God is the object of all desire, no matter how earthy and unholy our desire might seem. Everything we desire is inside of God. Both Jesus and the Psalms tell us this.

God is the object of all desire and only in God will our deepest longings be satisfied. We express this in our prayers, perhaps without ever being conscious of what we are saying: My soul longs for you in the night. You, Lord, alone, can fill my heart. We say those words, but is it really God that we long for in the night and ache for in our desires? Do we really believe that God is the object of our desires?

When we look at what’s beautiful, full of life, attractive, sexually alluring, and pleasurable on earth, do we really think and believe that this is contained in an infinitely richer way inside of God and inside the life into which God invites us? Do we really believe that the joys of heaven will surpass the pleasures of earth and that, already in this world, the joys of virtue are superior to the sensations of sin?

It is not easy to believe this because we struggle congenitally with turning our conscious attention toward God. Often we find religious practice and prayer more of a disruption to life than an entry into it, more a duty than a joy, more an asceticism than a pleasure, and more as something that takes us away from real life than as something that helps us enter its depths.

Moreover, if we are honest, we must admit that we often harbor a secret envy of those who recklessly plumb sacred energy for their own pleasure. Many of us doggedly do our duty in committing ourselves to something higher; but, like the older brother of the Prodigal Son, too often serve God out of obligation and are bitter about the fact that many others do not. This side of eternity, virtue often envies sin, and (full disclosure) this is particularly true regarding sexuality.

Partly this is natural and a sign of health, given the brute fact of our physicality and the weight of the present moment. These naturally impose themselves on us in a way that can make the things of God and spirit seem abstract and unreal. That’s simply the human condition and God, no doubt, understands. Only in certain graced, mystical moments are we affectively above this.

Thus, it can be helpful to more explicitly tease out something we profess in faith but struggle to actually believe, namely, that all that we find attractive, beautiful, irresistible, erotic, and pleasurable here on earth is found even more fully inside of its author, God.

If we believe that God is the author of all that is good, then God is better looking than any movie star, more intelligent than the brightest scientist or philosopher, wittier and funnier  than the best comedian, more creative than any artist, writer, or innovator, more sophisticated than the most-learned person on earth, more exuberant and playful than any child, more dynamic than any rock star, and, not least, more erotic and sexually attractive than any person on earth.

We don’t ordinarily think about God this way, but the truth of that is given in Scripture and is codified in Christian dogma where, in essence, we are taught that God is one, true, good, and beautiful and is the author and ultimate source of all that is one, good, true, and beautiful. Which means that God is also witty, playful, and erotic. Everything that is alluring on earth is inside of God.

But knowing that does not take away the power of earthly things to allure, nor should it. Countless things can overwhelm us: a beautiful person, a sunset, a piece of music, a work of art, youthful exuberance, a child’s playfulness, a baby’s innocence, someone’s wit, feelings of intimacy, feelings of nostalgia, a glass of wine on the right evening, a stirring in our sexuality, or, most deeply of all, an inchoate sense of the uniqueness and preciousness of human life itself.

We need to honor these things and thank God for the gift, even as we make ourselves aware that all of this is found more-richly inside of God and that we lose nothing when virtue, religion, or commitment ask us to sacrifice these things for something higher. Jesus, himself, promises that whatever we give up for the sake of what is higher will be given back to us a hundredfold. Knowing this, we can live our lives enjoying fully what is earthy and earthly. The beauties and pleasures of this life are a gift from God, meant to be enjoyed. Moreover, by being aware of their source, we can then also be free enough to accept the very real limits that life puts on our desires. Better still, we need not fear death since what we will lose will be eclipsed a hundredfold by what we gain.

The main character in T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral is Thomas a Beckett, a bishop, who from every outward appearance is saint. He is scrupulously honest, generous to a fault, and a defender of the faith who dies as a martyr. Yet, at a certain point in his life, prior to his martyrdom, he recognizes that he might not be distinguishing between temptation and grace.

Many of us are familiar with how he famously expressed this:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason. …

For those who serve the greater cause

May make the cause serve them.

What’s the temptation here that can look like grace?

