Answering the Call to Holiness

St. In Luke 10:41-42, Jesus speaks to his friend and hostess, “…Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things, when only one thing is necessary…”

That one thing?

A life moving toward an ever more intimate union with Jesus–the call to holiness. Answering the call to holiness is the essence of what we refer to as our spiritual life, or the “interior life.”   

Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange was the doctoral dissertation advisor for Karol Wojtyła (the future Pope St. John Paul II). He summarizes the concept of the interior life as follows:

• The interior life is a life of faith, hope and charity, and union with God through unceasing prayer.
• It’s a life of grace, and the infused supernatural virtues and Gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us through Baptism and fed through the Eucharist.

It is a life of dying to self—to be free from ourselves and free for God. It’s about growing in our relationship with God, growing in holiness, toward sainthood.

The Universal Call to Holiness

St. Francis de Sales wrote that,

All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be.

Four hundred years later, the Second Vatican Council addressed the “Universal Call to Holiness:”

The Lord Jesus, the divine Teacher and Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples… ‘Be you therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5:48) …Thus…all the faithful…of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity by this holiness… (LG 40)

Imitating the saints who have preceded us, we’re called to devote ourselves to the glory of God. And we’re called to the service of our neighbors. We’re called to love God and love our neighbors with, in and through Him, for love of Him.

The call to holiness involves growing in our relationship with Jesus. It involves spending time and building that relationship through prayer. As well, we need to be frequenting the sacraments, and cooperating with grace to grow in virtue.

The path to holiness generally has been characterized by three broad stages of the interior life. St. Thomas Aquinas used an analogy comparing growth in the interior life to periods in our physical life.   

Before We’ve Given Our “Yes” to God

Up until we give our “yes” to God, before entering the purgative stage, we haven’t really begun the interior life in any substantive way. We could be living in a state of more or less continual mortal sin, or just living a very shallow, casual form of faith life until we give our “yes” to God.

Once We Say “Yes” We Begin the Initial Phase

St. Thomas compared the first stage in one’s interior life, after saying “yes” to Jesus, to physical childhood. This period in physical growth, he said, runs up to about 14 years of age or so. This stage is commonly known as the “beginner” or “purgative stage” in our spiritual growth. St. Teresa of Avila warns that without some effort on our part, we can get stuck in the purgative way:

…The soul will certainly suffer great trials at this time, especially if the devil sees that its character and habits are such that it is ready to make further progress: all powers of hell will combine to drive it back again…but…there are no better weapons than the cross…” with which to fight this battle.

She’s saying that, once the devil sees you on a path toward spiritual improvement, he’ll attempt to place obstacles in your way. St. Teresa goes on to encourage us to get back up when we fall, keep going, and not abandon our prayer. The Lord will turn all that we do to our profit.

A More Proficient Interior Life

The second stage is what St. Thomas compared to adolescence up to early adulthood. In physical development, somewhere between 14 and 20 years of age. Spiritually speaking this stage we refer to as the “proficient” or the “illuminative” stage. By the time one reaches this stage, they want to avoid offending God, striving vigorously to even venial sin.  They’re working to overcome their imperfections. St. John of the Cross tells us,

These habitual imperfections are, for example, a common custom of much speaking, or some slight attachment which we never quite wish to conquer… A single one of these imperfections, if the soul has become attached and habituated to it, is of as great harm to growth and progress in virtue as though one were to fall daily into a great number of other imperfections and casual venial sins…”

Spiritual Adulthood

In St. Thomas’ analogy, he likens the third stage to physical “adulthood,” from about 20 years of age and thereafter. This stage is what some call the “perfect,” or the “unitive” stage. Although much purification has occurred through the illuminative stage, many imperfections continue to exist in the illuminative stage souls. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, referring to St. John of the Cross, says that these imperfections are analogous to rust on a soul that will only disappear under an intense fire. This deeply interior rust—in our intellect and our will—consists of self-love, self-will—an attachment to one’s self. 

Learning to Listen to God

While difficult and time-consuming, detachment from self-love and self-will frees us up for God. We need His grace, the virtues and the gifts, to grow in holiness. When we were baptized, we received what’s referred to as the “supernatural organism.” This consists of sanctifying grace, the indwelling of the Holy Trinity, the infused supernatural virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. What blessing these are to us–if we respond to them.

Our response requires us to listen to God. This listening comes through relational prayer, a dialogue, which includes both speaking and listening to God. As you might imagine, given mental prayer’s key role in all of this, we often hear questions about praying and prayer. Persons new to mental prayer often have questions about hearing and knowing God’s voice.

Consider the Scripture passage in 1 Kings:

the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice (1 Kings 19:11-12)

So, when we’re praying, we might experience that still small voice of God, that may come to us in our thoughts. Or it may be a movement of our heart, for example. As well, God may talk to us through other people. We can listen to Him in the Scripture readings and homilies at Mass. Sometimes we “hear” from Him outside of our time in prayer. 

Spend Time Actually Listening to God

God is always talking to us, but are we listening? Even if we’re trying to listen, have we spent time with Him, learning to hear His voice? He tells us, “My sheep hear my voice…and they follow me.” (Jn 10:27). So as members of his flock, are we setting aside time routinely for mental prayer? Are we consistently spending time listening for and to His voice?

The more time we spend in mental prayer, the better able we’ll be to pick up on His still, small voice. The better we’ll get at recognizing and discerning His voice from our own thoughts. The more likely we’ll gain an intimate knowledge of Him, leading us closer to the holiness we’re all called to pursue. There’s no time like the present to begin or to shore up our mental prayer practices. 

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)