My husband had a powerful experience recently while ministering to a woman through his volunteer work. The woman has been sick for many years with a degenerative autoimmune disease. She is dying. What made it so moving for him was her joyful resignation to her impending death. This is a woman who has suffered and who has allowed that suffering to prepare her for her eternal home. This is where we should all want to be when our hour comes. This is how we are called to live the Way of the Cross in order to come to full union with the Most Holy Trinity.
My husband wanted to share her witness with me because I have been struggling with my own chronic health issues recently. For years I have battled bile reflux disease, chronic gastritis, and esophagitis, but this year the symptoms have gotten steadily worse, and this summer things have been increasingly difficult.
Most foods make me sick, so I had to go on an elimination diet of low fat bland foods. (There’s a lot of oatmeal and rice.) I walk the grocery stores asking the Lord for the grace not to get frustrated because I can eat so few of the abundant choices of foods. The biggest struggle is finding snacks to carry with me when I am out to prevent a severe flare up.
It does little good to compare where I am currently at and this woman’s story. Her witness is the goal, but she’s at the end, and I am still very much at the beginning of the much deeper purging the Lord wants to do in my life. I know the goal is to confront death in the joyful manner which she exudes, and it is a blessing to see such powerful witnesses. Although I am not dying like her, my chronic issues are a reminder that one day I will die.
The process of detachment is a battle, and it is brutal in a culture of abundance. It is a purgation. It is to die many little deaths each day to be set free from attachments. It requires a stripping away of the things of this world—even good things—to be more closely united with Christ. This is the message He keeps sending me.
Last week, I sat in Adoration at a Dominican parish that my husband and I were visiting. I got a clear nudge to open St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Perfection on my Kindle. In the portion I read St. Teresa is speaking to her religious sisters, but her wisdom is meant for all of us who desire intimacy with God and holiness. She begins her Way with poverty.
To draw closer to the Lord we must be purged of the worldly goods we still cling to. She is urging her sisters to fully live their vow of poverty, but for those of us in the world, we too must be purified of our attachments to the good things of this world if we want to be poor in spirit enough to receive all the Lord wants to fill us with.
In an age of abundance, this is very difficult. Even within the Church we have bought the lie that mortification and detachment are from a bygone era. Part of the reason there is such a shortage of saints is because we have falsely come to believe that we can have our comfort and holiness. The two are incompatible. It is the Cross or nothing. The resurrection does not come before the Cross. We must walk the Way of the Cross, which in this life is the Purgative Way.
One of the quickest ways to discouragement when facing difficulties and afflictions is by comparing the end of a saint’s life with where we are on the journey. Each of the saints had to grow in their understanding of the call to holiness. They had to encounter the sufferings of this life and learn how to persevere and grow in humility, resignation, and love. The layers of sins and attachments must be peeled away by Christ.
The Lord has led me to this image of Him peeling away layers in my spiritual life because this chronic illness is a type of stripping away. He wants to peel away layers of worldly attachment in order to open my soul to greater and greater poverty. But He never leaves us in that poverty; rather, He fills it with Himself.
Our Blessed Mother is the ultimate example since she lived poverty perfectly. Her interior poverty, which was coupled with external poverty, allowed her to be completely open to Christ. Nothing of this world tainted her soul, so she lived her life on earth full of grace. She was completely filled with the indwelling of the Holy Trinity.
She is our model and guide. The Lord wants to fill us entirely, but we fill our bodies and souls with an abundance of the things of this world. While these may—or may not—be good in themselves, they too must give way to the spiritual goods. If we are dependent upon the things of this world for our own happiness—even tasty food—then we have put something before the Lord. That dependence becomes a hindrance on the path to Him. The wisdom of the saints confirms time and time again how we must become detached from the things of this world.
As hard as it is for me right now to be so limited in my diet and to have to give up a 20-year coffee habit, the Lord is at work in powerful ways. He is peeling back layers so that I can be free to dwell in Him and He in me. My dependence on the good things of this world ultimately is a hindrance to a more dedicated growth in holiness. The Lord did not make us for the shallows. He made us for the depths.
When we allow the Lord to take away our favorite things, we are allowing Him greater access to our souls. We are beginning to surrender fully to Him. Let’s be honest, all of us withhold a great deal from Him because we mistakenly believe that He will always want us to have those good things. Ultimately, what He wants is to give us Himself totally and completely.
I came to understand this more fully after an encounter I had with a religious priest a couple of years ago. During a brief conversation, we both fell silent. A silence that the Holy Spirit ordained. As I looked into his eyes, I saw vast depths. His soul was so open to the Lord that the expansiveness of that openness could be seen when meeting his gaze. He was so at peace with Himself and God that He was able to maintain my gaze in a moment that felt eternal. He drew me into that peace and the Lord used it as an opportunity to awaken a desire He wanted to place upon my heart.
That moment has stayed with me ever since because when I saw the beauty and depths of his soul opened to God, I immediately wanted the same thing. I wanted the Lord to open me to His love to that extent. To seek, by His grace, intimacy with Him that looks like that of the mystics and of the experience of this religious priest. I want to swim in the depths of the Most Holy Trinity.
To be opened to God in such a vast way, is to commit to being purged and purified. No one reaches mystical union with God without detachment and poverty. Even then, union with God is on His terms, not ours. The part we must commit to is in allowing Him to purge us. Our souls are too distracted and heavy so long as we are attached to the things of this world, even good things. That is the lesson as I stand in my kitchen unsure of what I should eat because so little doesn’t upset my stomach right now. By becoming detached from food, the Lord is opening a corner of my soul to Him.
I have not mastered full surrender yet. But I have noticed that through prayer and closeness to the Sacraments my desire to lovingly accept this purging is growing. I want more and more to be freed from my attachments, so that I can be closer to Him. This is the same reason the woman my husband ministered to is ready to die. She has been purged of all attachments in this world and now desires nothing but to go home to Our Lord.
The lesson of the religious priest and the dying woman are the same. There must be death to find life. There must be small daily deaths to reach greater and greater spiritual freedom. There must be a purgation to grow in intimacy with God, which then leads us to love in more expansive ways. We love in relation to our attachment to our own comfort and desires. The less we desire for ourselves the more we can give. The less we focus on the things of this world, the more the Lord can fill us with supernatural gifts. Ultimately, the longing of our hearts should be for Him alone.
Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash
