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Union with
God
Living the Christ Life by Fr David Vincent Meconi SJ To the Olsens, my icon oxoniensis of the holy Family All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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Contents The Divine Plan of Salvation .....................................3 The Great E xchange................................................19 New Creatures in the Spirit of Holiness ....................33 Seeking the Grace of Union......................................43
Fr David Vincent Meconi SJ is a member of the Chicago Province (USA) of the Society of Jesus, currently residing at Campion Hall, Oxford. Apart from his many pastoral duties, his academic specialty is the thought of St Augustine of Hippo as well as the place of prayer and the emergence of a Christian culture in the early Church.
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The Divine Plan of Salvation o you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
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This question, posed to me while out on a walk through the winding paths of Scotland’s St Andrew’s University, became a true moment of grace. My reply to this friendly evangelist was that in fact I did have a relationship but, adding remorsefully, ‘it is not a relationship with Jesus I want.’ To her ever-growing alarm, I went on to tell her that, ‘With Mother Mary and with you and with all the saints I want a relationship, but with Jesus I want union. I desire something even more intimate than relationship. I do not want to be simply face to face with Jesus, or side to side: I want his face to become my face: his heart to beat in perfect harmony with mine. With St Paul, I want to be able to say that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (cf. Gal 2:20). I want divine union.’ She abruptly thanked me for our conversation and, obviously still a bit flummoxed, proceeded to hand me some tracts regarding providence and God’s plan for my life. 3
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Years later, I still chuckle when I picture her face as I tried to explain what I meant and, more importantly, I continue to pray in gratitude for her, for she was a Christian woman who was in love with her faith but someone who did not understand the Faith deeply. While examining my conscience later that night, I was blessed with an intimate awareness of how the desire I voiced was precisely what the ancient Church meant by our ‘becoming God’, by deification, divinisation, or theosis, as it is known in the East. At that moment a medieval Latin phrase came back to me, formulating very aptly what I was trying to say - Christianus, alter Christus - a Christian is another Christ! Not familiar with this type of language, my evangelist’s suspicion was to be expected. But such strict identity between God and his friends is on every page of solid Christian theology. “Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself” (St Augustine, d. 431, Commentary on John 21.8; quoted at CCC 795), or as St Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 387) put it, “So then you who have become sharers in Christ are appropriately called Christs” (Mystagogical Catecheses 3.1; quoted at CCC 2782). The hidden beauty of Jesus Christ is not only that he longs to live for you, it is not even that he lives with you or through you, but that he actually desires to 4
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live in you and, we might dare to say, as you! He wants to make your life - in all of its various dimensions and in all of its joys and struggles - his own. Can we begin to fathom what that means? How do we become one with God and what do we mean when we say Christ wants to be wholly identified with his followers? Perhaps even more startling, what do we mean when we say that a Christian’s primary vocation is to ‘become God’? This little book sets out to explore the Catholic Church’s teaching on divine union. Living the Christ life is the consummation of the Christian promise: that we are to become one with God. While this may sound outlandish at first, it is not an altogether foreign idea. Reflect on your own experience. It occurs whenever two people in love spend time together - they become like one another. Or as the founder of Communion and Liberation, Luigi Giussani (d. 2005), expressed in a letter to a close companion, “The aspiration of friendship is union, it is that of becoming identified, becoming part of each other, becoming the same person, assuming the same physiognomy of the friend” (Letter of Faith and Friendship as in Traces 7.3 [2005] 31). Certainly you are ‘like’ your best friend in many important ways, and if you are married, you have probably noticed that over the years, you and your spouse have become more and more similar in expectation and expression. Well, in Jesus 5
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Christ, God has become like us and in our lives of Christian charity and sacramental worship, we are invited to become like God. In Christ we are called to become perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Mt 5:48), to love as Jesus loves (cf. Jn 13:34), to be committed to the Faith and to glow ardently aflame with the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 12:11). As is the case between you and your best friend, however, becoming like one another does not destroy your individuality but actually perfects it. This is the paradox of humanity’s divinisation. Because we are created in God’s own image and likeness, ‘becoming God’ does not abolish who we are but makes us who we have always been made to be.