Simply put, we can be doing a lot of good for the wrong reasons. Moreover, this can be enormously subtle; not least in those of us who serve the greater cause, because, as T.S. Eliot points out, it is easy to make the cause serve us.

How can we make the cause serve us? How can we be doing good for the wrong reasons?

Here’s an example: I can be doing a lot of good things that help others and serve God’s purpose here on earth. I can be generous to the point of martyrdom. However, what if I am doing this (serving the greater cause) mainly because it makes me look good, makes me feel moral and righteous, draws respect, earns me praise and admiration, and will leave behind me a good name?

These questions probe the difference between temptation and grace. I can be doing the right things and, while not doing them for a bad reason, I can still for the most part be doing them for myself. I can be making the cause serve me more so than I am serving the cause.

The late Jesuit Michael J. Buckley (one of the major spiritual mentors in my life) pushes us to make a painful examination of conscience on this. Am I doing things to serve God and others or am I doing them to make myself look and feel good? 

In his book What Do You Seek? The Questions of Jesus as Challenge and Promise, Buckley writes this: “For, in a thousand ways, those who serve the greater cause may make the cause serve them. This can be enormously subtle. Sometimes a nuance at the initial formulation of an action or of a life can work the unexpected twist, the unrealized but profound reorientation so that zeal masks a hidden but vicious ambition; it is hidden because ambition and zeal, however profoundly contradictory, can look initially so much alike. The desire to get something achieved can mix the intrinsic worth of a project with the reflected glory of the accomplishment.”

As a priest, in ministry for more than fifty years, I find this a particularly challenging prism through which to examine myself and my fifty plus years of ministry. How much have I served the greater cause and how much have I, blind to self, made it serve me? Who is the bigger winner here: God and the church or me and my good name?

Granted, motivation is tricky to discern and this side of eternity is rarely pure. We are a bundle of mixed motivations, some which serve others and some which serve ourselves; and, as Buckley astutely points out, initially they can look very much alike. Moreover, certain sayings of Jesus seem to suggest that sometimes explicit motivation is less important than actually doing the right thing.

For example, Jesus says that it is not necessarily those who say Lord, Lord who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but it is those who in fact do the will of the Father on earth who will enter the kingdom. (Matthew 7, 21) As well, in teaching that we will ultimately be judged on the basis of how we treated the poor (Whatsoever you do to the poor, you do to me), notice that neither group, those who did it right and those who did it wrong, knew explicitly what they were doing. They were rewarded or punished solely on the basis of their actions. (Matthew 25)

So, can we be doing the right things for the wrong reasons? And, indeed, if we are doing them for less than purely altruistic reasons (approval, respect, a good name, good feelings about ourselves) how bad is this? Does it denigrate or destroy the good we are doing? Is the desire for respect, a good name, and good feelings about ourselves genuinely at odds with altruism? Might the two befriend each other? Is God judging us more by our motivation than by our actions?

Am I serving the greater cause or am I having it serve me? That is a critical question for self-reflection. Why? Because it is easy to be blind to our own hypocrisy, even as it is just as easy to be too hard on ourselves.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists, didn’t become a Christian without resistance and struggle. He grew into adulthood nursing a certain skepticism and agnosticism. He wasn’t drawn naturally to faith or to Christ. But he was always radically honest in trying to listen to the deepest voices inside and at a certain point he came to the realization that Christ and his teaching were compelling in such a way that left him unfree. In conscience he had to become a Christian.

Many of us are familiar with the words he wrote on the night when he first knelt down and gave himself over to faith in Christ. Having just come back from a long walk and a religious discussion with J.R.R. Tolkien (who was his colleague at Oxford) he describes how he knelt down and committed himself to faith in Christ. But, by his own admission, this wasn’t an easy genuflection: I knelt down as the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom. Wow! Not exactly what we take for first fervor.

But he goes on to describe why, despite all his natural reluctance, he became a convert: Because I had come to realize that the harshness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and God’s compulsion is our liberation. What is God’s compulsion?

Here’s an example. There’s a famous incident in the Gospel of John where Peter, like C.S. Lewis, is also a reluctant convert. This is the story.

