The One Thing Necessary

What do we do here and now to live the spirituality that Christ first gave us? Do we need Christ to come again? No, because he has never left us. Do we need the Holy Spirit’s love to be poured out once more? No because that love has never stopped pouring out. All that is needed is to start again doing what Christ himself preached and practised and what St Peter called upon the first converts to do on Pentecost day in imitation of him. Which is simply to keep turning to God through an ever-deepening prayer life, that will enable him to do for us and through us and for ‘the world in need’  what nobody else can. In this way, the simplest of believers will soon find that their knowledge about what really matters here on earth infinitely surpasses that of others. And these are men and women who are worshipped by the ‘worldly-wise’ as great intellectual geniuses and leaders, none of whom agree with one another.

The Enlightenment Dazzles

For centuries the free thinkers of the Enlightenment have dazzled with their philosophical speculations, those with no spiritual homes to go to. It has not dawned on anyone that they have all disagreed with one another, especially about the most important, the true practical wisdom we all need to live meaningful and fulfilling lives with those we love. So how could any one of them come near to the Truth that Christ taught in the Gospels? They were as far away from the simple truth that Christ came to bring, as were the free-thinking biblical reformers before them. They may all have had the same Bible from which to read, but each interpreted it according to an unpurified self rather than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This inevitably led to interpretations which changed God’s words and therefore his will, to suit their own.  It was this that led to their opponents saying,  “Protestant, Bible in hand is his own Pope”, and this led to the civil war in England. In this war, ostensibly about political power,  both sides were internally divided by different religious interpretations of the truth. At the end of the war, they were not reconciled and were further divided down to the present day. If Christ prayed for unity and insists that it  is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in his chosen people,  then how can he be fully present in each different and  dissenting sect  that believes they and they alone have a monopoly of true wisdom. (See Luke 11:17; Mark 3:25; Matthew 12:25).

Free Thinkers Everywhere

The tragedy today is that the freethinkers in other Christian religions are now to be found in the Catholic religion too. They are not seeking to change the world through a tradition that is presided over by the Holy Spirit but by their own self-sought  ‘wisdom’ taken piecemeal and uncritically from a  secular world still waiting for redemption. True wisdom is the gift of the Holy Spirit, given to those who seek him in the purifying contemplative prayer to which all are called, but all too few choose to pursue. It is because this wisdom comes from God and not man, that it can only be received in the prayer that is open to all.

After Christ was glorified and returned to heaven, it was to contemplate his Father’s glory more perfectly than ever before. It was then that he poured out the love that he experienced in his heavenly contemplation through his human nature, so that all human beings who were open to receive it on the first Pentecost day, and on every subsequent day, could become completely transformed. This transformation would take place not just by being taken up into his new glorified being, but into his new contemplative loving of his Father to receive the fruits of contemplation. Perhaps the first noticeable fruits of this contemplation that comes through God’s love, is wisdom.

True Wisdom

True wisdom then is open to all, even the simplest who pray, because it comes from a loving God and not from man. Every sincere Christian who prays daily, whether they have an IQ of 45 or 145 will receive the true God-given wisdom that does not depend on human brain power or intellectual learning as the lives of the saints make abundantly clear.  The dunce of the class can know more about the love of God than the greatest of Nobel prize winners. This is the only wisdom that can change our lives permanently for the better, and the world that we are committed to serve in Christ’s name.

Just as St Francis of Assisi would not have the qualifications to join the Franciscan order today, nor would the Curé d’Ars have the qualifications to enter a seminary today, yet they both had the one thing necessary. Sadly this seems to be the one thing that is optional, or only nominally necessary for contemporary priests and religious. If deep personal prayer had been their staple daily diet, then the vast catalogue of sexual abuse and coverups could not possibly have taken place.

Although the breviary is said and the divine office is chanted in priories and friaries and monasteries, the psalms that are the heart and soul of these liturgies are but the outward expression of an inner personal relationship with God. Without the love of God that is first learnt and developed in personal prayer, the recitation or the singing of the psalms can soon become a meaningless daily treadmill that has to be ‘got through’ as quickly as possible, if it is said at all. Or even worst, it can become a sort of spiritual concert, even a charade. It may well attract believers and non-believers alike and win their admiration because the place where it is celebrated and its intrinsic aesthetic beauty makes them feel spiritually uplifted.

However, if it is not the outward expression of the love of God learnt by each individual in personal prayer before the liturgy begins, then, as St Paul put it, it will soon become no more than gongs booming and cymbals clashing. Those who celebrate liturgy without love use words and actions that are not so much inspired by their need to be pleasing to God, but rather to be pleasing to the congregation for whom they are primarily performing their stylised celebrations. In short, they are performing an act of communal hypocrisy.

It was to avoid this happening to his brothers that St Bernadine of Siena wrote these words in letters of gold around the choir stalls where his brothers recited the divine office. “If the heart does not pray then the tongue labours in vain”. “Si cor non orat in vanum lingua laborat”. He was merely reminding his brothers what Christ himself taught his disciples in his day, by quoting the words of Isaiah, “These people worship me with their lips but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8-9 & Isaiah 29:13).

The Way Forward

The way forward is not to change the outward expressions of our faith handed down to us through tradition, nor to replace it with the latest superficial fads and fancies, but to reanimate it from within. This can only be done by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who can alone re-enliven and re-invigorate those who are languishing to death without his transforming presence. It is only through those who have rededicated their lives to receive him that the transformation that we yearn for more than anything else can be brought about. This rededication must be embodied in the personal daily prayer without which all else will fail. For as Christ himself said; this and this alone is “the one thing necessary”.

David’s free course on prayer and his latest book is available at Essentialist Press