The following reflection was written for as part of the requirements for the Spiritual Direction formation program in which I participate.

What was the mysterious illness from which Lazarus suffered and died? It was the death of his false self. Death is the only cure for the false self. That is why Jesus did not come. Only the death of the false self brings liberation from the drive for survival and security, affection and esteem, and power and control, and from overidentification with a particular group or role.

… Lazarus shows us that the Christian journey is not a magic carpet to bliss, a career, or a success story. It is a series of humiliations of the false self. Divine wisdom works both in prayer and action to free us from the undigested emotional junk of a lifetime that is warehoused in the body.

These words from Thomas Keating are the ‘leaping off’ point for this reflection, which is written at a time of profound pain, searching and barrenness. I fear this reflection will be a little long and quite personal. I am aware it does not deal with many of the readings we were provided with. I have read them all, but it seems right to make a personal response on this occassion.

I am not a great soul. In many ways I am not even a particularly good soul. I know that I am beset by temptations, sins, and I have experienced many failures. In fact, my life seems to have been a tapestry of failure, in many ways. As I look back over the 40 years of my life I see little accomplishment, and much hurt. Nevertheless, in the midst of this the confronting and wondrous truth remains – I am God’s, God calls me deeper into Him, and I say ‘yes’. I fail a great deal, and am very aware of my propensity to evil. My rough edges are very visible to me, and cause me a good deal of pain. Yet, even now, I am aware of the limits of the ‘truth’ of this set of descriptors of me. The descriptors, whilst partly true, are also part of a false self which must die. – my connection to them and comfort in them is a choosing to be false. The effects of the history which drags after me must die. I must die.

As I listened to Christina speak at the last session, and as I read the written materials, and as I have lived my life and ministry, I have found myself challenged by God to continue to allow him to kill my false self – to continue on the walk to transforming union, which Keating describes as the ‘ripe fruit of dismantling the false self.

Christina’s talks underlined the real ‘blood and guts’ nature of these final stages of the apophatic way. This is not a time for scented roses, mystical visions, comfort and certainty – things I had associated (falsely, as it turns out) with saints such as Thérèse of Lisieux. It is a time for trust, guidance and obedience – things she lived and embodied abundantly. It is these things I am trying to live, in the midst of the dying. As I ponder and pray, I am reminded of this writing, from Meister Eckhart:

Our salvation depends upon our knowing and recognizing the Chief Good which is God Himself. I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself… Thus must the soul, which would know God, be rooted and grounded in Him so steadfastly, as to suffer no perturbation of fear or hope, or joy or sorrow, or love or hate, or anything which may disturb its peace… the soul should be remote from all earthly things alike so as not to be nearer to one than another. It should keep the same attitude of aloofness in love and hate, in possession and renouncement, that is, it should be simultaneously dead, resigned and lifted up.

Whilst this, particularly the final sentence, seems like a rather negative view, it reinforces Keating’s – death must come. Jesus himself taught this, when he said ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it bears much fruit’ (John 12:24, ESV). Keating describes the Night of the Spirit as:

… liberation from the tyranny of the false self. It is the necessary preparation for the full transmission of divine light, life and love.

This is death indeed, as the world sees it. The world constantly seeks to bolster my false self with things, experiences, desires. When the walls of the false self begin to break down panaceas are offered, such as therapy (which can be useful, but may serve to strengthen rather the walls rather than support the individual whilst they’re breaking down), drugs, sex, substitutes for life and meaning. The church, too, is complicit in this, by reducing much of Christianity to a mere consumer experience and failing to call the faithful to growth. I suspect that, in this, God often works in spite of the church, rather than through it.

Much of my false self has been eroded by events in my life – shaking my certainty about who I am, who God is, how the world works and what my place in it is. My brother Brian’s suicide, coming face-to-face with senseless murders, trouble in relationships, being gay and being rejected, being gay and being misled about what that meant, being spiritually abused, having cancer and being treated for having cancer – these, among other things, have served to shake my sense of self. Even now events in life continue to break against me, like waves breaking against a rock on the coast.

In the midst of all of this has been the absence of God, made all the more painful by a searing hunger for God. Over the past couple of years this hunger – a palpable, physical need – has deepened and intensified, but simultaneously, the absence of God has intensified. God’s call to me has become clearer, and I seek to respond, but who I am means that the church cannot or will not respond to me. There is a dying in that, too. Keating described it in the quote above. I am becoming Colin, and being cleansed of the roles and subterfuge – that which is false, in order to become one with God – suffused with ‘divine light, life and love’.