Jesus had just identified himself with the Bread of Life and ended that teaching by saying that unless we eat his body and drink his blood we cannot have life in us. Understandably this was both confusing and perplexing to his audience, so perplexing in fact that the Gospels tell us that the crowds all walked away, saying this is an intolerable teaching. Then, when the crowds had gone, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them: Do want to walk away too? Peter was not exactly enthusiastic and affirmative in his answer. He responded by saying, “We have no other place to go.” However (and this is one of Peter’s shining moments in the Gospels) he then adds: We know that you have the words of everlasting life.

When you parse out Peter’s response, here’s its substance. Peter has just heard a teaching that he doesn’t understand and what he understands he doesn’t like. At that moment, Jesus looks like the opposite of truth and life. Peter’s head is resistant and so is his heart. But underneath both his head and his heart there is another part of Peter that knows that, irrespective of resistance of his head and his heart, this teaching will bring him life.

At that moment, like C.S. Lewis, Peter is a most reluctant Apostle. However, he still gives his life over to Christ, despite the resistance in his head and in his heart. Why? Because like C.S. Lewis, he had come to understand that God’s compulsion is our liberation.

I remember once seeing an interview with Daniel Berrigan. The host asked him, “Father, where does your faith lie? Is it in your head or in your heart?” Berrigan’s response was both colorful and insightful: “Faith is rarely where your head is at, and faith even less rarely where your heart is at. Faith is where your ass is at.” By way of commentary, he added: “Anyone who has ever been in a commitment over a long period of time knows that there will be times and seasons when your head isn’t in it, your heart isn’t in it, but you’re in it because you know that the path to life for you lies in staying inside that commitment.”

 What ultimately do we trust enough to give our lives over to? I believe we need to answer that question not with heads nor with our hearts. It’s not that our heads and our hearts are untrustworthy in themselves, it’s just as we know from experience, they don’t always speak for what’s deepest inside us. God’s compulsion sits below our thinking and our feeling. Our heads tell us what we think is wise to do. Our hearts tell us what we would like to do. But a deeper voice in us tells us what we have to do.

The deepest voice of God inside us isn’t always at ease with our head or our heart. That voice is God’s compulsion inside us and it can make us the most reluctant convert in the history of Christianity, it can have us standing before Jesus telling him that he looks the opposite of truth and life, it can have us looking with utter disillusion at the seemingly chronic infidelity of our churches, and still have us say, we have no other place to go. You have the words of everlasting life. Doubt, disillusionment, and lack of understanding aren’t virtues, but they can push us to a place where we have to decide before what ultimately we need to genuflect.

A Benedictine monk shared this story with me. During his early years in religious life, he had been resentful because he was required to ask permission from his Abbott if he wanted anything: “I thought it was silly, me, a grown man, an adult, having to ask a superior if I wanted a new shirt. I felt like a child.”

But as he aged his perspective changed: “I’m not sure of all the reasons, though I’m sure they have to do with grace, but one day I came to realize that there was some deep wisdom in having to ask permission for everything. We don’t own anything; nothing comes to us by right. Everything is gift.  So ideally everything should be asked for and not taken as if it were ours by right. We need to be grateful to God and the universe for everything that’s been given us. Now, when I need something and need to ask permission from the Abbott, I no longer feel like a child. Rather, I feel that I’m more properly in tune with the way things should be in a gift-oriented universe within which nobody has a right to ultimately claim anything.”

What this monk came to understand is a principle which undergirds all spirituality, all morality, and every one of the commandments, namely, that everything comes to us as gift, nothing can be claimed as if owed to us. We should be grateful to God and to the universe for giving us what we have and careful not to claim, as by right, anything more.

But this goes against much in our instinctual selves and within our culture. Within both, there are strong voices which tell us that if you cannot take what you want then you’re a weak person, weak in a double way. First, you’re a weak personality, too timid to fully claim life. Second, you’ve been weakened by religious and moral scruples and are unable to properly seize the day and be fully alive. These voices tell us that we need to grow up because there is much in us that’s fearful and infantile, a child held captive by superstitious forces.

It’s precisely because of these voices that today, in a culture that professes to be Christian and moral, leading political and social figures can in all sincerity believe and say that empathy is a human weakness.

We need an important reminder.

