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16

  In his teaching about life and about the kingdom, Jesus often uses the image of a seed. It is a simple but very enlightening image. A seed must grow and growth takes time. This involves waiting and waiting calls for patience. Life is a mystery and so in its own way is growth. ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know’ (Mark 4:26-28). Growth shares in the mystery of life itself. Paul writes to the Corinthians, ‘I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God made things grow. Neither the planter not the waterer matters: only God who makes things grow’ (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). Life is a mysterious growth process and God is intimately involved. There is no instant fruit, no instant flower. There is no instant completion of life, no instant fullness of life whether physical, emotional or spiritual. A further dimension of mystery suggested by the image of the seed is that the future fullness and beauty of flower or fruit are potentially present in the seed. As this potential is fulfilled we say the seed ‘grows’. As we noted earlier, we do not say the seed ‘changes’. The word ‘change’ suggests becoming something else, something different. The word ‘grow’ suggests the realisation of what is already present. When Paul prays that our ‘hidden self may grow strong’, he is praying that we become more and more our own true selves. And he assures us that God is actively at work in that growth.

  We saw that Jesus himself grew in favour with God and people. In certain obvious ways we all grow in age, knowledge, skills etc. as life goes on. It is to be hoped that our physical, intellectual and emotional growth will be paralleled by our spiritual growth. But this area of our spiritual growth proves to be a problem area and one that can cause a lot of discouragement. We believe that this is the most important area of our lives. Yet the experience of many people is that it is the area where we observe least progress. Most of us are disappointed with ourselves. We feel that we have made little progress and, despite years of trying to live the Christian life, we are not much better than when we started. Indeed, some would say they are worse now than they were years ago. Not only do many of our old faults stay with us and we feel it is the same old me, but worse, the ongoing years reveal dark and ugly possibilities of evil in me not suspected in earlier years.

  I believe the picture is not nearly as bleak as people imagine and that our negative views of our spiritual state would not be shared by God. I think the reason why many people judge themselves harshly is that they limit their judgment to externals; they think of growth chiefly as moral progress. They have false and unreal expectations of what spiritual growth is all about. People with such false ideals can be quite upset, even shocked, when they hear Scripture say, ‘Be perfect like your heavenly Father.’ After years of Christian life they feel they are light years away from such an ideal. I wish to offer some thoughts which help me in this matter and which may help you. We will always experience some inner tension in this area. Not only that, but I believe that such tension is a good sign. The worse symptom of a sick spiritual life is self-satisfaction. The desire to see results and notice progress in our Christian life and spiritual growth is very natural. We all like to feel we are doing well in whatever work or project we have undertaken. We like to succeed. It encourages us. But in the area of the spiritual life this is a tricky, even dangerous exercise. It is natural to want to see progress, but may it is too natural! It could ignore the deep truth that growth in the spiritual life is not like growth in business or sporting skills or in mastering a language. The spiritual life is lived out in a faith context where the last can turn out to be the first. The spiritual life tends to defy analysis and measurement. We cannot plot it on a graph and admire the upward curve.

  The only people in the gospel who felt sure of their spiritual growth were the Pharisees. For them the line on the graph rose steadily all the time. And today we meet religious people who feel quite sure that their salvation is already achieved. True holiness, real spiritual growth, is the most unselfconscious phenomenon. When Mary was told she had found favour with God, we are told that ‘she was deeply disturbed by these words’ (Luke 1:29). If Simon the Pharisee were told that he had found favour with God, he would have said to the angel, ‘Tell me something I don't know.' And that’s precisely why poor Simon would not have an angelic visitor to tell him he had found favour with God.

  Spiritual growth is now synonymous with moral perfection. Many people think their growth in Christian life is to be measured by the degree of control they achieve over moral weakness and failure. This is not so. True holiness and growth are compatible with moral failure. Nor should growth in the spiritual life be identified with an intellectual grasp of the doctrines of the Church. After Vatican II many, including priests and religious, were thrown into turmoil by the changes, by new teaching, by the abandonment of old, safe positions, by accepting that there is truth in other faiths, even in non-faith people. Again, it must be stressed that it is possible to grow in holiness while being beset by doubts, ambiguities and uncertainties.

  I suggest an image which may offset some of our discouragement. When we think of growth and progress, we usually think of it as an outward and upward movement. That is behind the graph idea. We think of ourselves climbing to some point of perfection outside of us and away above us. The image of a ladder comes to mind. We see ourselves go up a few rungs as we feel we are making some progress. But then we crash. We slip back down the ladder. We feel we are back where we started or even on a lower rung. Now I suggest we think of the goal of perfection growth not as outside and above us but as within, deep down at the centre of our being. Our faith journey is not climbing up into the clouds but a journey into the deep, into the heart of reality, into the depths of the mystery of God within us.

  The motion now is not so much upwards as circular, covering old familiar ground, passing familiar landmarks on the way but, it is to be hoped, over the years, penetrating more deeply the mystery, the reality lying beneath all the external signs. We journey through the familiar seasons of the Church calendar – Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and each year we discover more meaning and riches in these holy days and seasons. We read familiar Scripture passages and prayers and discover new and hidden treasure we had not noticed before. We are present at baptisms, weddings, funerals and slowly again over the years are touched by an awareness of something far greater and more wonderful than ourselves. We receive familiar sacraments and now are motivated by personal desire rather than a sense of duty to Church law. And when we find ourselves in the terrible no-go area of suffering and tragedy, it is to be hoped that there may be less anger and bitterness and some kind of awareness that this pain is not wasted as we deepen in appreciation of the suffering of Christ.

  The model for our spiritual growth is not a state of moral perfection. The elder boy in the parable of the Prodigal Son seemed to have reached such a state. He never broke a single law and worked diligently on his father’s farm. But he had no love for his father or his young brother. At the end of the story he is all alone, sulking in the yard, while the others are celebrating inside. Here we have a frightening lesson, that it is possible to keep all God’s laws and still have no love of God in our hearts. The real key to spiritual growth is love and the model of that love is Christ. The gospel image for the growth to which we are called is Christ himself. St. Paul invites us to put on Christ, to have the mind of Christ, to become other Christs. Each of us, in our own limited by unique way, must try to love like Christ, must try to reflect his compassion, his understanding, his forgiveness. We are called to be Christ-like, each in our own special way. That is why it is so important that we accept our own self, our own unique self.

  Since there is only one you, this means that you can reveal Christ in a way that no one else can. Gerard Manley Hopkins reflects on this. He speaks of the unique creation, not only of each person, but of each creature. Each creature, he says, does its own special thing for which it was created and makes its own unique contribution to the great symphony of the universe. But the vocation of each person is more wonderful and mysterious. Each person, in living out his or her own true and deepest self, reveals some feature of Christ’s image. Each person, he says:

'Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ – for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.'

 

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