January 10, 2005

"Be Perfect: The Call to Holiness"

God is giving us an invitation to come higher, to come closer to Him - to come beyond wherever we are.  There is always room for growth in the spiritual life.  All of us want more and more of that union, more of that intimacy, more of God.
 
In Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council set aside all of chapter five to focus on the universal call to holiness.  This call to holiness, this call to come higher friends, is the very goal of the Church, in this life and in the next.  St. Paul says it a little bit differently.  He said, "This is the will of God: your sanctification" (1Thes 4:3).  It is very, very simple.  We can look everywhere we want for what is God's will, but the bottom line is always going to be sanctification, this call to holiness.

Now Jesus preached holiness of life also.  He said, "In a word, you must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."  There isn't any perfection aside from Him is there?  There isn't going to be union, intimacy, apart from Him.  It is in, with, and through God's Word, Jesus, that we must be made perfect.  "Be holy," the Father tells us, "for I am holy."  So He sent His Son, who is the Word, who will be the way into this holiness.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the very essence of holiness, the very essence of love, is obedience because Jesus said, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."  You will keep My Word.  So if we are really loving God, if we are really walking this path of perfection, this path to holiness, one signpost will always be, "Are we keeping His commandments?"

The Holy Spirit was sent, of course, as the Sanctifier to inspire us from within to love God with our whole hearts, with our whole soul, with our whole minds, and with our whole strength, so that we then could really love one another as He loved us.

In Ephesians 5:3 we read that, "We are called by God according to His own purpose."  We are warned by the Apostles to live so as to become saints, to put on, as God's chosen ones, a heart of mercy, a heart of kindness, humility, meekness, patience, all those beautiful graces and gifts of the Spirit, and to possess the fruits of the Spirit unto holiness.  This is a tall order that can only be accomplished in the love power of the Holy Spirit.  This is cultivated by the Spirit if we allow the Spirit to move us.  Those who are moved by the Spirit of God (those who will obey the voice of the Father) will, as Jesus said, worship then the Father in spirit and truth.  Jesus said, "The Father is looking for those to worship Him in spirit and in truth."  So we are called in this beautiful freedom as children of God, this beautiful freedom of holiness, to worship God in spirit and truth.  That can only be done in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  We are invited now to "Come higher, friends" - to follow the poor Christ, the humble Christ, the cross-bearing Christ, in order to be made worthy of being partakers of His glory. 

It is all about God's glory, not about ours.  St. Irenaeus has said, "The glory of God is man fully alive"  (Against Heresies, Book IV).  That means alive with God's own life, with God Himself.  In other words, we are really on our way.  We are glory bound.  Paul talks about going from glory to glory to glory.  It is a process in which we must be constantly working.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Behold I Make All Things New,"  Omaha, 2004.