The voice of Jesus is radically antithetical to these voices. Empathy is the penultimate human virtue, the antithesis of weakness. Jesus would look on so much that is assertive, aggressive, and accumulative within our society and, notwithstanding the admiration it receives, tell us clearly that this is not what it means to come to the banquet which lies at the heart of God’s kingdom. He would not share our admiration of the rich and famous who too often claim, as by right, their excessive wealth and status. When Jesus states that it is harder for a rich person to go to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, he might have qualified this by adding: “Unless, of course, the rich person, childlike, asks permission from the universe, from the community, and from God, for every new shirt!”

When I was a religious novice, our novice master tried to impress upon us the meaning of religious poverty by making us write inside every book that was given to us the Latin words: ad usum. Literally: for your use. The idea was that, although this book was given to you for your personal use, you didn’t own it. It was only for your use; real ownership lay elsewhere. We were then told that this was true as well of everything else given to us for our personal use, from our toothbrushes to the shirts on our backs. They were not really ours, merely given to us for our use.

One of the young men in that novitiate group who left the order is today a medical doctor. He remains a close friend and he once shared with me how today, as a doctor, he still writes those words ad usum in every one of his books. His rational is this: “I don’t belong to a religious order. I don’t have a vow of poverty, but the principle our novice master taught us is just as valid for me in the world as it is for a religious novice. We don’t own anything. Those books aren’t really mine. They’ve been given to me, temporarily, for my use. Nothing ultimately belongs to anybody and it’s best never to forget that.” No matter how rich, strong, and grown-up we are, there’s something healthy in having to ask permission to buy a new shirt. It keeps us attuned to the fact that the universe belongs to everyone, to God ultimately. Everything comes to us as gift and so we may never take anything for granted, but only as granted!

Several years ago, while presenting at a conference at our school, a young priest from Quebec, Pierre-Olivier Tremblay, shared a story (in words to this effect).

I spent some years working with young people and what I noticed with many of them was this. They were young and bursting with energy, with dreams, with hopes, an energy that was wonderful to be around. However, while so full of energy, few of them radiated much hope. They lacked hope because they lacked a meta-narrative. They had only their own stories and when things were going well their energy and spirits were high, but when things went wrong (a breakup in a relationship, a death of a loved one, a serious illness) they had nothing to cling to because they didn’t understand their lives within the context of a bigger story, a meta-narrative. They understood themselves solely within their own individual stories – and that is never a basis for hope.

What is a meta-narrative, a bigger story, within which we need to understand our own story? And how is that the basis for hope?

Here’s an example: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was both a world-class scientist and a Christian mystic. His intent as a scientist and as a man of faith was to articulate a theological synthesis which would bring together in one harmonious vision, both the divine intent within cosmic evolution and the divine intent in God becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ.

And he articulated such a vision, one within which a Christian could bring together in one harmonious vision, the scientific theories regarding the origins of the universe, the unfolding of evolution through 15 million years, the purpose and role of Christ in history, and how cosmic and faith history will eventually culminate (just as is described in the hymn in the Epistle to the Ephesians) in the fullness of time, where, through Christ, God will bring all things into one in him. And on that day, goodness will forever triumph over evil, love will triumph over division, peace over chaos, empathy over selfishness, gentleness over cruelty, and forgiveness over vengeance. 

As he was expounding this vision at a conference, a colleague challenged him with this question. You believe that good will ultimately triumph over evil; well, what happens if we blow up the world with an atomic bomb, what happens to your vision of things then? Teilhard’s answer: if we blow up the world with an atomic bomb, that would be a two-million-year setback; but goodness will triumph over evil, not because I wish it, but because God promised it and, in the resurrection, God showed that God has the power to deliver on that promise. 

He’s right. Except for the resurrection, we have no guarantees about anything. Lies, injustice, and violence may triumph in the end. Chaos, cruelty, and death may well be the last word. That’s certainly how it looked the day Jesus died.

However, the resurrection of Jesus is God’s last word on this. In the resurrection, God assures us that no matter how things look, no matter how much evil seems to have the upper hand, no matter how powerless innocence, goodness, and gentleness may look sometimes, no matter how many times our world crucifies Christ, no matter how many times we might blow up the world with an atomic bomb, no matter hopeless it all looks, the ending of our story has been written, and it is a happy ending, an ecstatic one.

