Every
religious-spiritual tradition of which I know includes within it two distinct
ways of life: the social and religious
traditions, publicly celebrated; and its hidden or mystical life, often
practiced by only a few, and in solitude.
The outward, religious side of Catholicism is rich, having developed
over some 20 centuries, not counting our roots in Jewish ritual, practices, and
beliefs, nor in those of the Hellenistic world which were incorporated Into
Catholic practice and belief in the early centuries. The liturgies of Holy Week are not only the
high point of the Church year, but in my opinion, the most meaningful and
beautiful services that Christianity has to offer. The center decisively on the suffering,
death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ—as does every Eucharistic celebration,
but often in more muted tones, especially if drowned out by the kind of loud
and busy, often social-activist services so common in our country today.
The mystical life of the Church is
essentially one with mysticism in other forms, because it is utterly
simple: the individual human being seeks
internal growth in holiness (the purification of spirit) in order to become one
with that which we by tradition call “God.”
This process is the growth in love and virtues, even to the point in
which one seeks to dissolve his or her own ego or self into divine
Presence. St. Paul said it well: “Now I live, yet not I [ego], but Christ
lives in me.” He kept renouncing
himself, his own will, in order to allow the Risen Christ to live in him and
through him. That is the pattern of the
mystical life. It is the goal of our
Catholic faith, at least as taught by the saints of the Church, but
unfortunately, has often been neglected for more external, ritualistic
religion, or for social “activism” of one kind or another. Anything is easier than dissolving one’s ego
into the abyss of divine love.
If one lives only as a practicing
Catholic in the external forms, and does not develop an internal spiritual
life, one will not understand the meaning of eternal life. For outwardly religious Catholics, eternal
life is usually misunderstood as afterlife, as something that happens to
one after one dies. Hence, the
celebration of Christ’s Resurrection (Easter) for example, is thought to be about
what happens to people when they die. Even Christ’s Resurrection is externalized into stories and beliefs that
sound more like a resuscitated corpse—more like Lazarus—than the experience of the Risen Christ in the
psyches (consciousness) of selected men and women. In this
sense, Catholic religious belief is not essentially different from that of
ancient Egyptians, or Greeks, who had stories about life in the “underworld,”
and how to escape the “lake of fire” and get to “paradise” or “heaven” in some
way. For many people, including for some
of our faithful Catholics, it seems that they believe that “getting to heaven”
is the goal of life, and what “religion” has to offer. One theological mind called this kind of
religion “fire insurance.”
Eternal life is not
essentially “afterlife,” nor is it a form of speculation on some kind of
futuristic existence beyond death. The
term “eternal life” was coined by the Greek philosopher Plato, and it would
have had some currency by the time of Christ. It means true life, a life that is true because one practices dying to
self, especially in yielding up one’s opinions for truth, and one’s selfish
passions for the rule of reason in the soul and in one’s actions. Eternal life is a life of openness to the
divine Presence, that “eternalizes” or “immortalizes” the soul from
within. At the end of his Ethics,
Aristotle notes that the purpose of genuine life is “immortalizing,” and it
comes from attunement to the divine mind. This is experientially equivalent to what the Apostle Paul means by
“Christ lives in me.” Life in union with
God is eternal life, here and now, and it is true life. “This is eternal life: to know You, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom You sent,” using the language of St. John’s Gospel. God’s Life, beyond space-time, is eternal,
forever.