Why deification? Our becoming divine is the sole purpose for God’s choosing to act outside of himself. It is the goal of his choosing to create the universe and why he became human in Christ Jesus: to give us a share in his divine nature. Deification is an arresting term capturing everything God has destined for us, everything Christ desires to achieve within us. What is the greatest gift God could ever bestow upon us? His ultimate gift to us is divine and living: it is God himself. God is not only the author of our salvation, he is our salvation. What more could we ever really desire? As splendid as the gifts of this world and 6
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our natural lives are, they are infinitely outmatched by the divine life God desires to pour into our souls. This is what this Deeper Christianity series is all about: being drawn into the life of the Lord ever deeper by allowing him to be drawn into our life more intimately. If today the Christian is in need of clearer catechesis and direction, it is because most of contemporary Christianity has forgotten the glorious end for which God has acted. Our lives have been instilled with and directed toward a particular purpose. If we fulfil that goal, we enjoy eternal beatitude. If we fail, we do so at our own peril. Since we are created for divine union, this “intimate and vital bond” cannot “be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected” (CCC 29). Of course we can choose to generate sufficient diversions so as never to have to lift our heads above our surrounding material, short-lived pleasures, but we can never really escape the true goal for which we have been created. It is therefore of the utmost importance that Christians today be able to articulate why God has brought every human person into being. In his usual piercing manner, Blaise Pascal (1623-62) separates all of humanity by how each of us seeks the divine: “There are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve him; those who are busy seeking him and have not found him; those 7
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who live without either seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable” (Pensées §160). Where are you? Can you honestly say that intimacy with God is your life’s ultimate aim which guides all of your activities and provides you with an absolute target from which all your other (penultimate) goals are measured?
Resting the restless heart The human person has an inescapable desire for perfect happiness. This yearning is common to all, regardless of race, creed or culture, because it is a “desire of divine origin” (CCC 1718) directing every human soul to the one true God. This is an essential insight, because before we start out on any endeavour or project, we must first understand the end we wish to achieve. ‘Should I fly, take the bus, or ride my bike?’ ‘Well, that depends’, the answer would come, ‘Where is it you wish to go?’. Without a fixed goal clearly in mind, it is impossible to weigh intelligently or coherently between choices. Nothing can be understood fully until one understands the purpose for which it exists. Without a destination, a right turn is equally as good as a left, and eventually we find ourselves treating life as nothing more than an aimless joyride, having produced a 8
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generation chanting ‘WHATEVER’ as the slogan capturing their forlornness and spiritual torpor. The great Christian masters have seen otherwise. For example, toward the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556) combats our fallen tendency to lose our way with this guideline: “The human person is created to praise, reverence and serve God Our Lord, and by so doing to save his or her soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created. It follows from this that one must use other created things in so far as they help toward one’s end, and free oneself from them in so far as they are obstacles to one’s end” (Principle and Foundation; Spiritual Exercises §23). Notice how Ignatius starts. Before entertaining how we should live, he first must establish why we are alive, “to praise, reverence and serve God”. Our entire life must be directed toward that end, the only real and lasting goal we have. Once we are resolute on becoming saints, only then does it make sense to begin to make plans regarding all the “other things on the face of the earth”. Always a master of human psychology, Ignatius opens with a clear proclamation that the goal of our lives is to praise and thus become the divine glory. This 9