A third ‘leg’ of this experience adding to the paradoxical absence of God and hunger for God, is, as Zaleski describes, a profound doubt in the existence of God. I find myself, for example, giving direction, leading worship or preaching and being racked with doubt and uncertainty about that which I am saying or teaching. At an intellectual level, and remembering experiences, I know the things of God to be true and real. I am, however, assaulted with the wondering that perhaps this is not. I feel all that I can do is to walk on, remembering God and his presence in my life. I do take comfort that souls far greater than I, such as Mother Teresa, were accosted by similar doubts. As I pray the Daily Office, day by day, or participate in the Eucharist, I know myself to be joined through the church’s liturgy with all the saints, and I find sustenance there. My own prayer seems meaningless and vague – the Daily Office is a place of peace amidst the roaring winds of the desert.

I have, lately, been very interested in the journey of Thérèse of Lisieux,  a saint to whom I had found it hard to relate. Her hagiographers seem to have taken great trouble to cover her with gilt and lace, and to make her profound insights into the spiritual way into maxims which have removed them of their shocking truth. O’Donoghue notes that Thérèse’s way is “addressed only to those who seek true greatness. It is a way for the truly heroic, a way that puts all pseudo-heroisms to question.”

It is a way which has a profound concern with the relationship between God the Father, and the soul. God the Father is loving – in fact, the definition of love – but also makes “absolute demands”. Thérèse’s way is the way of Jesus as the path to the Father is through the Son, who taught that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and prayed “that they may be one in us” (cf John 17:21-23) (the non-dual aspects of which are fascinating). This is the Jesus who modelled complete and selfless love for the Father, even giving up his life in obedience to the Father, walking into the depths of the darkness (and choosing to do so) with no consolation.

Thérèse’s love for Jesus led her to suffer, and through her sufferings came freedom from her false self and, divine union. My own small sufferings also bring gifts, to be accepted and embraced rather than rejected as negative and existentially or ontologically hurtful. As I suffer I remember the much greater sufferings of Jesus, and am thankful that I can suffer, for my own sake and for the sake of others.

One of the sufferings in my life is the living out of my vocation to the priesthood, when ordination to the priesthood is denied to me because of my sexuality. This vocation is tied together with the call, I believe, to spiritual direction, which has increasingly become the major focus of my ministry, and to my call to live a monastic life.  Yet… even this suffering is a good thing. Keating wrote:

In a ministry inspired by God, one receives a particular call and has to exercise it on God’s terms. That means the ministry will be characterised, as it was for Jesus, by opposition, rejection, failure, disappointment, persecution, and perhaps death.

I experience “opposition, rejection, failure, disappointment… [and] persecution” in varying measures (though as I write this I think of John of the Cross’s sufferings and almost reach for the ‘delete’ button). When I receive these experiences as they are, and do not allow the rubbish from the past to influence my reactions (easier said than done, as a recent event reminds me) I am able to embrace them and allow them to do their work.

But what does all of this mean for me as a spiritual director? I am tempted to respond simply with the following quote:

A person in this state is totally possessed by Jesus, identified with him in his surrender to his Father. Thus, through her, Jesus is on earth in an incomparable way. His kingdom has come in her and because of this comes even more fully into the world.

And whilst this might seem to be a flip or trite answer, it is I believe, true. I am, self-evidently, not in that state, but to the extent that there are moments of union with God, I am able to be Christ for those he leads to me. That is a high privilege, and one which I must approach with discipline and humility. The process of dying to self is, for me as one who follows the Benedictine way, a road of discipline. The sufferings I experience, rightly accepted, certainly lead to humility.

While 2009 brought some considerable graces, not the least of which was participating in the formation program, it also brought some significant challenges, and a call to consider anew where my spiritual ‘home’ is (if indeed I have one), and also to consider those whom God would have me serve. Increasingly, the people who come to me for direction are gay men or those who have experienced abuse at the hands of the church or her leaders. I believe my call to be in those terms to those outside the walls of the church, to nurture them, challenge them, be with them as a man of prayer, and to provide for them sacramentally. How this will be lived out I do not as yet know. I can only echo Mary’s surrender – let it be done to me as you will.