PICKING AND CHOOSING

Monday in Passion Week

There’s an internet site for those who have given up chocolate for Lent. Among other things, it has pictures of chocolate candy—stacks of chocolates, chocolate Easter bunnies, and people admiring chocolate bars—the site provides a “support group” for those who are keeping the letter of the law (not putting chocolate in your mouth) but missing its spirit (are you giving up chocolate if you’re writing and reading about it—and fantasizing about it—a few times a week?). A friend sent me a cartoon last week that showed a teen-age girl standing in front of a candy machine, contemplating her choices. The caption read: “I’m growing spiritually by giving up M&Ms for forty days.”

There’s nothing wrong with giving up chocolates—even if only a specialized brand of chocolates—for forty days and forty nights. At the very least, even a minimal abstinence serves as a reminder that we are in a special time of potential spiritual growth.

During my long sojourn in California, I met many “spiritual” people. Almost without exception, my conversations with them began “I’m not really a ‘religious’ person, but I am very spiritual…” Inevitably this introduction was followed by a set of the most banal statements, proving to me that not only were they not “religious” but they weren’t profoundly “spiritual” either. Most of their convictions center around expressions like “I really like nature and being alone in the outdoors,” “I freed myself from dogma and creeds and am able to explore my own truth,” or “Leaving religion has allowed me to discover my inner self.”

Let’s be clear among ourselves, anyway. Everybody is “spiritual,” and all of us—atheists, Episcopalians and Zen Buddhists, all have “spiritual lives.” Monks do and so do mass murderers. There’s nothing special about having a “spiritual life”—it’s like boasting that you have nostrils. What matters isn’t that you are “spiritual,” but what your spiritual life is about. The hedonist hopes to raise sensual indulgence to a spiritual art. The Buddhist seeks to transcend everything—to find perfect oblivion—and so escape the pain of existence. Atheists dogmatically deny the existence of God and look for meaning—or embrace the notion of a lack of meaning—in themselves and the society around them. Each of these are real “spiritualities” (it doesn’t hurt to remember that devils—yes they exist regardless of whether we’re too smart to believe in them or not—are “purely” spiritual).

Our spiritual lives, as Christians, are grounded in the facts of the Creeds, not the way we feel or even what we think. The Creeds don’t go into a lot of detail, but they’re bluntly factual about what those details are: God, the Three-in-One, is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. He exists and so do we. And, in the wonderful phrase of St Bonaventure, “He has come to us, so we can come to Him.” All Christian spiritual thought is based on these few, essential truths. Though the greatest minds the world has known have struggled over the centuries with the meaning of those profound truths, the facts are unchanging and plain.

For those of us who are Catholic Christians (as we insist we are in the Creeds), we believe God’s claim on our lives isn’t because we “believe” in Him, but because He has marked us as His own. “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ,” St Paul tells us, “have put on Christ.” We may choose to live as Christians, but God chose us first. The most basic fact about your spiritual life is not whether or not you’re “spiritual,” but that you are baptized.

God, through that fact, has made you (remember your catechism) “a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You no longer belong to yourself. You can live as a hedonist, follow a Buddhist path or deny the reality of the invisible; He still has marked you as His own. Being baptized doesn’t “accomplish” your salvation, but it does begin it. It also teaches us something important: our salvation, and how God accomplishes it, is in His hands. He acts in our lives to bring us to Him, and He’ll do whatever it takes. He really and truly is unconcerned about whether you are rich or poor, pretty or ugly, smart or dull, as long as none of those things gets in the way of your growth in His Spirit. If He allows you to win the lottery, it’s because He loves you and knows you need it. If He doesn’t, it’s because He loves you and knows you don’t need it.

Jesus said, “If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” Our spiritual lives and our struggles aren’t of our own choosing. We’re in God’s hands. When your pains and sorrows and the trials of your life come—even those which come because we made stupid decisions—Christ is there with you. When you’re sick, when you’re afraid, when you don’t know what to do, when you are hurt and betrayed, He’s with you, right then and there. Our usual response is to ignore Him or try to buy Him off.

You and I are like chocolate Christians. We want the struggles of our spiritual lives to be those we choose. “I’ll give up M&Ms for forty days.” “Lord, if only you’ll let me get by with it this one time, I’ll never do it again.” This is spiritual baby-talk.

“If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” We’re following Jesus’ Way of the Cross when we do. Where did that Way take Him? Outside Jerusalem to Golgotha, where they crucified Him. He didn’t want to be there. The night before He prayed that this could pass Him by. It’s okay if you and I pray His prayer. Remember, though, the words which concluded His prayer: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.”

For these days of Passiontide, as you follow where He leads, make His prayer your own. This is the spirituality we’re called to: living and dying—and rising—with Jesus.