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alone provides us with the aim toward which we should orient the whole of our lives’ actions and desires. Typical here too is the ‘world friendliness’ of St Ignatius. He never divides the world into anything automatically good or bad, nor does he ever list what created goods or activities will necessarily bring us closer to God. For Ignatius, any creature can prove to be either a holy icon inviting greater union with God or a deterrent to the divine, leading us away from the goal for which we should all be striving. Every seemingly mundane task can hence become, in the eyes of the saint, an opportunity to be used to grow in divine intimacy. Indeed, the saint is the one able to hear the sounds of the world as the primal symphony singing the glory of God. Before entering the Jesuits I worked in the world of high finance on the floor of the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago. I came to see how one could become a saint amidst the chaos and the pressures but I just as quickly saw that I would not be one of them. I left the ‘Merc’ not because it was inherently bad but because it occasioned all the sins with which I (secretly but all too gladly) struggled - pride, control, greed, and selfishness. Upon joining religious life, many imagined I quit my job because I was too holy when, in fact, I left because I knew myself too weak. This experience gave me an insight into what Ignatius is saying here: first know that you are alive right 10
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now because God has made you to love him, and then know yourself well enough to understand what things assist in your loving God above all things and what things hinder you. If trading stocks brings you closer to God, be the best financier you can be; if not, turn away and embrace another means. The same, of course, goes for deciding whether one should enter religious life or not, get married or not, whether one should embrace wealth or poverty, health or sickness, and all the means God uses to call you into deeper communion with himself. Union begins with trust in God, knowledge of self and the discernment that bridges God’s will with ours. As we think about all of the different ways we are pulled in the course of an average day, of all the various attractions and aversions within us, we can better understand why we need one sovereign goal beyond which there is nothing left to strive. We all hunger for permanence and when we are honest, we see how the world cannot offer us the incorruptibility for which we all seek. “Now thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways! You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied; you have drunk, but have not been exhilarated; have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed; And he who earned wages earned them for a bag with holes in it” (Haggai 1:5-6). Unless they are initiated, sustained and completed 11
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by the Lord, all earthly pursuits and relations leave us cold and empty, and as long as there is something still wanting, we are not yet at the Christ life. Union with the divine is the only state that can fulfil our deepest desires and give us a sense of purpose and peace. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you”, St Augustine confesses to God (Confessions 1.1), knowing how deep within the centre of the human heart is found a chamber opening up onto Infinity. It is God-sized and only God can fill it and until then, our vastness continues to hunger and ache - deep calling out to Deep (cf. Ps 42:7).
Sin: divine dissimilarity Such yearning raises another advantage to thinking of the Christian life in terms of deification. It is an all too subtle trap to gauge one’s spiritual journey solely in terms of the sins avoided. Combating personal sin is no doubt an essential part of following Christ, but it is nonetheless only the prelude to the fullness of life he offers us. So, let us then pray to be open to the graces which will burn out sin at every turn and out of every fibre of our being, for “no evil is graver than sin and nothing has worse consequences for sinners themselves, for the Church, and for the whole world” (CCC 1488). However, to envision the Christ life simply as shunning evil is like a builder who thinks he is finished with the house because the cellar has 12
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been made ready, forgetting that he has been employed for a much grander structure. Instead of gauging our lives in Christ simply by the sins we have avoided in the past 24 hours or so, we can now begin to think of the ways we are growing in order to be fully Christ-like. The essence of our Faith is neither the forgiveness of sins, nor is it even a peaceful reconciliation with God: what it means to be Christ’s is to become other Christs! So, while our desire for wholeness necessarily involves freedom from our sins, such absolution is only the beginning of the Christ life. The rest of that life consists in becoming like the One in whom alone our hearts can be satisfied. What is it we all want? We all want to know that someone rejoices in our very being, delights in us, and that in this someone we can wholly collapse and be accepted without reserve. The human heart wants its weaknesses and vulnerabilities to be understood without condition and its sins to be known without horror. In those rare moments when we are truly honest with ourselves, we all see that our most lasting desire is to love and to be loved. We yearn to belong to such mutuality, to know that we have been desired unrestrictedly - personally, perfectly, uniquely and forever. This is the essence of deification: it is the grace to enter into an eternal love affair and, in so doing, experience completion by sharing in absolute life. “I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full� (cf. Jn 10:10). 13
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Anything less than this divine intimacy would leave us longing for more, unsatisfied and incomplete.
