There is within us all, a lion and a lamb. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let them both lie down together. The lion is your adult, aggressive self. Your initiative and decisive self. The lamb is your fearful, vulnerable self that needs affection and support, affirmation and nurturing. Spiritual maturity embraces both. Both will lead you to the truth. The truth will set you free. Do not be afraid of God’s invitation – follow your inner voice. It is the heart of God. Keep living with the conviction that you are safe in God’s hands and that you are being guided every step of the way. The farther the outer journey takes you the deeper the inner journey must be. Only when your roots are deep can your fruits be abundant. Dare to lose your life and you will find it. Jesus said “I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full”.
Keep turning your eyes to God and go on trusting that He will bring peace to your heart. Speak from the place in you where God dwells. Claim the God in you and let God speak words of forgiveness, healing and joy. Jesus said, “Make your home in me, as I make my home in you”. God offers you His own intimate relationship. He wants His home to be yours. Give your heart to God and let Him tell you what to do. Notoriety, affection, future plans, entertainment, work, leisure, health, intelligence, emotional wellbeing, spiritual progress – leave all in God’s hands. Let go of them and you will discover the true freedom your heart desires. This is the spiritual search.
Everything echoes the heart’s journey to God. Let your wounds and pain enter too into the silence of God. Take your hurts to Him. Then you will live through them. Your heart is greater than your pain. It will heal you. You are in communion with God. Trust in that inner voice at the centre of your being, where God is all in all.
We are spiritual creatures. It is what gives life meaning and makes it worthwhile. It asks us to raise ourselves out of our minds and into our hearts. The need for meaning is the central crisis of our times. Many speak of an emptiness, a spiritual longing. Our spiritual longing is an innate ability of our psyche to go to the heart of things. To experience the spiritual means to be in touch with a larger, deeper, richer, whole. It is to have a sense of something beyond that gives meaning and value to our lives – a more profound level of truth and beauty, an awareness to some deeper, cosmic sense of wholeness. Without it our lives feel flat, our purpose finite. Our search for meaning is the primary motivation in our lives. It is this search that makes us spiritual creatures.
F.C. Happold in his book “Mysticism”, says: “The room was filled with a Presence which was both about me and within me, like a light or warmth. I was overwhelmingly possessed by someone who was not myself and yet I felt I was more myself than I had ever been before. I was filled with an intense happiness, an almost unbearable joy, such as I have never known before or since. And overall was a deep sense of peace and security and certainty. I realised we are not lonely atoms, in a cold universe but each of us is linked up in a rhythm of which may be unconscious and which we can never fully know but to which we can commit ourselves trustingly”.
Rainer Maria Rilke tells us: “I was in a state of quiet, passive, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images and emotions flow through my mind. I found myself all at once wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud. It was in myself. I felt a sense of exaltation, of immense joy. It was a moment of knowing a higher-being that filled my entire life with a clear, serene splendour”.
It is in our deepest solitude we will come to know God. Experience the thrill of beauty or truth, hear sublime music, see the majesty of a mountain, watch a sunrise, feel the simplicity of a new idea, sense the depth of prayer. When we pray we are trying to reach God. Within the heart of our deepest being, which puts us in touch with God, we find wisdom. When God answers it is from our deepest selves. J.R.R Tolkein in Lord of the Rings says: “The road goes on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow if I can, pursuing it with eager feet until it joins some larger way, where many paths and errands meet, and whither then I cannot say”.
I am a traveller, a navigator and everyday I discover a new continent!! Get in touch with all aspects of yourself. You are unique. You are valuable. You have personal dignity. You are worthy of God’s love.
Sr. Ann Crowley – Mercy Convent, Kilkee
Clare Champion Article 26th of November 2021