heart is to have salvation from Christ.
If you don’t want these things and are not able to plead for them with the same intensity of the sick who came to Christ, then you are clearly unwilling to have Christ to be your Savior.
—William Law (1686-1761), Mystical Writings
Prayer
Spirit of Love, teach me rightly to love all things. Grant me grace so to detach from them that I might rightly appreciate them as a Gift from You to all persons, equally with me. Amen.
Comments
An Asian Indian, in conversation with W. B. Yeats, sang the praises of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a Hindu mystic, poet, teacher, and Nobel Prize winner. The man said of Tagore that "he is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but has spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love."
Note the following beautiful example of Tagore's holy worldliness and its implicit warning against being apart from life.
The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jeweled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step.
In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust, he keeps himself from the world and is afraid ever to move.
Mother, it is no gain, your bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right entrance to the great fair of common human life.
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The best mystical teachings advise daily retreat, not to escape the world, but to live in the world more completely, less egocentrically, and with greater awareness of God-in-the-World. This is needful, for when sated continually, emotionally and physically, with things, one loses the sense of the preciousness, beauty, and holiness of life.
Nothing on this earth is to be judged or avoided in itself as evil. To live with the Sacred means to live in relationship with all these good things. Good consists in the way we choose to relate with the world. Evil is only the absence of the Good. Contemplation, therefore, changes our relationship with the world, but it does not take us out of the world, as though matter and culture is a detriment to faith. As St. Maximus the Confessor (b. 580) writes regarding persons who practice means of Grace to detach from the appetites of sexual promiscuity, material possessions, and fame: “Anyone who behaves in this fashion will not despise anything that exists on the face of the earth” (Centuries on Charity).
Truly, one of the things we most need is men and women who will refuse to refuse to live. We need Christians who love life and speak out of life as the primary arena of ongoing relationship with Christ.
The spiritual person is able to celebrate life as the domicile of the Holy and the church of the Spirit. Intimations of God are everywhere for eyes that can see. Amen!
What does it mean to detach from things in order to have a right relationship with those things? Are you tempted to replace your focus on Christ with undue or misdirected attention to sex, material belongings, or popularity? Explain. Do you love Christ with a passion that makes it possible for you to ardently pray to serve Him above all and that your heart be held captive only by Him? Explain
*First edition, July 27, 2001; Second edition, August 5, 2006
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