Letter Ea-Susanna 22: Firsttfiingsfirs

INNER LIFE David Torkington I'M NOT USUALLY addicted to telling pious stories, but as it's Christmas I'll make an exception. The holiest man I've ever met told it to me in a half hour's interview at a remote Cistercian monastery in northwest Cameroon.
I learnt more about the spiritual life in that half hour than in more than half my lifetime. He told me how he underwent a prolonged desert experience for more than ten years. During this time he had to undergo terrible temptations, the last and most testing of which was against the faith that had so far sustained him, no matter how he'd been tested. His spiritual desert came to an end during an illness that confined him to the monastic infirmary for a week. During this time he received a startling spiritual experience that took place in the context of what he could only describe as a weak ecstasy that lasted for the duration. By a weak ecstasy he meant that, although he was at all times conscious, his consciousness was filled with a powerful experience of the presence of God that never left him. Now on three distinct occasions, as he was being given Holy Communion he heard clearly and distinctly these words: 'Only you have been keeping me out". "I heard these words" he insisted, "as clearly as I have heard yours." Immediately he knew who was speaking to him and what he meant.
Christmas is not just a celebration of God choosing to enter into a special human being two thousand years ago but into every human being who freely chooses to receive him. However, the terrible truth is that we forget at our peril that we can and regularly do keep him out. My previous letters have given you the wrong impression if you think that there is something automatic about this divine indwelling that Jesus promised would take place in us as it had already taken place in him. If you'd read St John's account of all Jesus said and did at the Last Supper you couldn't have come to that conclusion either. So once again I beg you to read, re-read, and reflect on the most sublime chapters in the New Testament.
Now spiritual writers have always insisted that time should be given daily for what was later called "an examination of conscience". Its purpose was to try and find out what we have done or more importantly what we have failed to do to remove every obstacle that prevents what happened on the first Christmas Day happening again in us. I keep saying "more importantly what we've failed to do", because most people get their priorities wrong. It's not me and my miserable sins that should be the first thing to occupy our time, but God and how we've failed to remain open to receive him. Without him we won't even be able to see the real sins that keep him out, never mind receive the power to overcome them. "Without me you have no power to do anything". The first thing then that we should ask when we examine our consciences is how much quality space and time have we been giving each day to open ourselves to the only Love that can change us? Once we get this right then the sins that continually prevent the union that we desire above all else can be destroyed at source. At last the spiritual life will have begun in earnest, because we will be allowing the Spirit in to do in us what we could never do without him.
Then he will be able to save us from the self-absorption that keeps him out and then show us how to prepare to receive what Jesus promised us at the Last Supper. The sins that really keep him out will be seen with ever greater clarity, while at the same time the grace will be given which will alone enable us to overcome them.
A greater-spotted teenage Romeo will never be able to free himself from his selfabsorption to become the lover he wants to be until he experiences the love of his Juliet. It is her love that will give him the real desire and the strength to become what he wants to be, and change all in his life that would prevent them coming ever closer together.
It's exactly the same in the spiritual life. That's what St Augustine meant when he said "love and do what you will". In other words if you really love someone you wouldn't knowingly do anything that could come between you.
Once again I can already hear you saying "but where's the time"? I know it's not easy, but let's be honest; you do find time to go to the gym twice a week, to model and paint, and to read far more than me, so by a little judicious pruning you should be able to find some time for what time was created for in the fast place! If you do this I promise things will begin to happen in your life that you'd never thought possible before, because at last you've begun to put first things first.
Love, David.