Paths to Contemplation - 7

How can we come to the knowledge of God?

    As stated above, we ourselves do not have the power to come to the knowledge of God.  We cannot, by whatever study or spiritual exercises, bootstrap ourselves into the life of God.  Only God can transform us by the power of the Holy Spirit to remove whatever obstacles keep us from loving God with all our hearts and minds and souls and strength.  For it is only when we are conformed to God in perfect love so that we can look into the face of God without pain or fear.

    There are two aspects to our coming to know God.  First, we must accept God’s invitation to allow God to bring us to that knowledge.  Second, we must allow God to bring us to that knowledge.  We must open ourselves to God so that God can do the work that only God can do.  The more we try to control the process, the less control God has and the longer the process will take.  To paraphrase a statement of St. Paul’s, I must become less and less and God has to become more and more.  Put another way, we must die to self so that we will be able to live more fully in God.  Spiritual growth is a process of yielding ourselves up to God.

    As we become more conformed to God, we grow in holiness because God is the measure of holiness.  The more we live in God, the more loving we become because God is the measure of love.     

    But we ought not to mistake emotional feelings, or even some experience of God through contemplative prayer(a subject we will explore in the chapters that follow) with genuine holiness or Christian perfection.

In what does holiness consist?

    Christ was a perfect human being.  But what made him perfect?  It was not the color of his hair, or his facial features, or the fact that he was a man.  Christ, the human being, was perfect because his human will was totally in accord with the will of his divine Father.  Christ always did what the will of God required of him.  Christ perfection was in his will.  It was the choices Christ made, choices always in harmony with his Father’s will, that made Christ perfect and gave us the example for which ourselves are to strive.

    Our union with God in this life is perfected in conforming our will to God’s will in our regard, as best we can discern that will.  By always trying to act as we believe God wants us to act, we can best accept God’s invitation to open ourselves to his transforming grace and to remove any obstacles to the action of that grace to mold us into what God wants us to be.  God gives us directions not to demonstrate his authority or even to test our obedience, but to help us to cooperate with God to bring us more quickly into conformity with God.  The more our wills are attuned to God’s will, the more we are conformed to God; and the more we are conformed to God, the easier it becomes to discern and obey God’s will.

    Holiness is not found in emotional highs or special mystical gifts.  Our love of God is reflected first and foremost in our wills, in the choices we make, in the control of our lives that we give to God.  When God gives us spiritual gifts, God will give the gifts that we need to progress spiritually, or he will give the gifts that the Church needs for the good of the Body(and not for our glorification or as a sign of how special we are), but the gifts we receive may, or may not, reflect our spiritual maturity.  Perhaps God gives us some gift to try to jog us from our spiritual laziness, or to encourage us because we are only baby disciples of Our Lord.  Remember this throughout the discussion of contemplative prayer.