The resurrection of Jesus assures us that, as Julian of Norwich affirms, in the end, all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well.

The resurrection, God raising up the crucified Jesus in a way that was real, cosmic and corporeal, and not just a shift in the consciousness of his followers, is the basis not just for our hope but for our Christian faith as such. As St. Paul says, if there were no resurrection, we are the most deluded of all people. But, if Jesus was resurrected, everything we believe in and everything we hope for, not least that in the end goodness, love, community, gentleness, and joy will forever triumph over all that opposes them, is assured. The resurrection of Jesus, and that alone, is the basis for all hope, both for ourselves and for the cosmos itself.

The resurrection is the ultimate meta-narrative. This is the bigger story within which we need to set our own individual stories. When Pierre-Olivier Tremblay (now a bishop in Quebec) remarked that the young people he was working with radiated beautiful energy but radiated very little hope because they lacked a meta-narrative within to set their own stories, the meta-narrative he was referring to was precisely the narrative of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Young or old, our own individual stories are not enough. We need to understand ourselves (and the cosmos itself) within the meta-narrative of the resurrection.

Where might we experience Jesus today in a world that is seemingly too crowded with its own concerns to allow a space for him?

The renowned spirituality writer Tomas Halik, in a recent book entitled The Afternoon of Christianity, makes this suggestion. As the world makes less and less explicit space for Jesus, we need to search for him more and more in those places where he is “anonymously present”. Halik’s counsel: “Let us search for him ‘by his voice’ like Mary Magdalene; let us search for him in strangers on the road like the disciples on the road to Emmaus; let us search for him in the wounds of the world like the apostle Thomas; let us search for him whenever he passes through the closed doors of fear; let us search for him where he brings the gift of forgiveness and new beginnings.”

The invitation here is to better respond to the signs of the times, given that we are living now in what he calls “the afternoon of Christianity”.

What is the afternoon of Christianity?

He distinguishes three periods in the history of Christianity. He sees the morning of Christianity as the time before 1500 AD, the pre-modern period, the time before secularization. The noonday of Christianity, for him, is the time of secularization and modernity, basically from the 19^th century until our own generation. The afternoon of Christianity, for him, is our time today, the post-modern world, where we are witnessing a breakdown of much of the world as we once knew it with the effects of this on faith and religion.  And for Halik, the effect of all of this is that the Christian faith has now outgrown previous forms of religion.

Wow! That’s quite a statement! However, what Halik is proposing is not that the faith is dying, that Christianity is dying, or that the churches are dying. Rather, for him, Christianity today finds itself in a certain cultural homelessness, in a time where so many social structures that once supported it are collapsing, so that the Christian faith is now needing to seek a new shape, a new home, new means of expression, new social and cultural roles, and new allies.

And how will that turn out? We don’t know. But here’s Halik’s hunch: Christianity will not, as many fear, lose its identity and become a non-religious faith. It will not disintegrate into some vague, doctrineless, boundaryless, privatized spirituality. Rather, the hope is that (paradoxically) the very dynamism and diversity that frightens many Christians is the incubation phase of the Christianity of the future.

For him, the challenges that Christianity faces today invite us to bring faith into a new space, like Paul did when he brought Christianity out of the confines of the Judaism of his day. Here is how Halik puts it: “I believe that the Christianity of tomorrow will be above all a community of a new hermeneutic, a new reading, a new and deeper interpretation of the two sources of divine revelation, scripture and tradition, and especially of God’s utterance in the signs of the times.

How is this all to happen? That’s the thesis of the book. Chapter after chapter lays out possibilities of how we might more courageously read the signs of the times and rather than water down any of the substance of the Christian faith, let the signs of the times lead us to a deeper understanding of both scripture and tradition, especially so that we might bring together in better harmony the Christ of cosmic evolution with the Resurrected Jesus; and then recognize that they are both not just present in what is explicit in our Christian faith and worship, they are also anonymously present in the evolution of our culture and society.

