4th Sunday after Easter 22.5.11 Pursuit of holiness
In these latter stages of the Easter season the readings focus less on the Resurrection itself and more on the approaching feast of Pentecost.
Our Lord is preparing His apostles (and later disciples) to adjust to a new reality, whereby we would have the full power of His presence but without being able to see Him.
As ‘seeing’ is very important to us, it would take some adjusting, but it can be done.
We are very physical beings, we humans. We are a composite of body and spirit, but for most purposes the body is much more apparent to us and we tend to place more weight on what we experience in our body than anything in the spiritual realm.
(Thus people say: I’ll believe it when I see it.)
Our Lord is laying the groundwork for us to think spiritually, not just physically; to develop the spiritual side of our nature.
This will be necessary for the purposes of believing even when we cannot see with bodily eyes.
It will be necessary also for the purpose of becoming more fully what He intends us to be – sharers in His divine nature; sharers in the life of the Blessed Trinity.
A spiritual view of reality is required. Spiritual as against physical, material.
Not that the physical or material reality is bad; just that it needs to be governed and moderated by the spiritual.
Human beings – we can live like beasts or we can live like angels.
If we are too much in the body, indulging physical desires without restraint, then we are living like animals (worse really because the animals have no choice).
If we live spiritually it means we develop the higher qualities like love, generosity, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice – the qualities which are more obviously a sharing in the nature of God.
We see many examples of both. We hear on the news regular stories about atrocities of human behaviour – brutal murders, road rage, vandalism...
Then we are aware of great acts of courage, of sacrifice, of forgiveness. The same human nature is capable of both. We are complex creatures.
For us, as disciples, generally we are weighed down too much by preoccupations with the physical world – our health, our appearance, our possessions, our pleasures. Too little do we think of the spiritual world – of developing our humility, charity, generosity, of how much we love God.
The spiritual world is all there waiting for us, and this is what Jesus would have us realize. But we neglect it. If we take up Our Lord’s invitation and really seek Him out we will be setting a whole new reality in motion.
We will be activating two things at once: our own spiritual life; and an improvement in the world as a whole - making it a more spiritual place, more like the Kingdom of God.
Regarding personal holiness: we are not proposing some sort of Jansenism or Dualism. We are body and spirit but the spirit is supposed to be in charge.
We need the right balance. We can enjoy ourselves but we also need restraint and moderation. Even fasting sometimes to restore balance.
We must force ourselves to make room for the spiritual dimension. The more we do that as individuals the more likely there can be a new awareness in society; a much-needed, long-awaited improvement in the state of the world.
This will happen only if people (like you and me) will make a serious attempt to live a more spiritual life.
It is hard always to be pushing higher; so much easier to sink back to a comfortable medium. But then again the Holy Spirit lifts us higher so that what might seem beyond us becomes the new ‘normal’. In this way we can make genuine and lasting progress in holiness.
We will not be ‘out of touch’ with reality as the fear is often expressed. We will just have a better view of what reality is!
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