The triune life of love We experience this longing for intimacy because our very being is patterned on the most loving act of self-gift imaginable. Because the Trinity freely wills “to communicate the glory of his blessed life” (CCC 257), God created other selves so as to lift them up “into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity” (CCC 260). This connection the Catechism makes between the intra-Trinitarian life and God’s good creation proves essential for our study. The Trinity is constituted by a mutual sharing of persons: the Father is the Father precisely because he is received and thus confirmed by the Son, the Son is Son wholly due to this self-abandonment of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the perfect bond uniting Father and Son in this eternal act of loving self-gift. Here is the essence of Love, God’s very self - a Lover who gives himself over to the Beloved, the Beloved who receives, and both who are in turn united by Love itself. Unlike us creatures who begin life as individuals crying out for personal relationship, God is personal relationship: the Father who allows himself to be emptied into the beloved Son, the Son who is fully received by the Spirit of Love who eternally unites Father and Son in a timeless act of self-gift. 14
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Made in this divine image This mutual giving of selves is so abundant that God saw fit not to keep it to himself. In the Trinity’s infinite wisdom, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit decided to share their love with an order of being infinitely distinct from themselves. Out of nothing, then, the Trinity lifted creatures so as to grant them a share in God. Each creature in its own way was brought about so as to praise the divine, all things were ordered to the communion of Creator and creation. All things are in some sense deiform, in that their existence and beauty confess a Creator who made them and guides them (cf. Rom 1:20). But not all things are equally alive, equally beautiful. As the story of creation unfolds, we see how the human person enjoys a special pre-eminence. All of creation is ordered to the communion of God with those creatures who are uniquely like him, with those creatures who alone are persons made in his image. Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) affirms such communion when he rightly saw how, “God created all beings with one end in mind: the union in Christ of humanity and divinity” (Questions to Thalassius §50). From the beginning of time, Christ’s perfect union of divinity and humanity has been the goal toward which all created humans hasten, and such union demanded a unique creature capable of 15
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receiving God in a special and friendly way, God’s own icons who have no more important vocation than to enter into loving union with him. Genesis 1:26 provides us with the biblical basis of this truth: only the human person is made in God’s image and likeness. Emblazoned with this divine stamp, we have been created in order to reflect the Triune God, and like any reflection, we are most real when we become like the model upon which we have been patterned. Herein lies the ultimate drama of human living. Unlike all the animals and angels, we stand as singularly made, as bridge creatures somewhat similar to the animals in that we live in time and space, but also like God in that we know and love, often transcending our bodily conditions to act freely and sacrificially. Having been made in God’s image, no other relationship - no career, no family, no earthly success can ever fully capture us. Is this not the source of much of our malaise? We have been brought out of nothing for the sake of divine communion and we easily allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that we will find completion in a mortal or material comfort. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 389/90) realized this struggle well: “The Word of God took a lump of newly created earth, formed it with his immortal hands into our shape and imparted life to it; for the spirit that he breathed into it 16
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is a flash of the invisible godhead. Thus from clay and breath was created humanity, the image of the Immortal... That is why in my earthly nature I am attached to life here below, while I also have in me a portion of the godhead; therefore is my heart tormented by the desire for the world to come” (Dogmatic Poems §8). An image remains frustrated as long as it fails to achieve union with its exemplar.
Becoming self-gift This is how deification is the opposite of dehumanisation. In feeble attempts to unite ourselves with anything other than God, we act not like free persons but like those lesser creatures which surround us. “What made you establish the human person in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself. You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal good” (St Catherine of Sienna, d. 1380, Dialogue 4.13; quoted at CCC 356). One of the fundamental insights of the Second Vatican Council (1963-65) formed the underlying message of John Paul II the Great’s entire pontificate (1978-2005), that the human person “is the only creature on earth whom God willed for its own sake and thus can attain its full identity 17
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only in sincere self-giving” (Gaudium et Spes §24). As mentioned, God created man and woman for no other reason than his very own self. Grass he created for cows and cows for human hunger, but the human person is directed toward no other creature. Having been formed in God’s Triune image, the rest of creation could never satisfy us, never fulfil us. Made to be like God, we find fulfilment only when we are transformed into perfect union with God, only when we live like the persons of the Trinity and give ourselves away in the self-gift of love. Choosing selfish comfort over selfless charity, Adam and Eve lost the initial closeness God willed for them. Fooled to think that they could somehow “become gods” (Gen 3:5) without God, they forfeited the divine life offered to humanity. From afar God showed us how no law, no prophet, no human king, could ever capture our restless hearts and so he deigned to become a part of his own creation. A New Eve prepared the way for the New Adam and the second person of the Blessed Trinity was united to the fullness of humanity through the immaculate “yes” of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God became flesh (John 1:14) and took on all we humans are and experience (Phil 2:7-8). And now the type of communion Adam and Eve could have continued to enjoy with the Creator is far surpassed by the new way God can embrace us in Christ Jesus. 18