An awareness of Saints’ ordinary human beginnings makes them attractive to people in simple human situations, especially those whose lives are lived in a continuous and unchanging world of subsistence or poverty, with little evidence to demonstrate that anyone outside their own communities or cultures gives them more than a passing thought, even less that anybody cares.
The attractiveness of shared experience brings people together and into communion with each other, and in a similar way, this natural gathering process brings them into communion with those who have gone before. A confraternity of present and past Christians is formed and this is the present and ongoing reality for us of the Communion of Saints.
Within this Communion we find ‘examples of holiness’ among the people with whom we associate; we are ‘awakened’ and ‘nourished’ by them as part of God’s gift to us through community, and, as stated in The Catechism, those same expressions of His love are clearly available to us through the exceptional examples of the Saints. They may have had no further need of purification when they died: they may have entered God’s presence in that moment, but perfection will have been bestowed during the transition rather than achieved while they still lived.
St John of The Cross is prominent among those who have provided guidance for people who long to approach God through a life of contemplative prayer. His writings deal with the attainment of union with God, and it is this that, through being frequently described as ‘perfection’, causes the confusion; it is a matter of degree and of context. It is the ultimate point of perfection in the human capacity for prayer, but not perfection itself. Only Jesus was perfect.
In his ‘Instructions and Precautions ...’ to those seeking to arrive at perfection, he wrote, ‘If any religious desires to attain in a short time to holy recollection, spiritual silence, detachment and poverty of spirit - where the peaceful rest of the spirit is enjoyed, and union with God attained ... he must strictly practise the following instructions. ... If he will do this ... he will advance rapidly to great perfection, acquire all virtue and attain unto holy peace.’
His use of the word ‘great’ does not add to the emphasis of perfection, but lessens it in keeping with his own awareness that he speaks of something - however lofty in this life – that is below the presently unattainable unity and perfection to which this life leads.
I have read that when St John was made a Doctor of the Church, the then Pope stated that his work should be regarded as a guide for anyone striving to live ‘a more perfect life’. ‘More perfect’ again points to coming close to the very best that we can do: not perfection, but a life as near to it as can be achieved; a perfect life, by its very nature must fall short of true perfection.
Within this Communion we find ‘examples of holiness’ among the people with whom we associate; we are ‘awakened’ and ‘nourished’ by them as part of God’s gift to us through community, and, as stated in The Catechism, those same expressions of His love are clearly available to us through the exceptional examples of the Saints. They may have had no further need of purification when they died: they may have entered God’s presence in that moment, but perfection will have been bestowed during the transition rather than achieved while they still lived.
St John of The Cross is prominent among those who have provided guidance for people who long to approach God through a life of contemplative prayer. His writings deal with the attainment of union with God, and it is this that, through being frequently described as ‘perfection’, causes the confusion; it is a matter of degree and of context. It is the ultimate point of perfection in the human capacity for prayer, but not perfection itself. Only Jesus was perfect.
In his ‘Instructions and Precautions ...’ to those seeking to arrive at perfection, he wrote, ‘If any religious desires to attain in a short time to holy recollection, spiritual silence, detachment and poverty of spirit - where the peaceful rest of the spirit is enjoyed, and union with God attained ... he must strictly practise the following instructions. ... If he will do this ... he will advance rapidly to great perfection, acquire all virtue and attain unto holy peace.’
His use of the word ‘great’ does not add to the emphasis of perfection, but lessens it in keeping with his own awareness that he speaks of something - however lofty in this life – that is below the presently unattainable unity and perfection to which this life leads.
I have read that when St John was made a Doctor of the Church, the then Pope stated that his work should be regarded as a guide for anyone striving to live ‘a more perfect life’. ‘More perfect’ again points to coming close to the very best that we can do: not perfection, but a life as near to it as can be achieved; a perfect life, by its very nature must fall short of true perfection.
In her book ‘Ecstasy’, Marghanita Laski made comparisons of the times taken to attain the unitive state, the perfection of human prayer: - ‘St. Paul and St. Catherine of Siena each took three years, Suso sixteen years, St. Teresa thirty years, while that flaming thing which was the soul of Jesus burned its way to full expression in forty days of solitary communion.’
For me this is meaningless. From the moment of His conception, though Jesus was a man, He was something no other human being could ever be. He was the perfection of humanity: He ‘... is not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us, but has been put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin.’ (Hebrews 4:15)
All others were and are sinners. ‘If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and truth has no place in us.’ (1 John 1:8).
We have a maximum capacity for perfection somewhere below where Jesus was before He ever set foot in the desert.
This is why we should lay all else aside to follow Him. His disciples may look to the Saints and to Mary, His Mother, but they are examples of what can be achieved not the focus of the journey, and they constantly draw onwards, not towards themselves, but to a closer following of Christ. It is this alone that makes us Christians just as they were Christians through their own faith and following.
Mary’s instruction to the servants at the wedding feast at Cana, sums up her unending transference of all focus and devotion in the direction of her son. All who look to her must not linger, but must journey on in the direction she so clearly defines.
For me this is meaningless. From the moment of His conception, though Jesus was a man, He was something no other human being could ever be. He was the perfection of humanity: He ‘... is not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us, but has been put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin.’ (Hebrews 4:15)
All others were and are sinners. ‘If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and truth has no place in us.’ (1 John 1:8).
We have a maximum capacity for perfection somewhere below where Jesus was before He ever set foot in the desert.
This is why we should lay all else aside to follow Him. His disciples may look to the Saints and to Mary, His Mother, but they are examples of what can be achieved not the focus of the journey, and they constantly draw onwards, not towards themselves, but to a closer following of Christ. It is this alone that makes us Christians just as they were Christians through their own faith and following.
Mary’s instruction to the servants at the wedding feast at Cana, sums up her unending transference of all focus and devotion in the direction of her son. All who look to her must not linger, but must journey on in the direction she so clearly defines.
‘Do whatever he tells you.’
(John 2:5)