Consequently, we need to search for Jesus Christ not just in our scriptures, our churches, our worship services, our catechetical classes, our Sunday schools, and our explicit Christian fellowship, though of course we need to search there. But, like Mary Magdalene, we need to recognize his voice in the caretaker at the cemetery; like the discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus, when we no longer have the answers, we need to recognize his presence in strangers whose words make our hearts burn inside us; like the doubting Thomas, we need to overcome our doubts about his resurrection by touching his wounds as they are now manifest in the poor and the suffering; like Jesus’ first community who barricaded themselves behind a locked door out of fear, we need to recognize him whenever, inside our huddled fear, something expectedly breathes peace into us; and we need to recognize his presence inside us every time we receive forgiveness and are empowered to begin again. This isn’t a time of dying, it’s a time of kairos, a time when we are being invited to open our eyes in a new way so as to recognize the Christ who is walking with us in some unfamiliar forms.

I was raised a Roman Catholic and essentially inhaled the religious ethos of Roman Catholicism. I went to the seminary, earned theological degrees, and taught theology at a graduate level for a number of years before I ever started making a distinction between ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’. For me, they were always one and the same thing, Jesus Christ.

To my mind, Jesus Christ was the second person of the Trinity who took on flesh in the incarnation and is still now our God, our advocate, and our friend in heaven. I didn’t distinguish between Jesus and Christ in terms of whom I was praying to, speaking about, or relating to. Indeed, for many years in my writings, I simply used the words Jesus and Christ interchangeably.

Slowly through the years this changed and I have begun to distinguish more between Jesus and Christ. It began with a deepened understanding of what the Gospels and St. Paul mean by the reality of Christ as a mystery which, while always having Jesus as its center, is larger than the historical Jesus. This distinction and its importance became clearer to me when I began to have more contact with Evangelicals, both as students and as colleagues.

In faith fellowship with various groups of Evangelicals, I began to see that one of the ecclesial differences between us, Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, is that we, Roman Catholics, while not ignoring Jesus, are very much about Christ, and Evangelicals, while not ignoring Christ, are very much about Jesus.

How we understand the church, how we understand the Eucharist, and how we understand the primary invitation given us in the Gospels are colored by how we perceive ourselves in relationship to Jesus and to Christ.

What’s at stake here?

What’s the difference between saying ‘Jesus’ and saying ‘Christ’? Is there any difference between praying to Jesus and praying to Christ, between relating to Jesus or relating to Christ?

There’s a difference, an important one. Christ is not Jesus’ second name – as in Jack Smith, Susan Parker, or Jesus Christ. While it is correct to use the two names together, as we do commonly in our prayer (We pray through Jesus Christ, Our Lord), there is an important distinction to be made.

Jesus is a person, the second person in the Trinity, the divine person who became incarnate, and the person who calls us to one-to-one intimacy with him. Christ is a mystery of which we are a part. The mystery of Christ includes the person of Jesus but also includes us. We are not part of the body of Jesus, but we are part of the body of Christ.

As Christians we believe that Jesus is the body of Christ, that the Eucharist is the body of Christ, and that we, baptized Christians, are also the body of Christ. Saint Paul states clearly that we, the Christian community, are the body of Christ on earth, just as Jesus and the Eucharist are the body of Christ. And Paul means this literally. We (the Christian community) are not like a body, or some mystical or metaphorical body; nor do we represent or replace Christ’s body. Rather, we are the body of Christ on earth, still giving physical flesh to God on earth.

This has implications for Christian discipleship: Jesus is a person, the person who invites us to one-to-one intimacy with him (which Evangelicals see as the goal of Christian discipleship). Christ is part of a larger mystery which includes Jesus but also includes each of us. In this mystery we are called to intimacy not just with Jesus, but also with each other and with physical creation. In Christ, the goal of Christian discipleship is community of life with Jesus, with each other, and with physical creation (since the mystery of Christ is also cosmic).

At the risk of huge oversimplification, allow me a suggestion: Roman Catholics and Evangelicals can learn from each other on this.

From our Evangelical brothers and sisters, Roman Catholics can learn to focus as much on Jesus as we do on Christ, so that like Evangelicals we might realize more explicitly (as is clear in the Gospel of John) that at the very heart of Christian discipleship lies the invitation to a one-to-one intimacy with a person, Jesus, (and not just with a mystery).

