A few weeks ago, some members of our Chaplaincy community started gathering around a table to share a meal, enjoy community, and deepen in their understanding of what it really means to follow Jesus. As the Program Coordinator for the Chaplaincy, I have the privilege of being able to join gatherings like these and play some small part in guiding the discussion. Right from the outset, it was clear - with this group there would be no holding back on depth.
One of the first questions we explored together was "what is the driving force of your life?" The group gave many insightful answers ranging from things like "to live a life I won't regret" or "to have fulfilling relationships." In the end though, a general consensus emerged. For most of us, even if it didn't always show up in our decisions, the driving force of our lives is certainly love.
This answer wrung particularly true for me. By no stretch of the imagination would I suggest that I've lived what could be considered a "hard life." That said, in small doses, suffering has not been a stranger to me. Loss and hardship have the unique ability to sharpen our focus in life around the things that matter most. The little experiences I've had of such difficulties have reminded me that in the end, all that really matters is who I've loved, who I've been loved by, and how well I showed up in those relationships.
Let me illustrate how suffering makes the centrality of love clear through a short anecdote. I recently attended my paternal grandmother's funeral. "Nana," as we called her, lived in a very small town a few hours outside of Ottawa. She had lived a very full life, moving from the Philipines to Toronto as a young woman and building a career for herself in accounting. She retired in that small town and spent the rest of her years being called out of retirement by just about any Catholic group that needed her help. She worked for a while as the accountant at a fledgling Catholic university and became a Third Order Carmelite.
When she passed, I flew out to Combermere to be present at the funeral. As we stood around the casket before it was lowered into the ground, my grandfather spontaneously started singing The Doxology. Immediately everyone joined in and then moved to sing Salve Regina. These were hymns they had sung with my grandmother her entire life and that we now sung together, friends, family, and strangers around her grave. In a moment of intense suffering, love for her and what she held to be most important (her faith) drew us together. In that moment, Song of Solomon 8:6 became crystal clear: "love is as strong as death."
It's almost comical how easy it is to forget that reality. Life is often so focussed on the whirlwind, the day to day, that we can lose sight of our end goal. Even in the spiritual life, we can put our focus on the things that get us close to the "end" of the spiritual journey, but not the end in and of itself. We focus on building lives of prayer, on being involved in our churches, living missionally in everyday life, and cultivating virtue. These are good and important things but, as an example, is the end goal of prayer just to be a person who prays? Or is it something deeper and more encompassing?
In Eastern Catholic theology, there is actually a term for the end goal of the Christian life: theosis. It's translated roughly into English as "divinization." At first glance, this term seems almost scandalous but on deeper investigation, it becomes clear that theosis is one of the most central concepts to the spiritual life. Theosis puts into theological language the idea that the most important thing in life is love but it takes it a step further. The end of the spiritual life is not just to be a person who loves but to become love itself.
St. Irenaeus famously said "God became man so that man might become God." It's important to draw some nuance around this powerful statement. We don't "become God" in the sense that we suddenly become creator of the universe. Rather, this becoming is more akin to the way that two people "become" one in the Sacrament of Marriage. As they deepen in love, they draw so close to one another that one person's ending and another's beginning is indistinguishable. In the language of the mystics, they experience union.
Much is said of the prayer of contemplation, where we can just sit and be in the presence of God like Mary of Bethany, who chose the better part of sitting at Jesus' feet. Similarly, we marvel at the elderly couples who have fallen so deeply in love that all they need to do to express affection is be in one another's presence. This is what becoming love looks like. When love truly becomes the driving goal of our lives, the end to which all things are oriented, we become one with love itself, when all that's needed is to be present.
The whole goal of our life with God is to become one with Him, in an intimate, spiritual union. God is love, thus this union is an intimate union with love itself. Everything we do, both spiritual and otherwise must be aimed at this end. As we give love and accept love we, over time, become love.
One of the first questions we explored together was "what is the driving force of your life?" The group gave many insightful answers ranging from things like "to live a life I won't regret" or "to have fulfilling relationships." In the end though, a general consensus emerged. For most of us, even if it didn't always show up in our decisions, the driving force of our lives is certainly love.
This answer wrung particularly true for me. By no stretch of the imagination would I suggest that I've lived what could be considered a "hard life." That said, in small doses, suffering has not been a stranger to me. Loss and hardship have the unique ability to sharpen our focus in life around the things that matter most. The little experiences I've had of such difficulties have reminded me that in the end, all that really matters is who I've loved, who I've been loved by, and how well I showed up in those relationships.
Let me illustrate how suffering makes the centrality of love clear through a short anecdote. I recently attended my paternal grandmother's funeral. "Nana," as we called her, lived in a very small town a few hours outside of Ottawa. She had lived a very full life, moving from the Philipines to Toronto as a young woman and building a career for herself in accounting. She retired in that small town and spent the rest of her years being called out of retirement by just about any Catholic group that needed her help. She worked for a while as the accountant at a fledgling Catholic university and became a Third Order Carmelite.
When she passed, I flew out to Combermere to be present at the funeral. As we stood around the casket before it was lowered into the ground, my grandfather spontaneously started singing The Doxology. Immediately everyone joined in and then moved to sing Salve Regina. These were hymns they had sung with my grandmother her entire life and that we now sung together, friends, family, and strangers around her grave. In a moment of intense suffering, love for her and what she held to be most important (her faith) drew us together. In that moment, Song of Solomon 8:6 became crystal clear: "love is as strong as death."
It's almost comical how easy it is to forget that reality. Life is often so focussed on the whirlwind, the day to day, that we can lose sight of our end goal. Even in the spiritual life, we can put our focus on the things that get us close to the "end" of the spiritual journey, but not the end in and of itself. We focus on building lives of prayer, on being involved in our churches, living missionally in everyday life, and cultivating virtue. These are good and important things but, as an example, is the end goal of prayer just to be a person who prays? Or is it something deeper and more encompassing?
In Eastern Catholic theology, there is actually a term for the end goal of the Christian life: theosis. It's translated roughly into English as "divinization." At first glance, this term seems almost scandalous but on deeper investigation, it becomes clear that theosis is one of the most central concepts to the spiritual life. Theosis puts into theological language the idea that the most important thing in life is love but it takes it a step further. The end of the spiritual life is not just to be a person who loves but to become love itself.
St. Irenaeus famously said "God became man so that man might become God." It's important to draw some nuance around this powerful statement. We don't "become God" in the sense that we suddenly become creator of the universe. Rather, this becoming is more akin to the way that two people "become" one in the Sacrament of Marriage. As they deepen in love, they draw so close to one another that one person's ending and another's beginning is indistinguishable. In the language of the mystics, they experience union.
Much is said of the prayer of contemplation, where we can just sit and be in the presence of God like Mary of Bethany, who chose the better part of sitting at Jesus' feet. Similarly, we marvel at the elderly couples who have fallen so deeply in love that all they need to do to express affection is be in one another's presence. This is what becoming love looks like. When love truly becomes the driving goal of our lives, the end to which all things are oriented, we become one with love itself, when all that's needed is to be present.
The whole goal of our life with God is to become one with Him, in an intimate, spiritual union. God is love, thus this union is an intimate union with love itself. Everything we do, both spiritual and otherwise must be aimed at this end. As we give love and accept love we, over time, become love.