Conversely, Evangelicals can learn from Roman Catholics to focus as much on Christ as on Jesus, with all this implies in terms of defining discipleship more widely than personal intimacy with Jesus and church more widely than simple fellowship. Relating to Christ points to the centrality of the Eucharist as a communal event. As well, it implies seeing Christian discipleship not just as an invitation to intimacy with Jesus, but as an incorporation into an ecclesial body which includes not just Jesus but the community of all believers as well as nature itself.

We can learn from each other to take both Jesus and Christ more seriously.

There are times when our world unravels. Who hasn’t had the feeling? “I’m falling apart! This is beyond me! My heart is broken! I feel betrayed by everything! Nothing makes sense anymore! Life is upside down!”

Jesus had a cosmic image for this. In the Gospels, he talks about how the world as we experience it will someday end: “The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give forth its light, stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.” When Jesus says this, he is not talking as much about cosmic cataclysms as of cataclysms of the heart. Sometimes our inner world is shaken, turned upside down; it gets dark in the middle of the day, there’s an earthquake in the heart; we experience the end of the world as we’ve known it.

However, in this upheaval, Jesus assures us that one thing remains sure: God’s promise of fidelity. That doesn’t get turned upside down and in our disillusionment we are given a chance to see what really is of substance, permanent, and worthy of our lives. Thus, ideally at least, when our trusted world is turned upside down, we are given the chance to grow, to become less selfish, and to see reality more clearly.

Christian mystics call this “a dark night of the soul” and they express it as if God were actively turning our world upside down and deliberately causing all the heartache to purge and cleanse us.

The great Spanish mystic John of the Cross puts it this way: God gives us seasons of fervor and then takes them away. In our seasons of fervor, God gives us consolation, pleasure, and security inside our relationships, our prayer, and our work (sometimes with considerable passion and intensity). This is a gift from God and is meant to be enjoyed. But John tells us, at a certain point, God takes away the pleasure and consolation and we experience a certain dark night in that where we once felt fire, passion, consolation, and security, we will now feel dryness, boredom, disillusion, and insecurity. For John of the Cross, all honeymoons eventually end.

Why? Why would God do this? Why can’t a honeymoon last forever?

Because eventually, though not initially, it blocks us from seeing straight. Initially all those wonderful feelings we feel when we first fall in love, when we first begin to pray deeply, and when we first begin to find our legs in the world. These are part of God’s plan and God’s way of drawing us forward. The passion and consolation we feel help lead us out of ourselves, beyond fear and selfishness. But, eventually, the good feelings themselves become a problem because we can get hung up on them rather than on what’s behind them.

Honeymoons are wonderful; but, on a honeymoon, too often we are more in love with being in love and all the wonderful energy this creates than we are in love with the person behind all those feelings. The same is true for faith and prayer. When we first begin to pray seriously, we are often more in love with the experience of praying and what it’s doing for us than we are in love with God. On any honeymoon, no matter how intense and pure the feelings seem, those feelings are still partly about ourselves rather than purely about the person we think we love. Sadly, that is why many a warm, passionate honeymoon eventually turns into a cold, passionless relationship.

Until we are purified, and we are purified precisely through dark nights of disillusionment, we are too much still seeking ourselves in love and in everything else. Therese of Lisieux used to warn: “Be careful not to seek yourself in love, you’ll end up with a broken heart that way!” We’d have fewer heartaches if we understood that. Also, before we are purified by disillusionment, most of the tears we shed, no matter how real the pain or loss, often say more about us than they say about the person or situation we are supposedly mourning.

In all this, there’s both bad news and good news: The bad news is that most everything we sense as precious will someday be taken from us. Everything gets crucified, including every feeling of warmth and security we have. But the good news is that it will all be given back again, more deeply, more purely, and even more passionately than before.

What dark nights of the soul, cataclysms of the heart, do is to take away everything that feels like solid earth so that we end up in a free-fall, unable to grab on to anything that once supported us. But, in falling, we get closer to bedrock, to God, to reality, to truth, to love, to each other, beyond illusions, beyond selfishness, and beyond self-interested love that can masquerade as altruism. Clarity in eyesight comes after disillusionment, purity of heart comes after heartbreak, and real love comes after the honeymoon has passed.